Calligraphy Assignments

Alphabet Sentences, with all 26 letters in every sentence, help a calligrapher practice an alphabet in context. A Plethora of Pangrams. Even a Daily Pangram website (stopped after 2000 of them). Have even more fun with the Quick Brown Fox calligraphy project here.

Calligraphy Guidelines for all projects in general.

Calligraphy Unit Projects -- Eight suggested assignments using calligraphy. Individual assignments and cheklists below.

• Bookmark
• Quote Poster
• Passage from a Novel
• Passage from a Short Story
• Poem
• Personal Book of Quotes

Examples

Quotes from Invisible Man illustrated by my students.

Calligraphy & Lettering Art Galleries includes links to many galleries of truly artistic illustrations using calligraphy. The Alphabet Forest is artwork created just from the letters of the alphabet.

Layouts for Our Ornery Alphabet is a blog on calligraphy, reflective and beautiful.

Just Google Calligraphy Quotes, and enjoy!

Brush Calligraphy offers a very speific style, useful in journaling.

Printable Alphabets
& Guide Sheets

Speedball provides nine free alphabet guide sheets.

A simple guidesheet.

IAMPETH (International Organization) has a wonderful website, with lessons and guidesheets.

Calligraphy Skills -- Provides worksheets, alphabets to copy, illsutrations.

Dancing Pen Calligraphy has a gallery of letter styles, a Calligrapher’s Alphabet, a Calligraphy Ideas Journal, and more.

Bill’s Space generously offers free printable guidesheets and alphabets.

Learn Calligraphy has good beginning instruction.

Calligraphy Paper Generator -- An AP that lets you generate exactly the guidesheet you need for a project.

Sample Calligraphy Styles is a basic reference from the Calligraphy for Dummies book.

Calligraphy Fonts -- Includes links to many sites, with several fonts for digital projects.

The Groom Club’s Beginner’s Guide to Calligraphygives a history and overview, references different cultural styles for calligraphy, and even guides the learner to develop their own unique style. (Thanks to Melissa for suggesting this source.)

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech at Stanford explains how Calligraphy at Reed College infuenced Apple typography and his view of life.

Calligraphy at Reed College -- Notable quotes about the program that inspired Steve Jobs to learn calligraphy and design the Apple font.

Useful Websites

The Postman’s Knock is a personal blog giving sage advice on materials and techniques.

Layouts for Our Ornery Alphabet is a blog on calligraphy, reflective and beautiful.

Learn Calligraphy includes lessons and worksheets.

Katharine Scarfe Beckett’s Calligraphy Skills has much to offer, and my favorite is “What Is Calligraphy?” -- a broader and deeper subject than one might think.

A Guide to Calligraphy for Weddings, Invitations, and More offers links to the history of calligraphy, several intriguing projects, free calligraphic fonts, and tips for improving your style.

Cursive?

“The Case for Cursive” discusses the consequences when students no longer learn cursive handwriting.

“How and Why to Improve Your Cursive Penmanship”

Cursive handwriting practice at Education.com offers many printable resources.

Alternative Penmanship Assignments for those unwilling or uninterested in learning calligraphy.

Quotations about Calligraphy

“Just as writing can become calligraphy when it’s creatively, skillfully, and consciously performed, so can all other activities become art. In this case, we are reflecting upon life itself as an artistic statement—the art of living.” ― H.E. Davey, Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation

“Addison spoke in calligraphy while everyone else talked in scribbles.” ― Shawn Martin, Shadowflesh

“The making of letters in every form is for me the purest and the greatest pleasure, and at many stages of my life it was to me what a song is to the singer, a picture to the painter, a shout to the elated, or a sign to the oppressed. It was and is for me the most happy and perfect expression of my life.” ― Rudolph Koch

“Calligraphy may well be simply an artistic version of another form, that is the ideograms which make up the poem, but then not only does it reflect the character and temperament of the artist but . . . also betrays his heart rate, his breathing.”
― Sijie Dai, Once on a Moonless Night

“The making of letters in every form is for me the purest and the greatest pleasure, and at many stages of my life it was to me what a song is to the singer, a picture to the painter, a shout to the elated, or a sign to the oppressed. It was and is for me the most happy and perfect expression of my life.” ― Rudolph Koch

“Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant more time the two would be in contact for any given point, allowing the fiber of the paper to pull, through capillary action, more ink from the pen, more ink, which meant more evenness of ink, a thicker, more even line, a line with character, with solidity. The pad, all those ninety-nine sheets underneath him, the hundred, the even number, ten to the second power, the exponent, the clean block of planes, the space-time, really, represented by that pad, all of the possible drawings, graphs, curves, relationships, all of the answers, questions, mysteries, all of the problems solvable in that space, in bthose sheets, in those squares.”
― Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

“Just above our terror, the stars painted this story in perfect silver calligraphy. And our souls, too often abused by ignorance, covered our eyes with mercy.” ― Aberjhani, I Made My Boy Out of Poetry

“Calligraphy is a kind of music not for the ears, but for the eyes.” ― V. Lazursky