Family Tree of Skills

UNCIALS

penmanship 

good circles - letter o

basics of calligraphy

introduction to layout

introduction to fine detail painting

introduction to continuous writing

GOTHIC MINUSCULES

practice in verticals

inter-letter spacing

rhythm

exploring pattern and texture


introduction to relaxed penmanship (birds)

introduction to continuous writing

MONOLINE TRAJAN CAPS

foundation for Roman capitals in Foundational

understanding of capitals in Italic

appreciation of capitals in design

understanding of spacing and rhythm in lettering

understanding and critical approach to well designed typography

experience of drawn lettering

starting point to letter design 


Now its time to choose a direction for a while. 
You can always go back or change direction. The principle behind this idea is so that you don't go off at a tangent before consolidating one style like suddenly deciding to do Copperplate before mastering any script and at the end of a long time you have not really progressed in any direction.


Look at lots of calligraphy and decide what really appeals to you and what you think is within your ability.
What appeals to you the most? Look at the best calligraphy work to help you decide.
Tim Noad's beautiful Heraldry or Monica Dengo's expressive work. 
Consider Tom Perkin's or Hazel Dolby's drawn letters.

Tim Noad - reproduced with permission

Monica Dengo - reproduced with permission

Look at the St John Bible designed by Donald Jackson and Brody Neuenschwander's work. 
Look at the annual juried issue of Letter Arts Review.
Try to fit the work you see and like into one of the three categories below.
(I'm on dangerous ground here with all this labelling, but I really believe that its worth getting some strong foundations in a specific direction rather than becoming a workshop junkie going mindlessly from copperplate to rubber stamping to Brush Capitals and back. Once you have produced a really good portfolio in either Italic or Foundational, 
go on...indulge yourself in some experimentation and fun-stuff.)


FORMAL

This may lead to formal certificates, name tags, citations

Foundational

and 

Fine Detail or Heraldic Painting

later consider

Copperplate

Formal Italic

DRAWN LETTERS
This may lead to Typographic design, letter carving, drawn and painted letters
Foundational
with 
equal emphasis on capital letters & minuscules
and 
drawn letters
later consider
Formal brush lettering
computer skills:
Fontographer


GESTURAL 

This may lead to expressive work as in modern calligraphic works

It is also the most versatile hand for general calligraphy

and less formal work.

book covers

advertising

Italic (formal and informal)

and

art-design courses

later consider

brush lettering

computer skills:

 Indesign

I hope this helps! xxx At least it might help you evaluate differently.
The views expressed here are entirely my humble opinion* and I would welcome comments and debates. 
*b.t.w., one of my daughters once told me that my opinion is never humble.

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Monica Dengo - Artist

Its very difficult to choose which aspect of Monica's art to highlight as she is versatile and prolific. But for me, her Book as Body series is unforgettable!.


BOOK as BODY

Monica chose a black male model and a white female model and did gestural writing all over their bodies. She then collaborated with the photographer Marco Ambrosito to film the models. Tsering Wangmo Dhompa wrote poetry which accompanied the series on the opposite pages to the photographs.

"BAB series is based on the certainty that our realty exists because we've given it a name, that our representation of the world is as important as - if not more than - its existence a priori and that we, along with the world we're a part of, are defined by our words. - We've chosen the nude body and the writing that defines and transforms it until it becomes the body itself. The text on the body is an entirety of illegible signs, a web of letters that envelop the skin cover and replace it".

Dhompa's poetry and her "dharma" thoughts have been used for the calligraphic illegible textures of writing on the body. Photographic images result in which the person tends to vanish, leaving her own description, a wrapper of writing. A page of writing, side by side with the body - as in a book - becomes a mirror where the body is the page and the page the body.


"The body is a way to acknowledge the self that is not there".
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa


I think the way in which the depth is negated by the pattern of letters over a three dimensional form is incredible.
Monica, thank you for coming to the UK to share your art with us.
http://www.monicadengo.com/bab.html

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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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