Foundational Hand, by Understanding How the Letter Shapes in These Famous Gothic, Italic and Uncial

Four Famous Alphabets OU WILL FIND that most instructional calligraphy books will contain the same four alphabet styles Ythat I’m providing here: Foundational Hand, by understanding how the letter shapes in these famous Gothic, Italic and Uncial. Most other alphabets are based styles are created and how they relate to each other. They on the structures of these ones. There’s no need to learn are built on simple rules, but are not easy to do – no one has extra fancy tricks or special touches. You’ll add your own yet found instant success with calligraphy. character to these anyway. If you can write well in the fi rst Like learning to become a good pianist, if you really want four of these styles, you’ll already be an excellent to become a good calligrapher, it’s best if you can practise calligrapher, equipped with all the knowledge you need to every day, even for a short amount of time, rather than do most writing. Though you might choose to make small practising a lot all at once and then no more for days or changes to these styles, add decorations and learn other weeks. I also recommend that you only attempt to learn alphabets later, it is important to begin learning calligraphy one style at a time. This is a sample of Italic calligraphy, written according to the instructions in this book. 9 9 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 9 3/17/11 8:59 AM Foundational Hand et’s start with Foundational they look like. Foundational Hand pencil and fi tting them into L Hand, which was fi rst devised has many features of elegant squares, as shown below. Square- by Edward Johnston after Roman letters and can also be gridded paper is ideal to use to studying the 10th-century book, easily modifi ed to create interesting start with, but once you have Ramsey Psalter, written in a and useful variations. mastered this, you can then begin Carolingian style. As with learning Roman capitals, to write the letters freehand on Why choose to learn Foundational it’s best to fi rst learn the letter plain paper with top and bottom fi rst? It’s upright and based on shapes and proportions by guidelines only. circles, and everyone knows what drawing simple versions with a Use square-gridded paper to begin learning the letter shapes. 10 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 10 3/17/11 9:00 AM Then you can try spacing out letters to write words. The space between letters should always appear to equal the same area as the white space counter inside the letter ‘u’, or ‘n’. These areas should look the same. Unfortunately, you can’t rely on writing in boxes to space letters – it has to be done by eye. This can get tricky when an ‘r’ is followed by a ‘v’ for example. In that case, the top of the ‘r’ can be shortened, and the left corner of ‘v’ started fractionally lower than normal and tucked underneath. Similarly, the bar of ‘t’ can be shortened when necessary. I’ll show you some more problem-solving tricks later. The space between words should be about the complete width of the letter ‘o’, as shown below. If an ‘o’ touched on to the right-hand end of one word, the following word would be touching the other side of the ‘o’. Too large Shortened Tuck under The size of an ‘o’ between words The anatomy Flourish of letters Serif Ascender Minuscule or small letter Bowl x-height Pen angle Counter Descender Slab serif Swash Hackle Hairline Top line Majuscule or capital letter Base line Block Diamond or lozenge 11 11 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 11 3/18/11 3:00 PM Original capitals were painted and looked like these. Middle ‘diamond’ is longer and flatter when two lines are used. 3 3 4 1 4 or just one line 1 2 1 5 3 4 2 2 Gothic is also called Black-letter because it produces dense stripes, or blocks of writing. You can experiment with closing the space between lines of writing. When the space is very small, the text will be easiest to read if there are only a few words to each line. For even spacing of letter strokes, you can: Reduce the size Omit the block Tuck under This works for other writing styles, too. An example of writing in Gothic. 22 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 22 3/17/11 9:01 AM Writing Italic calligraphy he usual x-height of Italic small letters (minuscules) is fi ve times the width of the nib T(5 pen-widths or nib-widths). This alphabet is built in families of letters. Difficulty Rating Tick serifs on ‘i’ and ‘l’. x-height These shapes are very similar. 5 nib-widths 2 1 Pen angle 2 1 2 1 About 45° 1 1 Reverse of top serif Bottom shapes the same ‘V’ + ‘i’ 2 ‘V’s’ ** Flat tops slope downwards. 1 Built like ‘u’ ** ** ** ** 3 2 2 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Cover the top halves of these letters. Bottoms are all the same – upside-down ‘n’ 2 This is parallel to the top. 5 6 3 2 3 3 3 1 1 1 2 1 4 4 3 1 1 1 2 4 2 2 2 2 2 Top of ‘s’ and ‘c’ flattened like the top of ‘a’ Similar tails to ‘g’ 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 2 4 Stop the vertical here. Stroke 2 is 2 ‘r’ and ‘k’ branch from higher up almost straight and goes downhill. the vertical. 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1or 2 2 2 You can make numerals all the same height if you wish. 3 1 3 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 3 25 25 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 25 3/17/11 9:01 AM Designing Letters ESIGNING LETTERS IS a really fun thing to do! You can enjoy letting Dyour imagination run wild, like this: ...but I guess these don’t really qualify as calligraphic letters. Calligraphy doesn’t mean that everything has to be smooth and perfect. The proportions of the calligraphic letters below closely resemble the original carved Roman capitals, even though they appear to be scribbled. 44 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 44 3/17/11 9:03 AM In this delightful painting by Nathalie Tousnakhoff, all curved letter parts have a rounded shape and the accepted rules for elegant letters are followed. For example, the bottoms of ‘k’ and ‘R’ are wider than the tops, the tail of ‘g’ balances the bowl above it and the upper part of ‘s’ encloses less space than the bottom. These features make the letters pleasing to the eye. From ‘Petites histoires d’amour qui tournent court’, éditions Chocolat Jeunesse, 2010, calligrapher and artist Nathalie Tousnakhoff 45 45 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 45 3/17/11 9:03 AM Calligraphy by Colleen Little In every book on calligraphy, you’ll read that for normal scripts, all letters in an alphabet should relate to the shape, slope and width of the letter ‘o’. Circular ‘o’ in Foundational Hand leads to the use of circular tops to other letters, the thinnest point tells us what pen angle should be maintained, the vertical ‘n’ sets the slope and, together with ‘i’, the serif structures are used throughout. The area inside the ‘o’ also controls the width of ‘n’, other letters and their spacing. So if I gave you some letters such as the ones below, I’m sure you could design the rest of each alphabet just using the features drawn. The pen angle and nature of the letters will also help you to add a dot to the i’s – should it be circular, a square, comma, thin line or doesn’t it matter? AUTHOR’S NOTE In any alphabet the letter ‘k’ is always wider at the bottom than at the top. 46 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 46 3/17/11 9:03 AM Designing Lively Gothic and other Gothic variations et’s try to build a new family of Lively Gothic letters. We’ll still use the ‘o’ shape Lto control width and keep it vertical, but change a couple of features on ‘n’ to make it more lively. Then, again, we’ll build all the other letters from these two. The variety of corner structures provides extra interest. A OverlapBB Rounded corner C Curved entry D Angular corner F A C D B E EE Thin line showing 1 1 3 1 2 G F G 1 D F 2 3 2 F The pen is removed from the paper and repositioned before the next stroke is started. G Curved exit stroke. This and other rounded elements give the script extra life. Practise a simple Gothic alphabet before trying this one. Difficulty Rating x-height 5–6 nib-widths Pen angle About 40° Drawn with corner of the nib Numerals as we know them today were not in use when alphabets similar to this were developed in the 14th century. Drawn with the corner of the nib 47 47 P01666_Practical_Calligraphy_01-64.indd 47 3/17/11 9:03 AM Glossary Alfred Fairbank Alfred Fairbank, an English calligrapher, was born in 1895 and died in 1982. He wrote several books on calligraphy including A Handwriting Manual. He developed ‘Italic’ with joins as an elegant handwriting style and promoted it being taught in schools. ampersand A symbol sometimes used instead of the word ‘and’ (&).

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