Tutorial no. 7—Making a g

I was invited by Bill Moran to take part in Wayzgoose 2011 at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin this past weekend. I demonstrated calligraphy on Friday and provided an introduction to Western writing with the broad-edged pen to participants on Saturday. During my Friday demonstration I began making a series of lowercase gs and Laura Lewis managed to capture a small part of my writing on video. Although it is only a snippet it does manage …
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Tutorial no. 5—Calligraphy: The Basics of Italic addendum

The posts on The Basics of Italic became very convoluted once I tried to verbally describe the ductus of each letter. My 1993 ACI sheets did not include basic ductus information for some reason. (Maybe because the audience were calligraphers and I assumed they could figure out the rudiments of making letters from models.) But that assumption won’t fly with readers of this blog who have no experience with writing with broad-edged tools. So I am making available here as …
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Tutorial no. 5—Calligraphy: The Basics of Italic 4

The Basics of Italic: Swashes

This post, the last of The Basics of Italic, shows the rudiments of creating swash Italic letters. Most swash letters are ascenders or descenders since swashes need room to breathe and the most commonly available free space is in the margins and between lines. Swashes on ascending strokes, both vertical and diagonal, are shown in Row 1.

b d f h k l—The swash replaces the entry stroke at the top of these letters (with the …
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Tutorial no. 5—Calligraphy: The Basics of Italic 2

The Basics of Italic: Stress

These tutorials on the basics of Italic began with a monoline skeletal letter to establish the basic forms. But Cancellaresca corsiva, the original Renaissance name for Italic, is traditionally made with a broad-edged pen. The broad-edged pen creates thicks and thins (stress) as it moves through space in different directions. This gives the letters much of their magic. (A good theoretical analysis of the effects of the broad-edged pen versus those of the flexible pointed pen …
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Tutorial no. 5—Calligraphy: The Basics of Italic 1

The Basics of Italic: Skeletal Forms

The four images that comprise The Basics of Italic are scans of photocopied sheets I designed in 1993 for inclusion in the newsletter of the Associazione Calligrafica Italiana in Milano, Italy. That is why the notes are written in Italian. I will provide an English translation for each sheet as it is posted.

The first sheet shows the skeletal forms of Italic as a means of comparing and contrasting it with the …
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The Rchive no. 1

Inscription of Epaphroditus (Museo Nazionale di Roma), 1st c.

This R is taken from the inscription to Epaphroditus, a freedman who served Emperor Nero, in the courtyard of the Museo Nazionale in Rome. It is the first in a planned series of showings of the letter R. The R is the most complex capital letter. In its classical, inscriptional form it consists of a vertical stroke (the stem), a short horizontal stroke (the link between the stem, the leg …
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Tutorial no. 2 addendum no. 2 Comments—Sure and Faust

Johnny (Alex Morgan), Demo and ecs,

I don’t usually post comments on Blue Pencil without filtering or editing them first, but I think these testaments about Faust and Sure are deserving of being put up as is. Thanks to all of you for clearing up my misidentification of the star as an A and for explaining that SURE and FAUST are two different graffiti writers. I am sorry to hear that Sure was killed in Afghanistan.

Thank you for reading Blue Pencil …
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Tutorial no. 2 addendum no. 2—Castle William and A Sure Faust

Here are two examples of lettering that I came across recently that illustrate good and bad flourishing. The bad example is from Fort William on Governor’s Island, the former Coast Guard facility that is now open to ordinary New Yorkers. The good example (A Sure Faust) is from a storefront near Raffetto’s on West Houston Street in Manhattan.

The Fort William inscription—unfortunately poorly painted—has crude curves and a tailpiece whose spiral gets tangled up at the end rather than finishing with …
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