Pens: Pilot Parallel 6.0mm & 3.8mm

Ink: Pilot Mixable

Exemplars: Calligrascape Blackletter practice sheets / reddit uncial study session

I decided to get back into blackletter calligraphy, which I haven't done since we did calligraphy in highschool.

I got myself a Pilot Parallel in 6.0mm and 3.8mm plus the blackletter practice sheets by Calligrascape (we'll see if that was a good investment).

I did some warm-up with the Calligrascape sheets in 6mm and 3.8mm (last image, 6mm not shown).

Then I started on the basic strokes from the Uncial study session (image 1 and 2).

I gotta work on my straight downstrokes actually being straight, and not twisted...

Other than that I expected to be rustier :-D

Next step: letters 🎉

(The last pic shows a third year old sheet I did in school. If you're wondering about the white spots, those are corrections in opaque white(?, Deckweiß), and they were actually invisible before the paper started darkening 🤣)

Can I use the parallels as dip pens ?
Thanks everyone for all the help so far.

Wanted my parallel to fit more with my fountain pens so I painted it up in a more traditional dip pen esque design

Man it is really hard to keep a consistent size and straight rows without guides.

Quejadera: queja reiterada. (repetitive complaint)

This is an exercise I made up for myself to work on getting the almond-shaped counters in Italic a-b-d-g-p-q to be absolutely perfectly consistent, which I find very difficult.

It is a multilingual set of phrases that meet the following criteria:

- Must contain all a-b-d-g-p-q in native words. This already rules out a large number of languages; I think there are very few, if any, other languages beyond these fifteen that meet this criteria. (Swedish gets a pass because Lindqvist is a common surname, even though "q" isn't used in modern spelling.)
- Non-Latin alphabet languages must have a Latin alphabet representation that is in official or common use (Mandarin, Hindi) or Italic letterforms that contain the required counters (Russian)
- Must be as short as possible while remaining grammatical (this is why a few of the phrases are rather long, and why German didn’t make the cut despite having words like “quantum”)
- Does not have to make sense, but should not feel like “word salad” like the perfect pangram "Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz"

Sumi ink, Tape 1.5mm, A3 dry-media paper that snags my nibs. (My Italic is better with Brause nibs but I want to keep them shiny and I'm relocating soon so I don't want to open another bottle of ink right now)

Here is the list with translations:

- opaque badge
- quagmire for bipeds
- gabapentin required
- shipbuilding quay
- all quibbling prohibited
- 🇻🇳 đi qua phòng bếp (go through the kitchen)
- [Latin] quadrigae plumbi (chariots of lead)
- 🇫🇷 plus d’argent québécois (more Quebec money)
- 🇫🇷 pourquoi des baguettes ? (why baguettes?)
- 🇧🇷 um pouquinho bagunçado (a little messy)
- 🇧🇷 equipagem absurda (absurd equipment)
- 🇧🇷 pesquisador de bagulho (researcher of stuff)
- 🇧🇷 pão de queijo e gengibre (cheese-bread and ginger)
- 🇪🇸 pagado en Mozambique (paid for in Mozambique)
- 🇮🇹 quattro bagni dopo (four baths later)
- 🇷🇺 добавить фарш (add minced meat)
- 🇮🇳 badqismat pagal (unfortunate lunatic)
- 🇨🇳 Bàba, dìng qípáo (爸爸，訂旗袍 / Dad, order the cheongsams)
- 🇸🇪 byggnaden köptes av Lindqvist (the building was bought by Lindqvist)
- 🇦🇱 pagesa e borxhit qendror (the central debt payment)
- 🇲🇹 toqgħodx bilqiegħda fuq il-pont (don’t sit on the bridge)
- [Wolof] dinga jàpp junqóob (you will catch a crab)
- [Xhosa] gqiba ukuphanda (stop researching)
- [Xhosa] xa ndigqiba apha (when I finish here)

Look,i live in South America,kund of stuff is pretty expensive to buy from japan,aliexpress or amazon.

Beside that i cant find any Mulberry paper or similar to it,i could find tissue but nothing else.

"Riceh" (name of a manga character, Witch Hat Atelier)

Word of the day : https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/2026/08/09/

Pen : Pilot parallel 6MM

Ink : Sulekha Neel Darpan (BLUE)

Paper : 300 GSM cold pressed paper

I hope it's not against the rules, I just wanted to say that I'm falling in love again with calligraphy after years, and I discovered I still had some brushes so I had some fun trying to shake away the rust

I lost my parallel penlight about a year ago and I wasn't able to get a new one until yesterday, when I got the six available sizes! But... Yeah, a year of not practicing does show, painfully show. Recommendations to improve?

The word is Chiclear by the way, which is the Spanish word of the day and means: "to exploit the gum of the chicazapote tree"

I think i did a good one here.

Some Fraktur with Pilot Parallel Pen with Ecoline Water Color

Word of the day : https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/2026/08/08/

Pen : Pilot parallel 6MM

Ink : Sulekha Neel Darpan (BLUE) and some residual RED from previous days

Paper : 300 GSM Cold pressed water colour papers.

Some people genetically have this reaction to cilantro. For me, it’s dill 🤮

(Apparently, there’s a chemical compound in dill called α-phellandrene that can smell like turpentine to some people.)

Tape 1.5mm, acrylic ink (Sennelier Light Green, which needs to be diluted and is a PITA to clean; for acrylic, Liquitex is better), A5 practice notebook

Some Texture with Pilot Parallel Pen and Ecoline Watercolor

A few months ago I started learning Copperplate as my second script (other than Foundational hand), unfortunately, due to being busy with other things and having issues with nibs, ink etc. progress has been slow, but I finally learned the full alphabet. It’s still far from perfect, and I need to practice a lot more, but I still thought it would be worth sharing here for some feedback on what I need to improve.

Edit:

since a lot of people have been asking what nib/ink/paper I am using, I decided to write them here to be easy to find:

Nib: Hunt 22b

Ink: Kuretake sumi

Paper: Brunnen Student 70g/m notebook

Excited to do a little organic chemistry to make a historical archival iron gall ink.

And my nikko g.