World Famous Comics: Learn Calligraphy: The Complete Book of Lettering and Design
Learn Calligraphy: The Complete Book of Lettering and Design
By: Margaret Shepherd Publisher: Broadway Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Broadway Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 168 Publication Date: February 20, 2001 Release Date: February 20, 2001
Product Description: In an age of myriad computer fonts and instant communication, your handwriting style is increasingly a very personal creation. In this book, Margaret Shepherd, America's premier calligrapher, shows you that calligraphy is not simply a craft you can learn, but an elegant art form that you can make your own.
Calligraphy remains perennially popular, often adorning wedding invitations, diplomas, and commercial signs. Whether it is Roman, Gothic, Celtic, Bookhand, or Italic style, calligraphy conveys class and elegance. Margaret Shepherd makes this ancient art form accessible in a completely hand-lettered technical guide that will:
* Provide context for calligraphy as an art, exploring the rich tradition of hand-lettering and mapping the evolution of the most popular styles.
* Give detailed technical advice on choosing pens, paper, and inks, setting up your workspace, mastering various pen angles, along with step-by-step illustrations to guide you as you practice.
* Explain which alphabets are appropriate for different forms of writing. For example, the Roman alphabet works well for short, unpunctuated passages, while the Italic alphabet is more suited to informal everyday communication.
* Encourage you to personalize your lettering by using variant strokes and interpreting how you would like the words to look on the page.
* Inspire you with carefully chosen illustrations and examples, which bring letters to life.
In Margaret Shepherd's own words, "Calligraphy trains not only your eye and hand, but your mind as well." Learn Calligraphy is the authoritative primer for this age-old craft, and will help develop a new appreciation for lettering as you discover your creative personality.
going against the grain on this one I enjoyed reading this book and peruse it on occasion, but I cannot follow it. It is beautiful, yet not practical enough. I believe it is not well organized, that it visually all sort of runs together, and that it should have been spiral bound. It's worth it to pay a few dollars more for spiral bound, yet the majority of how-to books are NOT offered as such. With a book you are doing copywork from, it's a pain trying to weigh it down to stay open without damaging the spine. I will hold on to this, but am here now to shop for a more useful book.
Art in hand writting Margaret Shepherd has written many books about this subject (Calligarphy), this is special because include a sort of recomendations for students. I really enjoyed this book.
Good buy This book is excellent. When I received my book, I started to practice for 1 week and now my handwritting is pretty.
Great Author, great books I was really having a hard time picking out calligraphy how to books so i went to the book store. unfortunately they do not have a lot to choose from, at the second store i found a better selection and found Margaret Sheperd's books. Wow, great books and great way to learn, she has a funny side to her and this book is incredible, not only do you learn you have fun doing it. i also saw a few more books in her name. Unfortunately i didn't have very much time to look at them all and i cant wait to go back to see the rest. I am thinking of picking up all her books.
I think this is the best of the starter books. Very easy and a fun read too!
Cheryl
Response with gratitude I am the author of this book and just want to respond that I agree with the very critical reviewer who felt strongly that Copperplate should have been included. I wish so too. But it would need a whole other set of supplies and hand positions. Copperplate comes along much later, and is really outside the main core of the broad-pen historic hands. Maybe some day! To respond to Gary Bisaqa's review, I agree and I have covered the business end of calligraphy as a free-lance job, in a whole other book, Calligraphy Projects for Pleasure and Profit. I wrote this, like all my other books, because I wish I'd had such a book when I started out. Thank you to others who wrote in to say that it helped them start out too.