How To Do Calligraphy Symbols

How to write calligraphy symbols. And I'm using bone folder to squat my paper and I'm going to use fairly sharp knife to cut the paper. Never ever fold paper with your fingers.

Most people when they fold paper, they do this and then this and then they run it with their fingernails. It is the worst thing to do for a piece of paper because what happens is your fingers release a little bit of oil and that get's into the paper and your nails stretch the paper. So, if you do that, then you end up with a really wavy bumpy line which is the worst thing to look for when you're hoping to get a series of straight edges.

So, we're folding very carefully. It's all about precision. Don't do it too quickly because if you try to do it too quickly, it just won't work.

So, the first type of symbol I'm going to look at is how to do a ligature. A ligature is when you take some kind of letter and another kin of letter and you join them together by tying them. So I'm going to do a 'double F' ligature which is really beautiful.

So, this is the first 'F'. Notice I'm using my arm is of big letters and this is the second 'F' and then we have the cross. We can also use 'C-T' ligatures and the script here is an italics script.

And pull out of the top of it. Notice how slow I'm doing this and there is a 'C-T' ligature. The next type of stroke of symbol I'm going to show you is a suspension mark which we find in palaeography.

Palaeography is essentially the study of the development of alphabets and scripts and generally refers to the way we do research on illuminated manuscripts. But in a broader sense, there are palaeography on every field, for instance in Egyptian hieroglyphs or Mayan hieroglyphs, just trying to catalogue letter forms or shapes. And one of the more beautiful marks is 'I', an abbreviation mark or the word 'Dominus' and we're going to add, just very carefully a little bit of wax.

And as you've noticed, it's a little bit messy to deal with, so those of you who want to play with wax, please be aware that it's slightly problematic so you'll have to wait for the wax to dry a little bit. So, that was probably a little too hot. And you should really work with it flat.

And we're just going to - there you go. So, the next type of symbol I want to look at is something called a cipher or a monogram. Monograms are 2 letters.

Ciphers are more than two letters and I'm going to do this with 2 different scripts, and I'm going to show you how it works with a 'square-pan' script, so we'll use 'P' and 'A' and what is simplest, you can join the letters and what's most complex is to do this a copperplate nib and finish off this section. Those are the 3 major types of symbols. There's a fourth type which is where we actually use a historical form to create the symbol and that is where we take traditional letter forms, and like a cipher, manipulate them yet again.

And most basic of these symbols is this. Yet and it gives us such a wealth of variations for this conjoint symbol it creates. Notice when I don't get ink fluid, I simply jiggle the nib back and forth.

I don't press the life out the nib, so do be careful with your tools as you can damage them. And we have the 'en passant' and that's how to do calligraphy symbols. .