A small group of beginners settled in for a Sunday afternoon at HOME, ready to pick up a brush pen and try something they’d hadn’t done before.
This workshop was for a small group, built specifically for complete beginners, no experience needed. Two hours on a Sunday afternoon, which is my favourite slot to teach in. There’s no post-work tiredness to fight against, no one clock-watching for the next thing. Just a lazy Sunday and a room happy to spend it learning something new.
We were tucked upstairs in a quiet corner of HOME’s first floor restaurant, away from the Sunday footfall on the ground floor. It’s a lovely spot for it – quiet, with soft lighting and enough space to write in the calligraphy guides without anyone feeling cramped in on their neighbour. Quiet enough to hear yourself think, but not so quiet that a room full of first-timers felt self-conscious about getting it wrong.
What can attendees expect from the workshop?
Every beginner session starts with how to hold the pen, how much pressure to use, and the up-strokes and down-strokes that everything else eventually gets built on. It sounds simple written down like that. In practice, it’s the part where people realise calligraphy is less about a writing quickly and more slowing down and writing one letter at a time.
Partway through, I demonstrated a bit of my own lettering, which is when I got asked, “how long did it take you to learn?”, to which I say, “Ten years, give or take.” I always say it with a laugh because it’s genuinely funny to watch people’s faces when they hear it, but I mean it kindly too. Nobody comes away from a two hour beginner session lettering like a pro, and that was never the point. The aim of the workshop is to try calligraphy and leave with enough confidence to keep practicing at home.
Sessions like this one are exactly why I love teaching beginners. A small group, a slow Sunday afternoon, everyone genuinely enjoying themselves rather than racing to produce something perfect. It’s the kind of afternoon that reminds you why you started doing this in the first place.
One of the girls mentioned she’d been following along on Instagram for a while before finally booking herself onto a workshop, and asked, hopefully, whether more dates would be going up soon. It’s a lovely thing to hear, and a good reminder that plenty of people are watching quietly for a while before they take the leap. All the more reason to keep the dates coming.
Fancy having a go yourself?
If you’d like to join a class, the best way to stay in the loop is to follow @callibysteph on Facebook or Instagram.
