A look into our in-studio Calligraphy courses

The second half of 2019 was a big change for me - All of my family members are moving abroad early next year. For a single lady growing her own creative business, that meant got me thinking of my plans for 2020 and the years to come. Anyone that has their own creative business would understand this - Living in the present is great, but there is always this recurring question that creeps up every now and then: Are we on track with what we want to achieve? If not, how and what am I going to do about it? We always have some plans but when we meet a crossroad in life, our plans might either take a detour, or be thrusted forward.

I spent a good amount of 2017 and 2018 building community, and constantly promoting other artists on our team to people that I meet because I believe in their work and approaches to their art. I still do share about them to people and students I meet today because our local community should know of these amazing talents.

One thing I knew for sure was that I have been falling short on my own personal goals the past 2 years as I have been prioritising other things above it.

Artist Residency and Mentoring Stint

For some of you that are new to my work, I took up an artist residency program with the library@orchard in late 2018 together with my artist collective mates from Scribblers Collective.

I spent a good amount of my time during the month creating artworks for the end-of-residency exhibition, and I also mentored 2 students that I hand-picked from the list of applications that streamed in our inboxes.

My mentees arrived at the library religiously every week for a period of a month and we spent 4 sessions working on different aspects of the script. By the end of the mentorship programme, I looked at their work and felt extremely proud of them for what they had achieved within such a short time.

The joy of teaching never fail to amaze me. Fun fact - One of my mentees have turned to become a very dear friend that I truly care about.

I enjoy teaching lifestyle courses that focuses a lot on aesthetics because they are a great avenue for me to create attention and share the work that I do with them. But how about the others they wish to have a little more guidance under a structured support system? I have been telling my calligraphy friends that I wish to create a structured course as an extension to what we did for our mentorship programme for the longest time but I had not prioritised that until now.

Creating works in the traditional English Roundhand style (18th century script) at library@orchardPhoto credits: National Library Board, 2018 — Creating works in the traditional English Roundhand style (18th century script) at library@orchard
Photo credits: National Library Board, 2018

A space for the learners - to share and improve collectively

By late July, we decided that a house move nearer to town would be a better fit for me since everyone will be away by early 2020 (mind you, I live in Jurong area since 11!).

We found a cosy abode in Holland Village area and that is where my home studio resides today. With this move, I have also launched my Copperplate courses and lifestyle workshops for October, November and December!

A peek into our ‘Copperplate: Mastering Minuscules’ Course

My in-studio courses are capped at 3 to 4 students per class because that’s the most ideal class size for me to provide in-person guidance. I have received a couple of questions on what to expect from my courses so I thought I would put together a list of highlights that my students experienced since we just got through our very first session last Saturday.

Weekly sessions designed for progressive learning

All of the course modules has a course outline detailing all the topics and areas that will be covered in-class. All the course outline is provided in our class listings even before you sign up for it! So do check it out if you are keen to join. Every week, we approach the topics systemically and since I will be guiding you in-person, you get to receive some quick feedback from me as well.

ACCESS TO GOOGLE CLASSROOM

All the course modules has its own google classroom page and each participating course student gets access to it during the duration of the course study. They also get access to the page for another 2 months post-course before we archive the classroom page.

All materials that we posted on our google classroom page are free for our course students to download for their own personal study.

See relevant reading materials and videos

I find it extremely important to keep ourselves up to date with theory knowledge. For our courses, I try to look for relevant videos and reference materials to show in-class. Links to each materials/downloadable pdf are also included in our google classroom page after each session.

Images and pdfs are all inclusive of citations and by the end of the course, a reference list PDF is uploaded to the google classroom page for our students to download so by the end of the 2-month period post-class, you still get to keep the reference list for future reading.

In-Class Demonstration with a document camera

Even with a small cosy class size, it can be difficult to see how the writing is executed when our tools are so small in comparison. A document camera is used in our courses to ensure that all demonstrations are clear and projected on screen. I advise my students to focus on 2 key areas - (1) See how the tines of the nibs are open/closed when writing. (2) See my writing posture and everything else that you can’t see on-screen in person.

After-session Review and Observations

For every session, I spend some time into creating after class review notes to record common mistakes that is seen in-class. All the review notes get uploaded to our Google Classroom page so that students can look through the document over the weeks as they practise/work on their assignments. We try to touch on areas that you might miss out as a beginner so that the notes are still relevant to your study even after the course end. As such, our notes are customised to the group that is learning together for each course module.