What is Calligraphy?

Calligraphy is generally recognized as the Art of Beautiful Writing, but there are many styles of Calligraphy and writing.

Basically writing can be split into two, Alphabetic and Pictographic.

Alphabetic Writing

In this type of writing an Alphabet of letters is used to form words and sentences.

There are many forms of Alphabet the following are some examples.

ArabicHebrewGreekRoman

Pictographic Writing

In this form of writing symbols or Pictograms are used to represent concepts or ideas.

The principle Pictographic writing of modern times are Chinese and Japanese.

ChineseJapanese

Roman Alphabet

The Roman alphabet form the basis of most Western European alphabets and is called Roman because it is based on the 23 letters used by the Romans in writing Latin some 2000 years ago.
Examples of Roman writing can be found today incised into stone monuments in various parts of, what was, the Roman Empire.

Originally the Romans only used Capital Letters, or Majuscules as they are usually referred to by Calligraphers.
Over time Lower Case, or Minuscules, were introduced as well as three additional letters to give a total of 26.

ROMAN MAJUSCULES

roman minuscules

Hands

There are many different ways of writing the letters of the alphabet.
In Typography these various representations are referred to as Fonts, in Calligraphy the various styles are referred to as Hands.

Pointed and Broad Pens

The primary tools used by Calligraphers to write are pens and brushes, pens and brushes can be either pointed or flat (broad).

Generally Calligraphy refers to a style of writing in which the width of various parts of a letter varies.

In the case of pointed pens or brushes these variations in thickness are provided by variations in pressure of the pen or brush on the paper.

With flat, or as they are usually referred to broad, pens or brushes, the variations are given by the variation of the angle at which the pen is held relative to the direction of the stroke.

What's in these lessons?

As you can see, Calligraphy covers a huge area of study. No one can start to learn everything at once.

This first series of lessons covers just one small area, that is Roman Broad Pen Calligraphy.