Flourishing

[Venefyxatu]

I already saw MusinkMan ask about this in the Invitation To Show Off Your Stuff thread, but I think the topic deserves a thread of its own.

 

For me, personally, with a little practise I can copy an existing flourish. Well, okay... sometimes it takes a lot of practise. But as soon as I try experimenting without pre-existing examples things go downhill very, very quickly. Stuff is unbalanced, the curls look odd and are poorly spaced, etc.

 

So, like MusinkMan (and I hope you don't mind me stealing your question), I'm wondering: what are the basic principles behind flourish design? Are there any, or is it just a lot of practise and developing a feel for it? I've already found a few good documents on iampeth, but I'd love to hear all of your opinions as well.

 

So, links to some resources from iampeth:

• lessons on flourishing. The obvious starting point, with some good basic flourishes in there to practise - I assume these can be used as building blocks.
  
• Zaner's Gems of Flourishing. I still have to read it, but it looks promising with explanation, basic practise blocks and advanced examples.
  
• Gems of Penmanship, by Williams and Packard The lessons linked higher up are taken from this book, but there's more interesting stuff in here, like some flourishes which, to me, are proof that drawing skill can be a lot of help.
  

 

If anyone finds more good resources, has interesting tips, please add to this thread! I'll try to gather the links into the first post for easy perusal.

[thang1thang2]

Bill Hildebrandt's book on flourishing is my favorite. Some things to keep in mind

 

1. You should try and cross the lines at as close to right angles as you can

2. Thick lines should be crossed by thin lines, never by thick. However you can cross thin lines with thin lines

3. Flourishes are best done with full arm movement

4. Practice makes perfect!

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=y01dpfZpD9sC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Here is a section of the book I'm talking about. It contains most of the "how one would do flourishes" and most of the theory behind it. The rest of the book is mainly examples. Pay particular interest to page 30 for exercises you can do.

 

 

In this page in the Universal Penman, you will notice how they use flourishing to draw attention to certain words. Like the flourish to frame the word 'the' in "The Penman's Advice". They also use flourishing as decoration, such as in the P and in the A and at the end of the e in advice. In the example, flourishing is used to decorate and draw attention to titles. Notice how they use ample white space so that the heavy overusage of flourishing doesn't look sloppy or out of place, but instead attractive and warranted. They also tend to use much thicker styles of fonts (blackletter, germanic black letter, etc) around heavy flourishing because of the greater contrast.

 

 

In this one there's another example of great flourishing. Notice how in the top line, the 'w' is so thick and heavy it would unbalance the entire page, but the flourishing on the right side of the title is more intricate and pronounced, adding balance to the writing.

 

 

Note how the circular horizontal flourish on the right of the title is reversed and drawn backwards so that the swells from the pointed pen are on the opposite side, lending symmetry to the entire title. They continue this vein of mirroring throughout the page.

 

 

Another example of well done flourishing. Take note of the white space, of how the lines cross at only very close to right angles, and how thick lines never cross thick. The cadel style A has flourishing lines that tie into the lines of the capital W, which tie into the general framing flourishes of the entire piece of art. In my opinion, this is an exemplary example of tying in different styles. We have the cadel A, we have a bastarde style of W which is highly stylized, and then we have the minuscule characters in what appear to be a germanic blackletter style. The other capitals in the writing, however, are very toned down yet not out of place with the 'W' yet they fit right in with the simple minuscules of the page. Notice also how the flourishing is much more heavy on the bottom to counter the huge heavy capitals on the top. This means that even though they went way overboard with the top capitals, they don't look out of place at all, or unbalanced.

 

 

Notice how unflattering this flourishing example is? The lines are rarely crossed at anything resembling 90º, and at many places they're crossed at 30º or less. To make it even worse, several places have three or more lines intersecting at one place which is a big no no in flourishing. The result is that we have several beautiful capitals and flourishes, yet the overall page sends off a vibe of clutter and entropy of a major degree. One wouldn't be able to read this if their life depended on it, as compared to some of the other examples above. This highly stylized flourishing adds nothing to the work, and instead detracts. Flourishing should be something that adds beauty and even form and function to the page, rather than messing it up such as this one.

 

However, the flourishing of the title at the top of the page in the last image was well done.

 

Does that help any?

[Venefyxatu]

thang1thang2, yes, that helps a lot! Thank you for this very clear and informative post.

 

With two more books on my want-list and a lot of good tips I think I'll be busy for a while

[thang1thang2]

thang1thang2, yes, that helps a lot! Thank you for this very clear and informative post.

 

With two more books on my want-list and a lot of good tips I think I'll be busy for a while

 

You're welcome! Note, only the first image is from the Universal Penman. However I highly recommend that and the Flourishing book. Especially if you're interested in copperplate writing.