824-Lancastar Fanning, Saturday, July 26,1986
Leave Your Mark
With Decorative Lettering
BY KELLE BANKS BARFIELD
Copley News Service
From our earliest school days,
most of us have been taught the
value of good, careful penmanship.
Our handwriting is usually con
sidered to be one of the surest
indicators of our personalities and
our moods.
The Foundational-style alphabet
is just one of dozens of lettering
styles practiced over the centuries.
Others you may be familiar with
and may be interested in learning
are Old English, Gothic and Italic.
With any style lettering, begin
with a staff, the tool used to hold
lettering nibs, and the broad-edged
pen points. High-quality rag
content paper is the best canvas
for finished artwork, including
proverbs, poetry or a family tree.
Black ink is the most traditional
lettering medium.
All of these supplies should be
available to any art supply store in
your area. In addition, you will
need a drawing board, a pencil for
ruling lines, and a T-square to
make those lines as horizontal and
as parallel to one another as
possible. Use an extra sheet of
paper under your hand to keep
your work clean as you write.
Centre County 4-H Sheep Club
By learning and praticing
decorative lettering, you can
produce elegant artwork for your
home, make greeting cards that
are uniquely yours, and create
memorable invitations and gift
cards.
Decorative lettering, better
known as calligraphy, is a craft
virtually as old as the written
word. Although printing presses
eliminated much of the hand let
tering practiced by modern-day
artists, in recent years the art
form has regained popularity
across America.
The term calligraphy comes
from the Greek words kallis. or
beautiful and pittas, which means
Eleven members of the Centre
County 4-H Sheep Club traveled to
Berks County July 14 and 15 for
their annual tour. The club
finances the tour through fund
raisers such as serving food at the
Keystone Ram and Ewe Sale and
cookie sales.
Berks County extension agent
Clyde Myers arranged for the
members to visit a number of
tourist attractions. Members
visited the Strausstown Fur Shop,
where they saw exnensive fur
coats, and Amazing Acres, where
writing. Your frequent practice of
decorative lettering will indeed
produce beautiful, satisfying
results.
they saw how wool is washed and
prepared for spinning without the
use of high technology machines.
They also visited the Reading
Pagoda, a lookout over Reading.
Members spent the night in a cabin
at the Daniel Boone Homestead.
Tuesday, members visited the
George W. Bollman and Co. Inc.
Hat Factory where they saw how
wool becomes hats. They also
visited Hopewell Village, which is
an old iron ore furnace. They
completed the day with a swim at
French Creek State Park.
Once you begin printing, you will
see that the thick and thin strokes
that characterize decorative
lettering are made by varying the
angle of the nib to the horizontal
rules. The pressure of the pen to
the paper should remain constant.
Just as important as clean,
sharp lettering is the spacing
between letters. Only practice will
give you a real handle on proper
spacing, but in general, the size of
the letters (the amount of- space
within each letter) determines the
amount of spacing. In other words,
wider elements require more
space between elements.
As you print, you may want to
leave enough space in the margin
for a decorative border, such as a
curved stroke line repeated around
the block of letters. It is especially
fun to create borders from
repeated letters.
Another trick is to vary the size
of your lettering on one piece of
artwork. Print the most important
parts of a saying or the names on a
family tree larger, for example.
And write the names of the person
you’re quoting or dates in smaller
print.
Once you’ve mastered this
century-old craft, you’ll enjoy
always adding your distinctive
touch to paper.
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