Italic Saturation

Italic is one of the most useful of all the styles of calligraphy, in my opinion. It can be done with many variations on it's classic form to meet any calligraphic subject. Lets starts with the beginning.
Italic

History:
In the 1400's when the renaissance was dawning, Europe became more literate and needed more secretaries, penman, accountants, scribes to record and write for business and church. In Italy classical letterforms and subjects were taking over from the church leading all commerce and literature. A style of calligraphy was developing that was more a descendant of Caroline styles than the more recent blackletter styles. With the "need for speed" it also took on a forward slant. It was called chancery cursive.
We use it today to write everything from wedding invitations and envelopes to posters and signs. It can look very plain or very decorative. I want the student to know where it came from and where it stands in the history of writing.
Materials Needed: Beginning Material List for chisel point pens.
Start with a pencil at 1/2 inch x-height.  Learn the letterforms and spacing thoroughly before using a chisel point nib.
1. Write all the letters using the exemplar to learn the letter structure. Trace if you find that helpful. These letters are based on a triangle rather than a circle. Method of practice: Look at the example, trace it in your mind, write the letter, look back at the example, "what did I do right, what did I do wrong?" Write it again, compare again, write it again and go on to another letter. It's not useful to keep writing the same letter over and over if you are not improving on it each time. You are reinforcing the wrong shape in your hand and head if you aren't looking back at the example and writing it correctly. Most students are in too big of hurry, so take a breath and slow down. Really LOOK at the example and emulate it as best you can. Write letters in their family groups, it helps learn their shapes better.
2. The letter families are: i,l,j,f,t = i family. o,e,c = o family. n,h,b,m,k,p,r,u,y = branching family.
a,g,d,q = a family. s,v,w,x,z = diagonals.
3. Practice writing letters, systematically and in an organized fashion. Leaving margins all around, not crossing anything out, but starting and finishing the whole page.
4. Spacing: Picket fence spacing. Equal amount of space within the letters and between letters. Take the space between the legs of n, this is the amount of space between letters. 2 vertical strokes use the same space as inside n, such as il, ll, tl, ni, minimum have equal space. 1 vertical and 1 curve stroke are a little closer together to make up for the extra space in the curve. 2 curves or diagonals are closest together. Try to think of the volume of space, between letters and within letters, the same.
Write alphabet sentences. There is a little more space between words. About the space of the n from one side to the other. If you put too much space between words it creates "rivers" of space in a paragraph of writing. The look of the page of writing is more important than the individual word or the individual letter.
5. TBA

Bev Hills Gothic Class

Beverly Hills Adult School Class #2: DeAnn reviewed the Gothic Textura alphabet letter by letter and also went over spacing.

Today’s most important idea: The overall texture is more important than the individual letter’s legibility.

One historical theory to explain how Gothic textura evolved into a very compact style of writing is that the Crusades were on-going during its development. Because the Crusades cost so much money, the Church spent less on parchment and so to conserve its use, the writing style became compact. For example, a large book would need a herd of cattle for its parchment pages.

Lining the grid paper: For the 5mm Brause nib or the Speedball C0, the x-height (width between waist to base) is 5 pen widths, which is 1-inch or 8 boxes on the grid paper. The space from the waist to the ascender is 2 pen widths, which is 3 boxes; the space from the base to the descender is also 2 pen-widths, or 3 boxes. The ascender is also called an extender. So line the sheet so that the darker-blue lines will form the x-height every other inch. Then divide the 8 boxes in-between in 3-2-3 boxes; the first 3 are the descender, then 2 boxes for inter-linear space (space between lines of writing), then 3 boxes for the ascender of the next line. DeAnn suggests lining the paper once, then cutting that strip to create a template that you can just place against a clean sheet so you don’t have to measure each time. (see photo).

Review of the elements that make up the Gothic textura letter: think of the squares as serifs; serif = decoration. The rectangle strokes are not decoration.

The square serifs should pierce the waist-line and base-line just slightly so that the letters don’t look too short. Practice will help you learn where to end the down-stroke so the square serif only slightly pierces the base-line. The square serifs can touch (e.g. m, n, u, v, w)

Spacing is true picket fence; the space between the down-strokes = the width of the down-stroke. White space = dark space. So the “color” of the text is very dark. All the down-strokes for the letters in a word should look evenly spaced apart. Spacing between words is only slightly more than between letters; all the whitespace should look more or less equivalent in texture.

Notes on individual letters:

“h” : the left side of the rectangle-stroke should touch the letter and the waist-line.

“g” & “y” : for the descender, you can either curve out or slant away and leave a hairline to connect to

“p” & “q”: for the descender, rock your nib to the left at the end

“d” : think of it as an “o” with a longer rectangle stroke on top; start slightly to the left of the edge of the first down-stroke. The ascender is not a curve, but more of an entrance serif, either in the up or down direction.

Hangover letters: for “c”, “e”, “r”, “t”, “f”, “x”, leave the square serif off of the next letter and overlap or tuck underneath to start the down-stroke. E.g. ru, ei, ci, ce.

Illuminated Manuscript Project: start thinking about what text you may want to use. Think in terms of the time period, e.g. Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, even later poets like John Donne or Shakespeare. But any text that you like is OK. You’ll need about 50 – 100 words, but even if your text is too long, you can edit an excerpt from it.

HOMEWORK: write alphabet sentences. See DeAnn’s website to download them: www.designingletters.com. Go to “About”, then “About Calligraphy”, then “Alphabet Sentences.”

Nov. 30, 2009 Advanced Class assignments

At Westchester we are continuing to create pieces that have a prescribed; theme, color theme, paper, letterform and text. The students have chosen a week to make the rules for that day. For the 7 weeks we will have these items listed and we will complete the assignment each week for a critique the following week. "If it weren't for deadlines, I wouldn't have anything finished" is a common mantra, so we are making it so you will actually finish the project. Today's assignment is: Nov. 17, 24, Dec. 1, 8, 2009, Jan.12, 19, 26, 2010
7 weeks Calligraphy Classes, DeAnn Singh Teacher
1. Format will all be 8 1/2”x11” or 11x17”
2. You can use roman capitals in any piece, along with the specified letterform.
November 17. DeAnn Singh
Theme: Alphabets, The Written Language
Color theme: Brown, black, yellow,
Letterform: Italic
Paper: Arches Text Wove
Text: From Ancestral Voices, Decoding Ancient Languages by James Norman
pg.5 Chapter 1 The Invention of Writing
Man has resided on earth for more than a million years, yet we know very little about how he lived or what he thought during most of this time. In some of these societies the spoken tongue must have become quite expressive, capable of conveying a wide range of man’s thoughts and intellectual achievements. But because sounds fade quickly, and words, though stored in the memory, are not safe from distortion, hundreds of these languages disappeared without leaving any trace behind. We have no idea what they were like because the speakers had no way of recording them for future generations. It is as if the people and their languages had never existed.
November 24. Helen Chu
Theme: Calligraphy is order
Color Theme: Metallic Watercolors or gouache
Letterform: Italic and variations
Paper: Black Arches Cover
Text:
ORDER is a lovely thing;
On disarray it lays its wing,
Teaching simplicity to sing.
It has a meek and lowly grace
Anna Hempstead Branch
December 1 Gayle Hatton
Theme: Letters
Color Theme: Black, white and favorite color
Letterform: Stacked alphabet
Paper: fabric- I will bring fabric for book cover
Text: Actions, looks, words, steps form the alphabet by which you may spell character. Johann Kasper Lavater
December 8 Francine Oller
Theme: The beginning
Color Theme: White, black, & one other BOLD color of choice.
Letterform:
Paper:
Text: A - The first letter in the majority of world alphabets. A letter of great mystic power and “magic virtue” with those who have adopted it, and with whom it’s numerical value is one.
January 12 Marjorie Grace-Sayers
Theme:
Color Theme:
Letterform:
Paper:
Text:
January 19 Geri Bieber
Theme: Development of Writing
Color Theme:
Letterform: Uncial
Paper: Arches text wove
Text: From: History and Technique of Lettering By Alexander Nesbitt
Writing grew out of pictures… The greatest stop, probably, in the history of writing, was the development of phonetic writing-the representation of sound… Our own alphabet begins with the Greeks when it changed the direction of writing to left to right.
January 26
Binding pages into a book.