Calligraphy Tips: Writing Letter B

Video Transcript

"Watch the negative space. So, here's our B. Let's look up here. This example, of course, is a slightly bolder B. Here is our skeletal form, our mono line skeletal form. Notice the difference here between this A and the cross bar here and the sense, the cross bar which we can also consider kind of waist line and how this has been lowered. Alright. As for the purpose of opening up this negative space enough so that it doesn't look too squished. When I work with kids I talk about this as needing to be down this far and not up too high because otherwise it's like you've got your belt up against your throat. On the B what's going to happen and with most of the other two story letters is that we're going to raise this idea of the center line and therefore the top B is going to be a little bit smaller than the; or bowl rather is going to be a little bit smaller than the bottom bowl. What that's going to do is it's going to give us a sense of a volume lower on the letter and therefore more of a sense of stability to the look of that form. Because, you know as time goes on you're going to see that it's almost as if this letter or this letter especially is a standing person. So, you have a sense of standing. So, the term that we use in calligraphy is stasis; s-t-a-s-i-s. That has to do with standing balance. So, there's our B."