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Filed under: Calligraphy Books
This book is an ideal introduction to the traditional art of calligraphy.
Maureen Sullivan has produced a great handbook for helping you to develop and create your own original calligraphic style, and to enjoy the art of ‘beautiful writing’.The book begins with the historical background to calligraphy; the materials and equipment you need; and basic techniques, including ruling the paper, basic strokes, pen angles and basic letters.
The six most common writing styles (‘hands’) are explained clearly through step-by-step photographs – uncial, foundation, gothic, italic, sharpened italic and copperplate. Every letter of every hand is drawn out in stroke order and there is advice on letter and word spacing, all shown in clear, step-by-step photographs.
Paperback, 210 x 148 mm ; 96 pages
The first section is a very detailed section on tools and techniques. Many books breeze over the tools you will need – not this one. All tools and materials are covered in great detail. For example, detailed guidance is given on how to prepare your workstation, fit a reservoir to the nib, paper types, preparing vellum and making egg tempera paint. Finally there is detailed instruction on gilding and using gold leaf.
Section two deals with a wide of topics about preparing to work, including; layout and design, planning your work, enlarging letters and details, and transferring designs are covered in this section.The third section of the book is an alphabet directory containing completed decorated alphabets and numbers based on six historic styles which range from 7th-century Celtic to 15th-century Renaissance. Within each historic style, detailed instruction is given on how to create an illuminated letter. Each alphabet sections is followed by a selection of scripts suitable for writing out accompanying text.
