beginnings

Whew, the Jubilee is over, the bunting is down and the gazebos are packed away. What an amazing atmosphere of celebration and fun we have had despite the rain. I think my lasting "vignette" will be of the young women standing upright in their boat in the open, opposite the Queen as they sang to her in exquisite voices as though it was sunshine pouring down on their heads and not rain!
So its back to lettering and such.

I "taught" myself Italic at the age of 14 in prep. time at boarding school when I was bored with studying! I had a book by George L.Thompson called "Better Handwriting" which my mother had bought for my two left-handed brothers whose writing was virtually illegible. And it worked for all three of us! Their writing became readable and I developed a passion for calligraphy.


Italic has half as many strokes as the cursive we learnt at school, fewer "up" strokes and fewer loops. Its' simpler capitals are Roman-based not Copperplate-based. The number of loops and movements in a copperplate G written by a disinterested little boy with poor pen control and a biro boggles the mind. Yet somehow handwriting in schools so often seems to bypass Italic in favour of all sorts of other complicated scripts.


I am a full member of Letter Exchange (LX) www.letterexchange.org and as Speaker's Organiser I recently had the privilege of entertaining Monica Dengo from Italy as she visited the UK to address LX. I am awaiting images from her of her fantastic artwork, but in the meantime I'd like to tell you a little about what she is doing in schools in Italy, with a grant and a blessing from the Italian education authorities. (Give Italic back to the Italians, yeah!)


When her son went to school she was appalled at the style of handwriting which is taught early on, and later as handwriting is almost dismissed because we are going digital! 
Monica had been doing gestural artwork alongside sophisticated calligraphy in her commission work, but went right back to the very beginning with a vocational zeal to do something about school writing.

To mention just a few aspects, she covers :
a) The bare bones of skeletal writing to for kids to start learning.
b) Each letter has the potential to be joined.
c) When letters are joined they don't really change shape.
d) Capitals letters are Roman in origin not Copperplate.
e) Lettering is made fun by playing with lettershapes in colours.
f) Children's literacy is increased by teaching them letter recognition in different styles of writing.
g) There is plenty of scope for additional fluency and flourishes with skill, enthusiasm and maturity.
g) Monica has designed a font that teachers can use in conjunction with her book in their handwriting and other teaching. This font is a "nice squeaky-clean Italic monoline" This font will be available to buy at some stage, so watch this space.

f) Her book "Pick up your pen" is now published in Italy, France, Estonia and USA. It can be purchased at Amazon UK and is the starter book for kids. 
I'll be telling you about her lettering teaching for adults tomorrow and in the meantime you can view her website www.freehandwriting.net.
If you want to find out more about this amazingly talented artist, read my blog tomorrow and google Monica Dengo.

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