Video Update

Videos complete! Completed videos are now posted on my website and You Tube. Thanks for the encouragement!


www.timjohnsonphoto.com Gallery: calligraphy


You Tube: timjohnsonphoto

New Videos On My Website & At Facebook

Video updates!


www.timjohnsonphoto.com
Facebook: timjohnsonphoto


I've added a couple of new videos to these sites for your viewing pleasure and information about making broad-edge pen letters. 
The latest has to do with capital letters.
Capital letters - used only 2% of the time in normal writing - ought to be done well. (If you are a teacher or parent or just interested in checking this out, PLEASE get a straight-edge, a few pages of non-illustrated, non-technical text and start counting. LC vs. CAPS You choose caps. Let your students choose the lc. Count, total and do the percentages. Good for reading, good for math. Good for YOU.)
Just IN CASE you were wondering, we hardly use the terms upper and lower case in the scribal world. Until movable type came along, there were no such terms regarding letters. The names came along because the lc letters were used 98% of the time and type was set on the floor in huge type holders - less to lug. 2% of the time the typesetters could grab the caps and set them. Less to lug. In that day, leading, kerning and eventually casting was done by hand.
Any of you who has ever endured watching me type must realize that I learned typing on a Linotype machine - not a typewriter. Google THAT and love ME and my fingers and know why the keys sometimes hop around when I get excited timtyping.
Technically these letters are majuscules (major letters). They are monumental, since they are carved on monuments and they are versals, since they began verses. Most of them existed in a form familiar to us since 2 BC, when I was a feral child in the mountains of Virginia. 
8 years of Latin studies will not be repeated here or in my classes. I use it only to torture people hanging from chains who keep muttering something about the death of handwriting.
In most cases italic capitals are 2 pen widths or so shorter than the ascenders in the body of writing in which they are used. Their pen angle is flatter. 35-40 degrees instead of 45 - 30-35 if you are using a 35-40 degree italic hand.
The angle has to be less to make the verticals more stout.
Flourishes are nice - but control them. It is wisely said that under every flourished letter is a simple, strong letter trying to stay in. (You know, the old too much make-up and overblown yah-dah, and so on.)
The capital letter exemplars I have created do not pretend to be perfect. They do come with my high-tech angleometer attached to the back of the Sakura marker. It reveals how and when I change pen angles while making the letters, crosses and flourishes.
I have also made punctuation marks even included the little-used interrobang.
No one will watch the whole thing at a sitting. You might look at a particular letter or two.
I was writing out of my writing window and comfort zone. If I had been writing where I could have seen my marker point, all you could have seen was my very thin hair and the finished work.
There are some other new videos and others are coming.
I plan to cover the 4 major hands: Uncial, Blackletter, Foundation. I will add the final italic numbers and a few missing miniscule letters.
Classes through Wake Tech begin in January and are being moved to Reedy Creek Middle School, near Harrison and I-40 in Cary. I hope to see you there. © tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com