100 Benedictus

These Gothic letters are titled Benedictus.  They're grouped to highlight the 8 letters that have descenders or ascenders, which can be ornamented with extra strokes.  You will have to leave a lot of space between your lines of lettering to accommodate this alphabet, but it's worth it. 

I wasn't quite sure how to treat f so I made it a little shorter than the other ascenders.  And I thought that y, g, and j looked clearer with short descenders, especially g.  You might like to extend them further, however. 

99 Versals

These capitals, Versals, are based on a late-medieval style that was popular for the initial letters of sung verses.  They can be colored bright red or blue, and were sometimes filled with ornament and scenes, as we will see now and then during the year.  

Um, I've had further thoughts about that pen angle: because the pen is so narrow compared to the height of the letter, left-handers could just as well hold it flat at 0° or even towards -20°.  And--my usual failing--the letters seem to lean a little.  Don't do that. 

Matting your calligraphy project

When I design a piece of calligraphy--for myself, as a gift, or by request--I like to think about where it will be seen, at what distance, in what light, and by whom.  That often includes taking the frame into consideration from the very beginning, and sometimes even more important, the mat.  Think about the color, texture, size of mat, and relative size of opening, width of frame; be sure to take your client into the planning too. 

Here is a Cliffs Notes version of matting.  There's a lot more to learn and try out, but it's important for you to have a simple plan while you work on the design.  

98 Sprung

Sprung is an alphabet that's not quite all there.  The flat pen angle seems to cut off the head and feet of many letters.  Of course, you'll probably want to use it for single words--logos especially--to make the most of its oddness.  

97 Bright Idea Overhead

Bright Idea Overhead celebrates Arbor Day today, when we think about planting trees.  Trees turn sunlight [from overhead] and water into shade and clean air, while they give us a real sense of passing time.  This alphabet somehow uses a flat black letter stroke to imply an invisible 3-D letter.Create the illusion of an edge by adding strokes with a thick and thin pen, using translucent paper laid over a simple alphabet.  Below, A B C D and N O P Q have been shaded.

Use simple fat capitals, and hold your pen at 90°.  I find it easier to turn the whole paper one quarter turn.  If the missing parts of the letter that don't cast a shadow seem too absent to help you read, then you can try a letter that has more curve, that leans, or that has simple serifs to catch the light.  (For instance, try Fat Caps from January 3).  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet.  

96 Big Kid

As children learn to write the alphabet, they make the letter forms more uniform and less inventive.  The letters here, Big Kid, have lost a lot of their magical thinking, but they still have a tough originality about them that I admire.  
Today, by the way, is Take Your Child to Work day.  Please let them WRITE if you take them to work.  My kids were already where I worked--then just a room in my house--every day of the year.  Though it helped make them into creative artists, I finally had to get a separate studio.     

Compare these letters to Happybet, February 16, and Kid Writing, February 17.

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet.  

95 Friendly Roman

As a break from the rigors of classical Roman capitals, I recently offered my students in Hanoi* this Friendly Roman, a version with its rules relaxed.  For the calligrapher, it's much more fun and forgiving; for the reader, it's softer, friendlier, warmer, and more immediate.
Keep the basics of Roman capitals but moderate them: 

• While you should still distinguish between the differing widths of letter families, you can make the narrow ones a little wider and the wide ones a little narrower.  
• Make the letters 6 pen widths tall, not 8.  
• Let a curved serif appear on vertical strokes.  Not too curved nor too large! And not in corners where the strokes join.  
• Round the lower corners and separate the overlapped strokes at upper corners [example: D and B]   
• You'll still want to turn your 20° pen angle to 45° for the diagonal letters, but keep those joins simple and don't let it slow you down too much. 

I love this simplified Roman and hope you will too.  I've named it after my long-suffering husband, David Friend.   

*They have a lively Facebook page at "Learn Calligraphy"

93 Coiltic

Somehow I made all these letters lean back a little.  Don't copy that!

Coiltic exaggerates the coils of Celtic decoration to make a very playful, entertaining style. Depending on the pen's width, the coils can fill a letter, loop a corner, or just curl the stroke's ending.  

  

And another texture project

Last Sunday we looked at the texture of each letter when repeated in a block.  Now you can letter the alphabet to make overall repeating patterns.  Here the lighter or darker bands are made by different styles, 26 of them, offset by one as we cycle through the alphabet.  

The quotation around the edge is good advice.  Don't be afraid to copy a great deal, especially at first.  

92 Robot

I based this alphabet, Robot, on a few letters from a logo design I saw in Italy years ago. For some reason, the joins are overlapped at most corners but not at the upper and lower left of B D P and R, where the strokes just touch.   

☞

I'm still working on this alphabet.  If you've got better solutions to some of the proportions and strokes, let me know.  

You'll probably be happier if you limit this to a few words at a time.  And--trust me--give yourself a lightly pencilled center guideline to make all those mid-strokes line up. Don't try to write this with a narrower pen, or one much wider. You might like to write Robot letters using steely ink tone, or in black ink on gray paper.  

It never ceases to amaze me how many kinds of alphabet styles you can create with a calligraphy pen.  

91 Twinings

Twinings lets the descenders and ascenders of simple Gothic develop into swashed patterns of their own.  All it takes is remembering not to put on the usual serifs, and then coming back later with a small pen [about 1/20 of the letter's height, here] and carefully interlacing two lines that spring from the vertical stroke.  

The letters are given in family groups here, since those ascenders and descenders are the only ones you need to practice.   

The small lines can be done with the corner of your broad pen, especially with a marker or quill.  

89: Thistle

Simple Roman capitals can be turned into a Thistle alphabet with two little lines added on to the vertical. They offer an enriched visual texture without exactly pinning down any particular symbolism.

N6MP5TRX2MCG 

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet. 

87 and 88: Soft Square caps and LC

These Soft Square letters coordinate with yesterday's capitals. The shape lies somewhere Gothic, Roman lowercase, and an old-fashioned TV screen.   

Your own design project

This post is borrowed from my book Using Calligraphy, which offers calligraphers lots of practical advice--whether they sell their work or write for a hobby.  I'm a strong advocate of spending extra time on the first drafts, until you find one* that fits the physical text and reinforces the meaning.  Sleep on your nearly-finished design.  And use the more important end of your pencil--the eraser.  

*And not always just one.  In a further design step, you may find that a favorite quotation inspires something quite different in you some weeks, months, or years later.  I keep coming back to this one, in a way that the quotation itself describes, and try it again now and then with different results.  I plan to think about more designs, and hope to see it some day for "the thousandth time."   

From Using Calligraphy, and still good advice.  

86: Split Swash Capitals

Similar to yesterday's alphabet, these Split Swash Capitals are formed with a split nib.  Sometimes called a "scroll pen," it outlines each stroke, and necessitates very precise joining of separate strokes and swashes.  

You can also make a split calligraphy marker by taking a notch out of the nib with a very sharp knife.  It's much easier to write with, and will let you try these out without difficulty.  

You can fill the outlined strokes with color.  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet.  

85: Swash capitals

These Swash Capitals are written with a relatively wide pen, adding heft to their strokes and forcing them to stay simple.  Eliminating the vertical backbone of B, for instance, helps focus attention on the graceful curve at the left.  Note the precise corner joins in K and M, in contrast to the open air in R and D.  

These capitals come from Capitals for Calligraphy, now available from used-book dealers, which I wrote during a period when my letters were mostly heavier than they are now.  Not sure why.  

Like many decorated capitals, these do not combine well to spell out whole words.    

84: Plain Gothic

Revisiting yet another version of Gothic is an excuse to let me give you a very inspiring little example of how it was used in its heyday.  The manuscript page here is really small, witness to the way Plain Gothic letters accommodate crowding.  

The lettered and illuminated area is 6 centimeters square, making the letters about 2 millimeters tall.  

83: Cut

You can make lively, forceful, eye-catching letters with paper scraps, scissors, and glue.  You use paper to make the background, not the letters.  Here, with Cut, are white letters made by separating pieces of squares.  

We will come back to cut paper several more times.

82: Fat Shadow

This alphabet is easy and fun.  Unlike previous alphabets that suggest an invisible edge by presenting a shadow that seems to define a third dimension, Fat Shadow just drops a gray shadow, as though the letters were floating like a glider over flat ground.  

You can add a drop shadow to ANY letter.  

81 Lower Kingdom

Outsiders who learn to write Chinese calligraphy are often enchanted to find that many characters, or parts of characters, look like alphabet letters.  If you put them together into words, you will add Asian flavor to your calligraphy while you mystify your Chinese readers, who just don't see their own characters as letters.  

I've named this alphabet Lower Kingdom.  We'll pick up the capitals from Upper Kingdom later in the year.  Enjoy!  

Here is an alphabet of lower-case look-alikes.  

Alphabet texture project

Whenever you write letters, you create a visual texture that the reader enjoys along with the meaning of the words. After all, the words text, texture, technique, and textile all come from the same linguistic root.  
Like many calligraphers, I like to experiment with abstract textures, like this sampling of repeated Roman alphabet letters.  

Roman letters, each so individualistic, create more varied textures than other, more uniform alphabets.  I and J share one pane to help the design fit into a 5 x 5 rectangle.

80: Bookshelf

This alphabet, Bookshelf, makes the letters using simple rectangular strokes.  A distant relative of Gothic, with its line-up of parallel verticals, it works best in logos where the reader has some clue to the nearly abstract word.  

Vertical strokes resemble the spines of books on a shelf; standing up, leaning, or piled in stacks.

79: Endless

This Endless alphabet challenges the calligrapher to make each swashed letter with one uninterrupted stroke.  You will probably come up with a few of your own.  

These letters look best one or two at a time.

78: Fleur de Lys

Fleur de Lys offers one more example of the all around utility of basic Roman letter forms.  This alphabet adds the suggestion of an iris with a few simple strokes.  

Choose a few letters, and add the strokes with precision.  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet.  

60: Runes

The coils of rounded Celtic letters co-existed with archaic squared-off Runes.  The Book of Kells offers hundreds of different forms.  Here are just a few.

77: Papyrus Caps

These simple Papyrus caps have a distinctive shape that makes them decorative and useful.  Use a Speedball D pen nib, which reduces the contrast between thin and thick strokes to about 2/3.  

Derived from a popular typeface.

76: Ronde lc

These letters were especially popular in French book design.  They are graceful and rounded, and are usually called Ronde, lowercase.

75: ^!$cell@ne0u$

April Fool!  Each of the letters in this alphabet is actually something else, made readable by your determination to see letters.  You just THINK it's an alphabet.  

Have fun surprising people.