Easter egg calligraphy project

Easter!  I love all the ways you can add color to eggs, and then what you can use them for.  Here is a monogrammed egg, ready to be hidden, serve as a buffet place card, or arrive as a hostess gift.  

Classic, but personalized.  And easy to make.  

74: Ronde Caps

This alphabet was popular for at least a century, back in the 1700's.  It is called Ronde, to describe how the letters are gracefully curved. 

73: Very Light Roman

Roman letters, originating in carved inscriptions, tend to be about eight times the width of the pen stroke.  They had to be side enough to be deep enough to catch the sun.  
The alphabet here is Very Light Roman, some 16 pen widths tall.  It's challenging; the reduced weight will show up every slight tremor in your stroke. Concentrate on maintaining the Roman proportions.   

72: Legende small letters

These letters go with yesterday's Legende Caps.  Legende small letters have very small bodies and very long ascenders and descenders. 

[Note: I'm posting these today too because I will be on a train tomorrow.]  

71 Legende caps

These capitals are modeled on a typeface called Legende.  They have a vaguely Arabic flavor, as well as many Arabic strokes and joins.  Enjoy trying them one or two at a time. 

70 Staves

You can write letters with two lines, three lines, or any number [remember Echo?].  This alphabet uses the five-pointed nib designed for ruling off music paper.  Once you get the hang of it, Staves is a wonderful style.

You could even add a few musical notes on those staves.  

Stationery design project

Once you've chosen an initial, monogram, or logo, you still have a design task; where to position it on the page and how large to make it.  And of course, what color.  And what paper...

69 Houseplant

You can give a simple Roman letters a green flavor by turning them into Houseplant, with a few extra strokes.  You don't have to add leaves and flowers to every letter.  

Two simple strokes evoke natural forms.  

Bamboo 68

When you make letters of brushstrokes, you can turn them into Bamboo by simply breaking them into sections.  

Make the strokes larger at the ends and smaller in the middle using brush pressure.  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet. 

67: Bright Idea Vernal Equinox

March seems like forever...and then suddenly it's Spring!  Today the days even out to the same length, and the sun is halfway to being straight overhead.  In honor of this, here is an alphabet, Bright Idea [Vernal Equinox Version], made of shadows cast by a light source at upper left.  
I have shown the "invisible" upper edge only on the letter A.  Your mind supplies that edge itself when it sees the shadows cast elsewhere.  

Start with a simple block letter; lay a second sheet of paper over it; hold your pen at a negative 45° angle; and trace the lower right edges of the strokes.  Left-handers can position the alphabet as shown; right-handers can rotate the paper to reconcile the pen angle with a comfortable hand position.   

Suitable for lefties. 

66: Echo

These letters are appropriately named Echo.  They are written with lines of two different colors--any two, using markers, crayons, or colored pencils.

65: Vivaldi caps

These extravagant caps look better one or two per page, or capitalizing the lower case Vivaldi letters from yesterday.  Never use them to spell out a whole word--as you can see, the word Vivaldi below is almost unreadable...   

Enjoy the challenge of making most of these with just one uninterrupted stroke.  

64: Vivaldi

This alphabet lets you imitate a popular typeface, Vivaldi.  The letter body is round rather than like Italic.  A few odd characters--d, v, x, and y--add to the appeal.  In f, p, and q, the vertical stroke thins out for no other reason than to vary the visual texture.

You'll need to keep your pen at a 45° angle, and slant the letters about 12°.  

Calligraphy Project for St Patrick's Day

You can print this out as a border for St Patrick's Day quotations, or  find a version with guidelines for practice at margaretshepherd.com

Celtic letters are the perfect medium for Irish thoughts.  Use the typical color scheme of gold and green. You can create your own interlaced border, based on principles explained in the classic book Celtic Art: The methods of construction.  Or print out the border from Learn World Calligraphy shown here.  

63: Super Celtic

Celtic scribes loved to stretch and elaborate their letters.  This alphabet, Super Celtic, is adapted from the many letter forms to be found in the intricate Book of Kells.

62: Shamrock Caps

These Shamrock Capitals go with yesterday's lowercase alphabet.

Note the basic letter body shape common to D and Q and O and E and U...

61: Shamrock

This is a knock-off of an existing typeface, easy to imitate with a broad-edged pen.  Named Shamrock, it has a very mild Irish flavor.

Note the odd, archaic G.  Also use the extended E at the end of a word.  Make the T distinct from the C.

59: Celtic lowercase

At the other end of the spectrum from yesterday's Celtic caps are these Celtic Lowercase letters.

If you use these by themselves, you might like to wait for tomorrow's alphabet as capitals.  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet. 

58: Celtic caps

Celtic letters sometimes use what we would think of as capital and lowercase forms interchangeably.  These Celtic Caps lie at one end of this spectrum.  
This week will feature 6 different takes on alphabets from Ireland leading up to March 17 St Patrick's Day. 

You can freely substitute different forms.  

I am a fan of the odd statement, delivered in innocent certainty and slightly tuned out to its own oddness.  This has always been one of my favorites.  In this design, the quirky letters I built up are meant to echo the charm of thanking God for a coincidence on the calendar.  
And March 2013 does have "five Sundays in it." 

This was the occasional prayer of the Reverend James Duncan, minister of First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1875-1884.  My grandfather Fred Murray was fond of repeating it. 

59: Doublecross

It's about time to ring some more changes on the basic Roman alphabet, with Doublecross.  Leave yourself enough maneuvering room in the middle, and don't use a pen that is too wide.    

57: Eastern capitals

Calligraphy offers extra fun in the way you can choose a pen and knock off a typestyle.  You may not be able to imitate a font exactly, but once you've tried it with your own pen, you'll look at it with more understanding.  And it may suggest new styles to invent, like these Eastern Capitals; maybe you could create some lower case letters to work with them.   

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56: Rounded Gothic

If you took an angular Gothic letter and gently blew a little air into it, it would swell out to be Rounded Gothic.  The sides are still parallel; the interior space is still the width of the strokes; all you've done is smooth out the sharp corners.  This style is easier to read, and distracts less from the text, than angular Gothic, while maintaining Gothic verticality and overall texture.  

55: Fast Forward

Letters acquire extra dimension when you leave the pen on the paper between them--making motion visible.  Experiment with Fast Forward, not by writing any faster but by revealing the entry and exit strokes.  

These caps work with Caroling, from February 28.   

Calligraphy Every Day 3: Letter Box

While we're thinking about letters in the mail, try this cute little four-cornered alphabet, Letter Box. Almost the whole alphabet is built out of two strokes that connect two ways. Enjoy lettering your initials, a short word, or a new logo for 
a tech idea. 

These letters are fun to play with--many of them are transformed into different letters when you turn them upside-down.

54: Extra lean

Italic leans a little, but you can push to lean a lot it if you want extra emphasis or exaggerated contrast, as in Extra Lean, here.  

Ex libris

People who treasure their books--the printing, paper, and binding as much as the words in them--like to put a book plate in them.  This little sticker, around the size of a playing card, has for centuries identified a book's owner but also given an idea of the person's artistic taste.

Here is a design based on the Latin words for "From the books [of]," that bears witness to an omnivorous reader with an interest in lettering.  [It's also printed inside the cover of Learn Calligraphy]  The space at the lower margin allows you to write your own name in. once you've practiced on scratch paper to be sure it will fit.

One of my favorite quotations about books.  

53: Heavy Copper caps

Heavy Copper refers to the copperplate printing process that made possible the swelling strokes of the flexible pen popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The capitals could get really, really ornate.    

52: 87 1/2 % Roman

I have a tendency to let the verticals lean a little backward.  Don't imitate that! 

When you shrink the width of basic O, all the other letters will get slightly narrower too.  In today's alphabet the O is one pen-width narrower than the classic eight pen-width version, which translates into 87 1/2 % Roman across the alphabet.