Water + Ink + Music

May 15, 2014 1:05 PM

YouTube user Leigh Reyes does amazing things with paper, a fountain pen, and some water.
posted by Sokka shot first (13 comments total)

Wow, that was amazing. For a moment there, I was not grumpy at all.
posted by Uncle Grumpy at 1:46 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

that is some seriously emo shit there... (for the record i like emo shit, haha)
posted by cristinacristinacristina at 2:39 PM on May 15, 2014

Four stars for coloring outside the lines, for sure. Very nice.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 2:53 PM on May 15, 2014

I'd kill for good penmanship, being able to use a fountain pen, and knowing calligraphy. And to be clear, its not for a lack of trying - its for a total lack of skill.
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:18 PM on May 15, 2014

Nanukthedog, I don't know what kind of penmanship you're looking for but have you tried Spencerian and learning from the Spencerian copybooks? I've recently begun to learn calligraphy and yes you have to go back to the guided boxes and copy letters and such but I enjoy it and find it well worth the time. Spencerian can be adopted as a handwriting style using a fine fountain pen, or as a calligraphic hand with a pointed nib.
posted by Just Another Entity at 3:57 PM on May 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Plus good fountain pens don't have to be expensive! The Pilot Kaküno is dirt cheap (¥1,000 in Japan and somewhat higher elsewhere) and it has a fantastic nib on it that also happens to feature a little smiley face.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:46 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

the pen stuff was nice, BUT THAT SONG.....lordy. Way to spring that on a cloudy, overcast day.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 5:38 PM on May 15, 2014

Personally, I'm more a fan of Theosone's stuff — the calligraphy in this video seemed kind of… inexpert? I'm trying to find a nice way to say, essentially, that the idea of putting water onto the page is the main thing that makes this unique, because the calligraphy itself looks kind of on par with the level I'm at, which is not something I am especially proud of.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:27 PM on May 15, 2014

To be clear, it appears that there are both fountain and dip pens at use here. The brown pen looks like it may be a Mabie Todd, judging by the amount of flex in the nib and the heart-shaped breather hole therein. The black pen, judging from the body shape and nib shape, is more likely to be a dip pen (I can't hazard a guess, knowing almost nothing about dip pens).
posted by namewithoutwords at 5:00 AM on May 16, 2014

oh, and for anyone looking to improve their penmanship, the International Association of Master Penman-Engravers-Teachers of Handwriting (IAMPETH) have many free lessons available.
posted by namewithoutwords at 5:03 AM on May 16, 2014

Tried to click on the IAMPETH free lessons but:

" Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to 127.0.0.1 "

Even using link address : http://www.iampeth.com/lessons.php also gives same message.

Help please. any work around?
posted by kryptos at 4:21 PM on May 16, 2014

google cache of the lessons page, but it seems like the whole site just has a bad redirect in it.

dev% curl -I http://www.iampeth.com/lessons.php
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Sun, 18 May 2014 02:39:10 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://127.0.0.1/lessons.php
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

So, bad Apache configs, iampeth!
posted by lkc at 7:40 PM on May 17, 2014

(I just sent the contact email listed an email about it).
posted by lkc at 7:47 PM on May 17, 2014