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How to Master the Art of Calligraphy

Lowercase Calligraphy Letters - P, B, K

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  • Joanne Wasserman

    Artist/Owner, Wasserman Design

    http://www.wassermandesign.com  
    301-589-3444

    Joanne Wasserman has been professionally engaged in original art, custom art services, and graphic design since 1979, when she opened Wasserman Design in Washington, DC, as a studio business. Joanne was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic DesignCalligraphy, drawing, painting, and graphic design are bedrock art realms that Wasserman uses interchangeably to explore diverse subjects material and create original formations of content and imagery. Her intention for every work of art is the same: to communicate what is most intensely meaningful about the circumstances which shape a subject's identity.Over the years, Wasserman has produced a singular body of works for business clients and individuals whose interests are focused on serious issues of life in today's world. Her testimonial art honors statesmen and leaders for their career achievements and dedication to public service. Recently, two exemplary works of calligraphy and illumination were composed for Senator John Warner, of Virginia, and Former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Atlantic Council of the United States commissioned both of these works of art. Wasserman's mural painting for the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing is a visual tribute to the school's educational mission across the entire field of nursing practice; the mural was named after an alumnus: The Leona Bowman Carpenter Center for Community Health Nursing.Other works include several drawings and watercolors that were made to express the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's advocacy on behalf of all countries in which landmines have been used against innocent civilians, causing the destruction of lives, homelands and national economies.Wasserman's interests in current events, American history, and the development of writing systems and art traditions of peoples throughout the world are frequent catalysts for her choice of topics; moreover, through her work she cares to express the endearing aspects of living that are all around us. Change Agents of Culture is an ongoing series of 27 works that address creativity and invention in American society from the late 19th through 20th centuries. The first seventeen of these calligraphy-paintings were exhibited at the Embassy of Japan's Information and Culture Center, in Washington, DC, where the artist gave a public talk about writing systems in the world, entitled, PictureWritingThen & Now.

  • Lowercase Calligraphy Letters - P, B, K

    Calligraphy is the art form of writing beautifully. The writing system of Western world history is presented through the Chancery Cursive Script, the 15th Century, formal, book hand, invented by Italian professional scribes. Viewers can increase their manual skills as well an artistic insights during the time in which they practice the writing of an 'italic alphabet' using a pen, hand-dipped in ink, on pages that are ruled, also, by hand.

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  • Transcripts

    Joanne Wasserman: Hi, I am Joanne Wasserman and my studio is Wasserman Design, and today we are learning Chancery Cursive script, we are learning right now the Miniscule letters and the second group of letters begins with a P. so we are introducing letters with a curve and a straight. So the letter P holding a pen at a 45 degree angle, and two strokes, it looks just like the J so far. And I go back and that was four strokes. I will show you again. Here, and another letter, letter B and the third letter.

    I will write these letters and talk to you through them. On the first letter the P, we want to keep our pen at that 45 degree angle and we are going down at a slant, before we get to the bottom of the next space, we start going intp a curve as if we are going to land, an airplane or something. Okay, then we want to put -- we dont have to put that hook on like this, we can put a hook like that. But still, the very first stroke tells us that this is not an H because we have gone below the line and this line stroke below our X height is called a descending line.

    Soon I pick up and I want to curve the letter down, now what this is important, picking up, curving and adding a ball, half of the ball to a straight line. It is like when we made the letter O, it is this second portion of the letter O that is like that portion of the letter P, you see. So, instead this portion of the letter O that second stroke is essentially what I am putting onto this. Okay and then I can leave my P with the angel or I can put a little foot on it. The letter B is almost like I am doing it inverted although it -- when you are writing it doesnt matter whether it is upside down, it just feels very different.

    But I am going down and I am already going into a curve. But I am making it a little wider curve then I did for the letter L or the letter T, see that space in here is a little wider and that is because like I did to the O second stroke and the P stroke, I am going to make that same up curve and I am going to meet that hairline where I left off. So that is two strokes and the way I started this letter B is with a hook, the way I began the letter I and the letter R.

    However, I could also start from the right hand side, and go down, and go into that little curve with a little ball, and then add that second stroke of the letter O. And then I have a hook this way or this way and if I have a hook this way usually, I will put this little finishing stroke on it. So that it balances this very long letter, it's still going to the right where we have our slant and then our third letter, is the letter K and I also can do the same first stroke coming from the right. So that I have the smooth curve and then I end it without a hook, just like I did the letter R because that is my first stroke. We only put the hooked foot at the end of the last stroke of the letter formed.

    So there is the hook because that is the last stroke, this was the first stroke and then I can add this little hat for little flag. But I wanted to explain something when you are making the letter okay -- We can also do it this way, that in the second stroke it is small like when we made an E. You put this little eyelid, kind of little eyelid at the top. When we are doing that to okay, where we are coming from a steep angle. Here we did it at the very top of the letter.

    Here on the K, I am doing it further down that does this space. But then when I come into meet that first line, I change the tilt of my pen from that 45 degree angle to maybe 10 degrees because when I make this stroke, I am coming out of it at an angle. I want this stroke to be as wide as this stroke. It I did not tilt my pen to this way, you see how it is not 45 degree angle anymore, this is 45 degree angle. But if I make this stroke at 45 degree angle, you see how fat that mark is and it is so much wider than the first stroke, that it looks awkward and unbalanced.

    So I tilt the letters -- I tilt the pen so that I am giving all my strokes that my letter forms an even appearance. Okay for that set we have the -- and I am turning there.

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