Italic Exemplars (August 2010)

It’s been almost a year since I last posted.  How time flies!

I’ve been meaning to post these for the longest time: two Italic alphabets, one showing the recommended order of strokes and another, cleaner one showing some letter variations, and a guide sheet for writing on.  The alphabets are hardly perfect, but I trust they are clear enough.

I usually give these as handouts when doing calligraphy workshops: one copy each of the two alphabets, and four copies of the guide sheet.  And I bring a pile of guide sheets just in case people run out of them.

Vive et Vivere (October 2010)

I was recently asked to write this for someone who wanted to put it up in her office cubicle. Apparently in Latin it means ‘live and let live’, but google this and you’ll find different formulations, including vive et sine vivere.  I know hardly any Latin, not having had the privilege of a Classical education, but I do know that word order is extremely free in the language because verbs and nouns are highly inflected for case and agreement, among other things.  Presumably, what I’ve written literally means ‘live and to live without’, but this is just a guess.  Written with a Kuretake marker.