Learning Italic

[bobje]

Cobalt, that's an intriguing idea. Do you mean an alphabet that begins to approach or include ideograms?

[Randal6393]

Hey Randal, thank you for the answer. However, I was not referring to the pen - paper angle, but to the nib edge - writing line angle...and that one is clearly shifting from 45 degrees (as is the norm with italic) to a very steep angle, in order to get a very fine rounded hairline between the two vertical lines which compose the lower-case 'n'. Another clearer (closer) example is here:

 

at minute 12:30, when he makes an 'm'.

But note what you say yourself: the fine hairline is more important than keeping the pen at a constant angle. In many broad-edged scripts, pen manipulation is necessary to achieve a particular effect. However, until the student can maintain a good nib angle to the paper, such pen manipulation is troublesome. The angle appeared to be around 55 degrees to my eye. Considering the manipulations needed to do a good Rustic alphabet, I wouldn't call that a very steep angle. As you watch videos and read older documents, you should find that a good Italic script will include nib-on-paper angles that vary from 30 degrees to 60 degrees. But vary consistently.

 

Best of luck to you,

Edited December 13, 2015 by Randal6393

[Maurizio]

 

Thanks for the heads up for Reynold's italic book. I found the link here.

Thanks much for this link to the Reynold's book. It's a great and rare resource and appears to contain more exercises which the publishers had decided there wasn't enough space for in his useful and still-in-print book Italic Calligrapy & Handwriting - Exercises and Text. Printed it out and going to my local Office Max to get it comb-bound.

[cobalt]

Oh just thinking what other shapes we can create reflecting similar construction rules to the ampersand. I suppose we'll end up with Japanese....

[bobje]

Cobalt, there may be several starting points. Prepositions, smartphone text slang, emoji, abbreviations in general, sigla. Corporate logos maybe. Intriguing exercise for someone knowledgeable in linguistics and calligraphy.

[cobalt]

yes, thinking of posting attempts at: i.e., e.g. etc., and viz. Stay tuned.

[bobje]

Þ = Thorn

= Thorn with stroke

 

This is wild. Several abbreviations based on the "Thorn" letter from Old English. From Wikipedia:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_with_stroke

the thorn letter with a horizontal stroke through the top was an abbreviation for the word "that"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

 

• – (þ^e) a Middle English abbreviation for the word the
• – (þ^t) a Middle English abbreviation for the word that
• – (þ^u) a rare Middle English abbreviation for the word thou (which was written early on as þu or þou)
• (y^s) an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word this
• – (y^e) an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word the
• – (y^t) an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word that

[cobalt]

Following on the ampersand, I went off into the wilderness to explore single character replacements for i.e., e.g., etc. and viz. There are others, but this is just for starters.

 

Each must also be able to be typed in the width of a single letter width, like the ampersand, so has to stay within typographic bounds.

 

For writing, I was looking at angle and flow. Pitman shorthand uses thick and thin strokes, so ideal for italic. Gregg is single width and designed for writing at a angle. There are another conventions "e.g." (wouldn't a single character go well to eliminate 3 characters! Do wonders for Tweets!) Teeline, which I didn't explore.

 

See pic. Column 1 is my wilderness go. Then I took a look at Pitman and Gregg shorthand conventions for Column 2 (Pitman) and Column 3 (Gregg) to devise a version that might be easy to write. Some I quite like. What do others think? Apologies to those who know shorthand, just borrowing the insights.

 

Over to you!

 

Edited December 19, 2015 by cobalt

[bobje]

Impressive innovation in typography! I agree, and quite like your character for i.e. and the Pitman character for etc. The Pitman character for i.e. looks identical to the Old English character for thorn.

[cobalt]

Thanks bobjpage, much appreciated. Italic is a style of writing designed to facilitate rapid or at least quick writing, though it has become a bit of a show style today. I learned to write with a dip pen and italic style letter formation. When I write quickly, I find the italic hand movements produce legible text at speed. A broad-ish nib with some flexibility works as it gives these lovely thick/thin transitions, that communicate letter shapes to the brain enabling easy comprehension. I think the trick is to adopt the style of letter formation than make that your own style.

 

The forms I've suggested would likely work for quick writing, and eliminate the periods, which is I think the whole point of the ampersand.

 

Good point on 'thorn'. perhaps I.E. can be thought of a (bleep): this is what I mean specifically, id est! (bleep)! Got it.

 

Such fun! Your turn.

[bobje]

OK, cobalt, challenge accepted. I was looking for ways to write "thank you" with a single character, and landed on a swashy italic/Roman numeral version of "10Q" from SMS text language. The teenagers fluent in texting in my household say they've never seen "10Q" used for "thank you," unfortunately, but I like it anyway.

 

The "thank you" search resulted in some diversions. I found the other characters here interesting because they were so completely different from Greek, Latin, and Phoenician . A Japanese stationery/design firm calls itself "yuruliku." They say it's a combination of two Japanese words meaning "relaxing slowly." (Why are Japanese stationery stores so terrific, anyway?) The other, a Norse rune for "Jera" or "year" or "harvest," is a unique example of two characters playing together within a single character.

 

[dragos.mocanu]

Work done as a gift for a friend (written in Romanian):

 

 

 

"Nasruddin was busy planting saplings. A passer–by asked him, "With what hope do you plant these trees! How many years more you think you will live to pluck the fruit of these trees?" Nasruddin said with much dignity, "you fool! Others planted, we ate the fruit, we plant and hope the others will eat." (traditional oriental philosophy)

Edited December 21, 2015 by Murky

[bobje]

Murky, this is inspiring work. You formed each character masterfully, down to the punctuation, and the letter "a" is consistently amazing. It's also interesting to see the diacritical marks.

[brunico]

Work done as a gift for a friend (written in Romanian):

 

Frumos!

 

I gather you have only recently started italic, so I'd like to say a couple of things. This is very well-formed, and you have a good sense of spacing between different letters. Moreover, you clearly understand what italic is all about: there is sometimes a tendency for people to think that italic is just about adding fancy flicks to the end of strokes, which leads them to embellish writing that isn't at all well-formed, and the result isn't good. But you have grasped the whole package of form, rhythm and proportion that makes italic so special.

[dragos.mocanu]

Thank you all for the kind words. I've actually started "learning" Italic about 2 years ago, when I purchased my first broad edged fountain pen (Lamy Safari 1.5). However, due to the lack of a proper teacher, I developed an incorrect approach; I was to regret that later, since learning something properly in the first place is far easier than correcting a bad habit. That being said, there were two happenstances which enabled me to pursue the real Italic: the first was discovering Lloyd Reynolds' Italic series on Youtube, and the second was my attendance to an Italic calligraphy workshop this summer.

 

My frank approach of Italics (less embellished) stems from my study of Lloyd Reynolds' rigorous instructions and philosophy regarding handwriting and calligraphy. I completely agree with his saying that

 

 

After all, Italic was devised as a way to write the Humanist Minuscule faster, so handwriting should come first in mind when approaching this script.

[dragos.mocanu]

http://i.imgur.com/i3q7voQ.png

 

For another friend

[LeonW]

Well said.😊

[dragos.mocanu]

Safe joins, arcade and rhythm exercises from Lloyd Reynolds' "Italic Calligraphy & Handwriting". Osmiroid 1.0mm nib, Waterman Black.

 

[bobje]

This is a photograph of a document from about 1600 in an exhibition called "Shakespeare, Life of an Icon," at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. Several fascinating features:

 

- The flourishes on the "N" in "Nicholas Breton" (but not on the "N" in "Nash").

- The double V that creates the "W" in "William Shakspeare"

- The difference between the letter "s" at the end of a name (as in "Thomas" or "Nicholas") and the letter "s" in the middle of a name (as in "Nash" or Shakspeare").

- The rendition of "Josuah Sylvester"

 

[Randal6393]

Also Gervase Markham. Is it a "u" or a "v"? Context!

 

Enjoy,