295 Poinsettia

Remember Leafy Green from last week?  You can turn it into Poinsettia.  Rinse out your pen and write these pointy italics with red ink to imply the Christmas-time flower.  You can add a few green leaves, and make yellow dots to strengthen the illusion.  And notice how to spell this often misspelled word.

Christmas cards, conventional or innovative

Gothic letters are inspiring to design with.  Their medieval flavor is closely identified with Christmas customs, which mainly came from Germany via 19th century England.  But also, their abstract hexagonal shape helps them express creative contemporary calligraphic layouts.  

The greetings above offer two different approaches: a conventional illuminated page with large capital and leafy border, or letters in white falling out of a midnight sky. You can experiment along the whole spectrum from the familiar to the unexpected.  

294 Snowflakes

I love what happens when letters repeat.  In Snowflakes, I have oriented each letter, done in pointy Gothic outline, at a 60° angle around a center point.  Voila! a calligraphic blizzard.  

293 Leafy green

The pointed letter body we saw in Leafy [November 30, #283] can look even leafier in color as Leafy Green. 

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292 Elf dot

Note: I got a little rushed on this alphabet: I forgot to use waterproof black ink for the outlined title.  Red and green watercolor inks made it run.  If you take care, you don't have to make that mistake. 

This is simple: take yesterday's Elf and add a gold dot where red meets green.  

291 Elf

Elf is just a simple nod to "It's Christmas!" Use basic outlined Gothic letters and fill the upper half with green, using a brush or pen.  Let it dry completely.  Wash out your brush or pen.  Then fill in the lower half of the letters with green.  

You could add a gold dot to where the colors meet.  Let's make that modification tomorrow: 

288 Flower Box

Flower Box is a hard alphabet to just sit down and write.  I've broken it into letter groups, but even then, many of the letters don't really lend themselves to the overall principle of squaring off the circle, breaking each side into two strokes, and fitting them together with precision.  You'll probably want to do some of them differently.  
I find that I use this alphabet occasionally in a short word or logo.  

286 Back slant Gothic

Back Slant Gothic is an extra-tall version of "Disinclined Gothic" we saw earlier (August 10 # 188).  

282 Thanks!

I'm taking today off to have thanksgiving dinner.  You can make a turkey out of a T, or vice versa. 

272 Coloring the countdown to Christmas

Like yesterday's Alphabet Advent calendar, today's ABC Advent calendar uses letters to map the road to December 25.*  A child can color in the line drawings on the outside of the little door, and then read the word for each letter; for instance, A is Angel and B is Bell.  
*If the numbers seem a little off, remember there's "No-El" in Advent.  Noel.  
If you only print out the line drawing, you'll miss the fun of opening each door.  You might enjoy drawing holiday pictures yourself, or helping your child brainstorm seasonal words for each letter. But --trust me--cutting those little doors will take time and patience.  So you might like to have the actual Advent calendar.  There's still time!  

The calendar is 8 1/2" by 14" on stiff card stock, and can be requested for $15 for one, or a much, much lower price for more than one, from shepherdmargaret5 [at] gmail.com.   

257 Skeletal Gothic

Ever since the Gothic Revival of the 19th century, its calligraphy has been connected to things wild, romantic, mysterious, eerie, and otherworldly.  Here is Skeletal Gothic, a blank slate for you to enjoy filling with ugly colors, unpleasant textures, or Halloween motifs.  The extra letters O at the bottom are for you to experiment with.

256 Skritchy

This alphabet, Skritchy, not only looks but sounds creepy.  

1. Take a coffee-stirrer and break it in half.  
2. Dip it in black ink.  
3. Hold it at right angles to the direction of the stroke.  
4. Then drag it along on cheap paper.  

The wood corner on paper will stick and slip a little, making that jagged, itchy line.  And it also makes a little noise like dead fingernails on chalkboard.  The blots and splats are a bonus. Enjoy!  

258 Swab

This is an all-purpose, mildly ugly alphabet.  Swab looks just wrong enough to make the reader uneasy.  You make it by rolling an inky Q-tip along the page for each stroke.  As the cotton swab gets worn out, its uneven shape and trailing fibers add interesting irregularities to the line.

255 Weirdness

As we discussed in this week's project, it's harder than it looks for calligraphers* to write ugly letters on purpose.  (By accident? no problem!)  Here's Weirdness, an example of malligraphy done with the dropper of an ink bottle. Have fun!  

*It takes a real artist to do a bad performance.  One of the best--worst--recordings I've ever heard was a spoof of cocktail music done by Jo Stafford and Paul Weston called "Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris."  You will never forget her off-key rendering of "The Last Time I saw Paris.." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxZbukUEyXk  (you have been warned). You could listen to it to inspire yourself to write badly.  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet.  

252 U N Day

Today is United Nations day, so here are two medieval initials in color, plus nine different black and white versions of U and N.  Peace.   
From Capitals for Callligraphy.   

218 At One

This alphabet is made by using the pen strokes of Hebrew calligraphy to write the letters forms of the Roman Alphabet.  I've named it At One in honor of the day when Jews atone for their sins and celebrate God's forgiveness.  

This comes from my book Learn World Calligraphy, which includes three other Hebrew-flavored alphabets and a wealth of decorative motifs.  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet.  

217 Not my fault!

Today is Blame Someone Else Day,* which falls on Friday the Thirteenth.  And who needs a scapegoat more than calligraphers, who make typos every day of their lives?! 

There are many online discussions about preventing, catching, and repairing errors you make when you letter by hand.  Here, from decades of freelance work, are my precautions:

*The first Friday the 13th in any year.  

I haven't made an alphabet style for today; I'm trying to think of Somebody Else to blame.  

209 Rosh Hahanah

This alphabet comes from my book Calligraphy Alphabets Made Easy.  You can find four other Hebrew-themed alphabets there, plus three more in the Hebrew chapter of  Learn World Calligraphy.  These are not quite in alphabetical order throughout, in an effort to help you classify them into letter families.  

September is the season of Jewish New Year.  These letters, Sabra, are a blend of Roman alphabet forms with Hebrew pen strokes.   You may take some time to get used to the extreme pen angle and the backward letter slant. 

207 L for Labor Day

These nine versions of the letter L come from my book Capitals for Calligraphy.  I like the idea that the scribe's labor comes in so many flavors--medieval, Celtic, floral, mechanical to name the most obvious.  And the two figures pay tribute to holiday weekend activities: a dip in the hot tub and a quiet session of writing.  What more do you need?   

172 BirthdayZ

This comes from my book,  Capitals for Calligraphy, now out of print but easily available second-hand.  

This is not actually a whole alphabet.  But today is my birthday, which I share with my daughter Zoë.  Her initial is a good excuse to offer you some versions of Z.  So here is a bouquet of Zs for all those other Zoës and Zacks out there who have to wait till the 26th letter to start their names...  

...plus a B for anyone's Birthday.