Calligraphy in Rustic Capitals

Video Transcript

"This alphabet is tall and thin. It was a way, creating letters in this shape was a way of saving space. Because of the thinness in through here, a lot of times they would leave out the cross bar on the A, but you can almost see it beginning to be implied right down in here. And I would like you to notice how it is that I've connected that second of the B, because what's going to happen is that after a while this is going to get sort of relaxed until a point where we end up with a lower case b or a minuscule b with only the bottom bowl. So what you're seeing here is part of the evolution from capitals to a combination of capitals and small letters. What you should think about the Roman capitals, you know them by now, right? I'm stopping here, just like with the B. Here's the first stroke. Now it's going to be a little bit weighted on the bottom. Here's our minim stroke and it's going to come over a bit. Very high-wasted. The F comes up above the line a little bit, maybe just to make sure that everybody knows that it's an F and not an E. And then there's a little, little bit of a flourish that happens there and then high-wasted. These letters are beautifully designed. They're designed for the brush, or they were anyway at least when they were on painted on walls. And they work so smoothly and quickly."