Eleanor Winters - The Foundational Hand - Historical Hands - Aug 20 & 27 (Part 1)

Historical Hands 

In keeping with our commitment to calligraphy education, the Gentle Penman is pleased to announce a new series of short workshops, which will serve as an introduction to a selection of styles of traditional calligraphy over the past 2000 years.

The workshops will focus on broad-edged pen hands (scripts) with an emphasis on the basics: pen angle, letter proportions and "family groups" in order that students can build on these fundamentals to develop an understanding of our craft.  These workshops will be relatively short, two 2-hour sessions for each hand, emphasizing basic skills rather than design and layout. Our purpose is to create a foundation for further study.

With the exception of the first workshop, The Foundational Hand, we will offer these workshops in historical sequence.  The next workshop will be Roman Capitals (to be scheduled for this autumn); subsequent workshops will include Uncial, Carolingian, Gothic, etc.  Students are welcome to sign up for individual workshops or take advantage of the full series of Historical Hands.

The Foundational Hand

The Foundational Hand is a style of writing associated with Edward Johnston, one of the fathers of contemporaty calligraphy.  As a calligrapher and teacher, Johnston considered Foundational to be a "beginner script," suitable for learning to use the broad-edged pen.  As such, we have chosen it for the first hand in our new series:  Historical Scripts.  In a sense it is out of sequence -- the aim being to study calligraphy as it evolved since the Roman era and developed over 2000 years.  But since Foundational will give students a wonderful basis for all the scripts to follow, we are starting our program with this 20th century style of calligraphy.

Foundational is much more than simply a beginner script; it is elegant, versatile, and very legible.  We will examine the basic strokes and minuscule letters, and how the contrast between vertical and rounded shapes makes this script both dynamic and visually accessible, both in large format calligraphy and in small writing.

The aim of this brief introduction to Foundational is to offer students a jumping off point for studying and practicing this script, by concentrating on the basics, learning to create consistent forms and developing an understanding of the concept of positive and negative space.

We would like to invite beginners to take advantage of a short workshop, Introduction to the Broad-Edged pen, which will be offered two days prior to the Foundational workshop, in order to learn about tools and materials and prepare you for the basic pen skills you will need for this series of broad-edged pen Historical Hands.

The Foundational Hand - Historical Hands (Part 1)
Eleanor Winters, Hosted By The Gentle Penman

Live (Also recorded for later viewing)

August 20 & 27, 2023 (Sunday)

21:00 pm – 23:00 pm (Hong Kong Time)

Class Cost : HK $ 740.00 or USD 95.00

Registration Link : https://www.thegentlepenman.com/thefoundational-hand-historical-hands

All Skills Levels

Supply List:

• Brause 3 mm nib or equivalent (N02) (Left-handed students please use left-handed nibs [N06])

• Penholder (H133, H134, H129)

• Non-waterproof ink, such as Higgins Eternal, or Moon Palace (I08, I70)

• Smooth practice paper, such as Canson Pro-Layout Marker Paper (P32, P25)

• Water container and cloth or paper towels

• Pencil (PL21, PL38), eraser (E09, E13), pencil sharpener (PL70, PL34)