Pointed Pen Calligraphy Guides

John Hudson

Pushing the nib means moving it away from the angle of the writing arm, rather than pulling it. This can be done reasonably easily with broad nibs made of some materials and on some kinds of medium (sized paper and vellum, for example), but a pointed, split nib will dig into the paper, and even on a very smooth surface you won't get good ink flow with such a movement. Hence, split nib ductus always involves pulling movements, rather than pushing movements.

Michael Clark

Depends on the user John. an e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz-Hzl57F6Y

Jacques Le Bailly

Wow...

John Hudson

Yes, obviously that's someone who is never going to dig into the page. But I wouldn't really call those connecting movements pushing, at least not in the sense that some styles of some broad nib scripts call for pushing to create the principle stems of letters.