Gothic Calligraphy with Instructor Dan Nelson: Letter "U"

So I was about to say that the letter U has some unique properties about it, and I realized, wait a minute, I think I said that for both of the last two letters. So then I went back and counted, and sure enough, essentially, the last eight letters of the alphabet, probably in almost every font, but certainly in Gothic, the last eight letters break little rules here and there. They're all unusual. Funny how that happens. And the A, of course, is one of the most unusual. So the first letter in the last eight, the ones in between hover that many leaves, kind of follow a bunch of rules, but a lot of the rules are broken now for these last eight letters. So the letter U starts out, yay, very much like many others. Little S curve at the top. Goes up, meets the baseline, stop there. Now, instead of going straight down, as we would with about a dozen of the other letters or more, we're gonna do a curve very much like the letter O. I may be doing it intuitively condensed compared to the letter O, because I think that I am, and I think that's okay. The next stroke, we have our choice. We have to do one of two things, and I think we'll go this way. Angle here, then a vertical, and angle to meet the inside of that arc. And then you notice I did quite a long angle there because we need room up here for a vertical. Likewise, elongated diamond. Got it? And then another vertical, and if we're lucky, this vertical will intersect, yay, we did it, will intersect that arc right there. And then we do a long diamond starting from that intersection down here and a little hook on it. We're almost done then. Then we come in here with a vertical stroke, our two barbs in here, and our two ladder marks right there, and that's the letter U. Got it? It's a lot of fun. Let's do it again. S curve at the top. It's not a particularly difficult letter, and it's nice to do something a little bit different. Yeah, see, this is not a perfect arc. Let me draw, if this were the letter O, that would be my arc, right? And it is not quite that. It's scrunched. It's a little bit more steep at the top and a little bit tighter curve at the bottom. Got it? Then back to the top. Angle, straight down, angle. Back to the top, elongated diamond, a little bit of barb on it, and then vertical straight there, and then an elongated diamond or a foot with a toe on. Then we squeeze our vertical stroke right in here. That's why we have to make sure this line is long enough because we need daylight in here long enough to get this vertical stroke in here, and we have to make sure we have enough daylight here to get our two hooks in. Got it? So there's a lot of information goes on inside the letter U just as it does a couple of other letters and our two ladder marks, and we're done. And I think this one's a little wide. That one's a more appropriate U shape. Let's do it now with a pen. I'm using a Speedball C1 nib, and so my guidelines for this width are about eight nibs high. S-curve, don't get in a hurry. Nice arc, flattened out a little bit from the arc that we would use in an O. Back up to the top, angle, vertical, angle, elongated diamond here, a little barb on it, and then vertical straight down and a foot with a toe. My vertical stroke in here, my two hooks, and my two ladder marks. Let's do that again. I think I've got enough ink in my pen to do one more letter. S-curve, nice bulbous shape curve there. Angle, vertical, angle, elongated diamond with a hook on it, vertical, and again, elongated diamond or foot with a hook or toe on it, and then my vertical and two hooks. Got it? Two ladder marks, and we're done with a capital U. Now let's do the lowercase u. It's pretty simple compared to what we just did. Diamond, straight, elongated diamond. Angle, diamond, straight, elongated diamond, and a barb on it. Yay, nice and simple. Got it? Let's do it again. Diamond shape, vertical, elongated diamond, angle, diamond shape, vertical, diamond shape with a little barb on it. That's all there is to it. That's gotta be one of the easiest letters in the Gothic alphabet in the lowercase. Let's do it with a pen. Diamond, vertical, elongated diamond, angle, diamond, vertical, elongated diamond, and a little barb there. Very good. Am I talking about me or you? I'm talking about you watching me. Very good. Let's keep on. We're on a roll.