I received a 2-DVD calligraphy set by Denis Brown called Italic Rhythm. It was beautifully filmed, edited, narrated, and demonstrated by Denis. He also supplied the music and designed all the printed work – the box and printouts.
Italic Rhythm 2-CD Set by Denis Brown (posted with permission from Denis Brown)
In these videos, Denis explains his signature style of expressive writing. That is, instead of carefully forming each stroke, his strokes are freer, with quick flicks, resulting in a looser and more energetic form of writing. Denis is a clear speaker and good teacher.
He employs several clever digital effects to show us what he is talking about, For instance, he tells us that the up-strokes should be the same, then we see an animated upstroke move to be superimposed on another letter’s upstroke. He pulls lots of digital tricks out of his bag to help us understand his concepts in the “normal” letterforms and the more expressionistic ideas.
The second disc has a wealth of techniques you can adapt to your current broad-edge lettering, including layering your lines of text in various ways, and expanding/contracting your letterforms. Bonus material includes several interviews of famous calligraphers like Julian and Sheila Waters, John Stevens, and others. At the end, he films the progress of a large-format work. If you’ve ever wanted to know how an expert calligrapher thinks when he looks at his work critically, this is a terrific set! I’ve come away inspired to get out of my narrow box and try a few new things.
In the videos, we see him work with brush, ruling pen, Automatic Pen, and Brause broad-edged pens.
He includes a complete alphabet of minuscule letters (one video per letter) so you can learn how they are executed. He shows us how to do a few capitals, but prefers to show us examples, and encourages us to take them as ideas on how we can form our own letter designs. “OK, Denis, I’ll take up the challenge!” He also supplies 12 beautifully designed PDFs on the first DVD (in photo above), so you can have some references on hand when away from the computer.
If you are wondering about expanding your calligraphy repertoire and don’t have any “expressive” calligraphy skills, and you like learning from videos, and you are a motivated self-starter, you’ll get a lot out of this set with practice. A lot of practice! I realized after a few days of practice that I would need to give dedicated time to this endeavor to be proficient at it (but that’s normal for any style of calligraphy, huh?) This set does not teach calligraphy to first-timers, but shows techniques that practicing calligraphers can learn from and incorporate into their work.
You may have come across several of his promotional Calligraphy.tv videos on YouTube; if not, you can view them here. You may want to visit his fabulous QuillSkill web site as well. If you want this dual-layer DVD set, you can order direct from him from his site. At only $55, they are a bargain. I ordered from his site and he included the DVD package in an envelope addressed to me in a cool lettering hand!
