Gothic Calligraphy with Instructor Dan Nelson: Letter “L”

So let's tackle the letter L. You can use your double pencil tool. This letter starts the way so many do with a little S curve way up here at the top, up to the top of the line, down, and then back up again. Lift up your pen. The next stroke is vertical, straight down, and the challenge is to make it straight and vertical, down to about one third of the way from the bottom, and then curve, hook over to the left. Now the next stroke is very much like we did with the letter E. If you're doing your letters in alphabetical order, starting here, go up and then down, and if with a pencil, I can push it uphill quite easily, and some pens will allow you to do that, but many times you'll need to do that in two separate strokes. Got it? Then back to the top again. My second stroke is about half a pen nib width away from the first one. In other words, the space in there is narrower than the width of your pen. Got it? And then what I call a flag up here at the top, a medium flag, not small like the J and the I had a very small hook flag up here at the top. The L can be medium size. Then we put our pencil or pen, our pencil tool in this case, in the number one position, which is vertical, and come straight down, and then holding it still in the number one position, we do our two hooks here. Now you'll notice again that I tend to push my pencil when I'm doing the hooks, but when I use a pen, I'm going to pull. Let me do that again. Let me move my page. You see my guidelines there. You can make a guideline sheet just like this for your pencil practice. S-curve, pick up, straight down, one third of the way from the bottom, curve to the left. Then this long S-curve, very long. Let's do it this way, pulling that second curve. Second vertical, very close to the first, coming down, and I like it to intersect with that bottom curve. Then this flag, medium size flag at the top, vertical stroke, two hooks, still holding my pen in the vertical position, and then holding my pen in the number five position for the little ladder marks. Good enough. Let's do it with a pen. I'm using a Speedball C1. I have a piece of paper here where I want to try to make sure that my pen is releasing just the right amount of ink, not too much. S-curve, vertical, about one third of the way down, hook to the left. Then this long curve, again, making sure that the ends of these curves line up with each other. Then the second vertical, all the way down to connect with that curve, flag, vertical stroke, my two hooks, and my two ladder marks. I think that's simple enough. You probably got that. Let's go ahead and proceed to the lowercase L, which is quite predictable. Here's my lowercase guidelines right there, but of course, an L has an ascender. If that's my X height, about half again as much, then that would be my ascender height. Got it? The L has a distinct, not quite distinctive, but distinct elongated diamond at the top with a significant hook or what I've called sometimes a hangnail serif on it. Straight down and either a simple diamond at the bottom or an elongated diamond if you prefer, again, with a little hook there. You see that? Let me do that again. There's my top of my ascender line. Very simple letter, of course. There we go. Let me do it with a pen now, and you can do it right along with me. Here are my guidelines for the pen. Again, that's the X height, so the L would be half again as tall, and I can eyeball that just fine. I don't have to draw a line. Very close to the bottom, I stop so that I have room for this diamond shape at the bottom with a little hook on it. Let me do one more time. Diamond and that little serif. There you go. That's the letter L. Let's keep going.