Video: Calligraphy in Insular Half-Uncial: Pt. 1

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Writing calligraphy in Insular half-uncial form can be very elegant. Learn about the Insular half-uncial in calligraphy with this free handwriting video from a calligrapher.

- Calligraphy in Southern Gothic

Comments

Nik Jun 25, 2011
how many nib widths is the x-height?
Nik Jun 25, 2011
that's actually the Greek letter chi.

Video Transcript

From the sixth century a book hand called the "Insular half Uncial", these guys, they are luscious. The book of Kells, here is the back cover to the book of Kells this is the initial letter "P" o.k. we could conceivably call this a versal. Look at the unbelievable elaboration of this, I can't even begin to tell you how long this must have taken and how many people must have worked on this. There's the design, there's the first you have to you have to get the sheep or the goat and kill them and and fix the skins and then you have to make all the paints and then you have to have all the very special tools and you have to design this thing and then you have to paint it in. It's just an extraordinary piece and way down here is some little tiny lettering and this is the lettering that I want to show you now. It's quite wonderful but keep in mind once again right what I'm going to show you is a very generic idea of what the Insular half Uncial character is so you mustn't, I guess what I mean to say is you mustn't take me too literally. The there's an interesting thing that's happening with the "A" and that is that is has what is called a "pulled curve" so that's the first stroke of the "A" maybe it goes around to about there and then it goes like this. It's basically and then it comes around like this and then it comes off like that so it's a bit odd looking. It's basically you can consider this well it's still pretty much considered capitals even though it's starting to look more like small letters, now. It's sort of half way in between.

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Calligraphy in Insular Half-Uncial: Pt. 1

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