I’ve been terrified of blackletter for many years. I had Tamer Ghoneim of Blackletter Foundry on my show, and he walked us through a basics lesson on blackletter.
This one is SO good.
First Things First… Meet Tamer.
Tamer Ghoneim is a professional calligrapher from Houston, Texas (originally from Canada though ??). He’s been focusing on blackletter for about five years now – he’s amazing at it! You can find him on Instagram at @BlackletterFoundry (and other social media too).
When I told Tamer I was super intimidated by blackletter, he assured me that although it looks really scary, it can be easy and really approachable. He loves to encourage people to try it out, so he broke it down into super manageable steps for us.
When I started to write this post, I wanted to break it all down for you. However, I just couldn’t do Tamer’s lesson justice. I highly recommend you hop on over to YouTube and check it out in realtime!
Supplies Used
In this tutorial you’ll learn:
- What supplies to use
- What pens to use for beginners
- How to properly prep your pens
- Three of the basic strokes of blacketter (you can construct almost an entire alphabet using these three strokes!)
- Stroke One: A broad vertical line moving downward
- Stroke Two: A thin line parallel to the nib
- Stroke Three: A broad diagonal line
- Why consistent angles are so important (and the best angles to use)
- How to use Tamer’s (super helpful and FREE) guidelines
- How to write happy – Tamer breaks down each letter completely for us!
- How to space your letters
- How to add visual elements to make the letters a bit more interesting
- And more!
And that’s a wrap!
I was seriously avoiding blackletter for no reason! It’s so approachable. Just gotta break it down into basic strokes…. Hmmm, that sounds familiar. ?
Wanna connect with Tamer?
You can find him on Instagram at @BlackletterFoundry and a ton of his freebies at blackletterfreebies.com!
And now it’s time to go buy a Pilot Parallel Pen… ?
Ink dad joke for you…
I accidentally drank a bottle of invisible ink…
Now I’m in the hospital waiting to be seen.
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