Review: Calligrascape Blackletter Practice Sheets

plus: potato filter

Last year I decided I wanted to learn blackletter calligraphy. I’d previously learned Italic, which is kinda like the gateway drug for blackletter, and enjoyed it so much that I wanted to get into the harder stuff.

There were many reasons for this:

• Aesthetic preference

• Saw an opportunity in the rising need for handwritten, hard-to-read diplomas

• Found cursive too hard to read even if I was the one who wrote it

• Wanted to use all my italic pens more often

• I am a MAN and needed my handwriting to be MANLY according to a podcast I didn’t listen to and cursive is for GIRLS

this would look absurd in cursive

I was surprised how hard it was to find written instructional materials on this. You can find lots of exemplars of this stuff, and I already had a book full of gothic typefaces, but you kind of need to already be a calligraphy wizard to use that. So I’d hoped that I’d find something as comprehensive as the Getty-Dubay stuff on basic Italic (review) or Michael Sull’s Spencerian workbook (review), both of which I highly recommend.

And…I didn’t. I did find Richard Wideman’s Calligrascape site, however, and that led me to his master Blackletter Calligraphy practice sheets. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

from his product page, available here

Just to cut to the chase: this is probably the best starter option for most people. It’s $32 and covers eight scripts. It breaks down the letters by stroke, so you don’t have to try and analyze each letter from an exemplar. It’s not as comprehensive as the other materials I’ve reviewed, but it’s not trying to be—and it’s a good value for the money in its current form. Let’s go through it.

Supplies

In addition to the practice sheets, you’re going to need an edged pen and paper.

EDGED PEN: These materials are designed for the Pilot Parallel. Specifically, the 6.0, 3.8, and the 2.4mm nibs—the materials are sized to be printed out for those sizes.

from the product page

You don’t need a Parallel, and you can do almost all of this stuff with a normal italic nib—it’s just going to be a lot harder and more frustrating if you want to learn scripts that use some of the more complicated techniques.

That’s because the Parallel’s sandwich nib design, where you can create capillary action with any part of the nib, means you can do hairlines (using the edge of the nib) and tapers/twists (twisting/lifting the nib) really easily. You can also do this with a regular italic nib, but it’s a lot trickier.

parallel nib

For actually learning this stuff, my recommendation is to get a 2.4 or 3.8mm Pilot Parallel and go from there. The bigger Parallels are cool once you get the strokes down but will just eat ink and paper at the “still learning” phase. I personally start with a 3.8mm Parallel and then switch to a Kaweco 2.3 or Lamy 1.9 once I know the letterforms, both of which I’m more likely to use day-to-day.

PAPER: Two options here. You can print out the materials and if you’re totally new to this you might find it useful. If so, you’ll need to invest in some quality paper as the Parallel is the world’s wettest pen.

I’ve since just taken to doing this in my journal, a dotted Leuchtturm. It holds up fine against the Parallel and the dotted grid makes it easy to do everyday, good-enough lettering without having to draw a bunch of lines.

How It Works

This workbook covers Uncial, Rotunda, Italic, Neuland, Textura, Batarde, Roman, and Fraktur. He also sells these as one-offs for $10 each, so the $32 will be a better deal if you like at least four of those.

Each script has an intro page that has all the letters, a “quick brown fox” exemplar, the letter height ratios, and then the techniques you’ll use in the script (pen angle, if you need to tilt/rotate the nib, etc.). The ex-designer in me really likes how efficiently he uses the space on each of these pages. Here’s the intro page for Rotunda from his product page, available here.

After that, you get pages and pages of letters. Each letter is broken down by stroke, and then there’s a line below where you can practice, including a few grayed-out ones you can trace if you like. Here’s one of the Fraktur pages, also from his product page.

Thoughts

I’ve used this to learn Uncial and Batarde and am now working on Rotunda. Here’s how I’m doing with a 1.9mm stub nib (the one from the LAMY Joy):

This is representative of how I normally write—in a journal, with a pretty rounded stub nib, kind of eyeballing the height, reversing the nib at times. A crisper nib, loose paper, and taking the time to line out the baseline and x-height and so on will give cleaner results, but my most common use case is making headings in my journal and that’s what this looks like.

And I’m happy with these results! I think these materials are definitely worth $32 and would recommend them.

That said, here are some things I wish were different:

• I wish the letters were grouped by similar shapes/strokes, instead of just appearing alphabetically, and that they would appear in order of difficulty. For example, the “a” in Rotunda is a fairly standalone letterform and also the most difficult, and starting there is VERY DISCOURAGING. Adding a second intro page for each script that gives a recommended learning path, with similar letters grouped together, would help a lot.

• I wish there were vertical grid lines. Getting a letter’s proportions right involves both height AND width. Seeing a grid that tells me the general proportion of the letter would be incredibly helpful.

• I wish there were more exemplars of the script being used. This would help with spacing between words in particular. You can find this elsewhere easily, but still.

Those aren’t really criticisms, though. They’re me wishing these were something different—comprehensive how-to books instead of practice sheets. Those are just areas I felt were challenging as a result of this format when compared to something more comprehensive.

In sum, if you’re looking to get into any of these scripts, this is probably the best way to get started and see if it’s for you. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Other Stuff

CIAO DA VENEZIA: I’m in Venice again. It’s cold and wet but I saw EIGHTEEN DOGS the first night so it’s an overall win. Winter in Venice is delightfully spooky; even with Carnevale starting shortly, you can walk around at night and be the only person on a street where every building is a thousand years old. It’s incredible and feels like being in a novel and I highly recommend it. Look forward to a future post on some good stationery and pen shops here.

IN MY PROFESSIONAL POTATO OPINION: To follow up on last time’s post about weird YouTube stuff, here is a channel where a lady recaps TLC shows using the potato filter. In the best videos, her editor inserts her into the scenes as she describes them. It’s exactly what it sounds like.