Writing Roman Calligraphy Letters: Part 1

Video Transcript

"We're going to start out by working, again, with the Roman. This is a review and hopefully you've done some little practice or made some little effort so that this is going to be a little bit more meaningful to you. Here we have the basic underlying geometric structure of the Roman. Here we have the skeletal forms of the Roman divided up into our one story letters, which I would call this, and our two story letters, which I would call this. Which goes here or here. Let's see if we can make some sense out of this. Adding the broad edge. What you want to do is make sure that you have the underlying structure visualized. Second stroke is going to be thicker. When you make your cross bar, remember that your thinking in terms of weight but also just what this triangle in here is going to look like. You don't want it to be too squished. Here's our minim stroke, remember we had this idea of a minim stroke. Top bowl is going to be a little bit smaller than the bottom, which gives a sense of stasis or weight to the bottom part of this letter. Make sure when you start out you're thinking about a rounded form. Coming down to here, straighten out over so slightly. Think about this imaginary line, come around, turn around and meet it. Minim stroke. Bring it over slightly, come back up. Think of the D as being two strokes. Think of the inside or counter being created. You want to pay attention to that."