Height Guidelines for Italic Hand Calligraphy

Series Summary

Calligraphy is the art of stylistic writing. It is also known as the practice of giving an artistic form to letters and signs. It is considered a skill and is often taught in art classes or craft seminars. The skill set learned in calligraphy classes ranges from practical usage to artistic interpretation. In the latter form, function takes a backseat to artistic expression. Practical uses for calligraphy include fancy invitations, font design, logo design, maps, and documentation of other sorts. Depending on the area you are in, different types of calligraphy include East Asian character calligraphy, Indian calligraphy, Persian calligraphy, Islamic calligraphy, or Western calligraphy. There are many different tools used in calligraphy but the two most important are the paper and the pen. In this calligraphy series, learn about the history of calligraphy and about the supplies you will need, such as pens, nibs, inks and papers. Our expert will also demonstrate how to use the pens to write lowercase letters of the italic alphabet.

Video Transcript

"Hello, we're going to be going ahead with the remains of the lower case alphabet. But before we do, I just want to touch the point that we're going to be hitting these letters between guidelines. The guidelines are five times the height of the pens. So we've measured out five pen widths. And we're going to do the consonants, but here are the vowels just in case you haven't seen them, a; e; i, I tend to forget, o; and u. Writing in the italic style with the slight forward slant and then oval shape to the round letters. So we'll be continuing in this way. We're going to work within guidelines and we're going to work carefully, breaking each letter into two strokes, sometimes more, so that we can control the direction and the shape of the pen mark. Remember to keep the pen at forty five degrees, about here, in relation to the baseline."