Attempting to Learn Gothic Calligraphy

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     Greetings! I made a resolution to do some productive things during Thanksgiving Break, and just learn some new skills in general. I've been wanting to tackle Gothic-style calligraphy for a while, because I think it's a very elegant style. What could go wrong?

  Great things start with search engines.     


       After googling, I found a page on Lettering Daily, written by Edgar Villa. A little background on Gothic calligraphy. It's also called Blackletter, and it was used in the Middle Ages, around 1200-1500. People valued it for its ornamental and formal qualities, and today it's used decoratively. Apparently, it was cheaper to use Gothic calligraphy than other scripts! A long time ago in Europe, animal skin was used as paper for books. The dense letters seen in Gothic calligraphy saved space, therefore costing less.
Image result for gothic calligraphy
What I'm aiming for, but will probably fail at.

     At the end of the page, I found a Dropbox with printable worksheets! Even better, I didn't have to sign up to be a member or log in to access them. On the worksheet, it said to use a 3.8mm Pilot Parallel pen, but I used my blue Elegant Writer pen, which worked just as well. (I actually got a set of the pens as a present from a nun) Turns out, they came in handy. I tried my hand at the uppercase letters, below:
Page 1 done, now 2 more pages to go.
     It took a long time, but I finally managed to finish writing the uppercase letters, and began the same process with the lowercase letters.                               
                                       The final result.                                     
  I also wrote some quotes and sentences.
Apparently you can use red for the uppercase letters and black for the lowercase letters. It looks more "antique" that way.
     After learning Blackletter calligraphy, I would definitely say that modern calligraphy takes less time than Gothic calligraphy, because it uses smooth, connected strokes, and rounder shapes. For Gothic calligraphy, you use many small strokes to make an elegant letter, and it takes more time to put detail. Also, Gothic letters tend to be block-like and angular. I've put some links below to the page and worksheets.

Link to the Lettering Daily article: https://www.lettering-daily.com/blackletter-calligraphy/

Link to the Blackletter worksheets: 

Thanks for reading!

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