Gothic Calligraphy with Instructor Dan Nelson: Letter “P”

Let's do the letter P. The letter P starts out very much like most of the other letters, an S curve here at the top, and then it does something unusual. Our next stroke, you know, if it's a sort of typical letter, we would stop about one third away from the bottom and hook to the left, right? Well, the letter P actually has a capital D sender. Now, there must be some name somewhere for lowercase letters have D senders, but there are four capitals that have D senders in the Gothic script, and they are H, P, Q, and Y. So, those four letters, you don't have to memorize that. It's just interesting that four of them go below the baseline. So, we keep going down here, and then very much the way we did on the letter J, we do a hook. Now, just between you and me, the letter J, the J hook came up here and went all the way around like this. I don't think we want to do that for the letter P. That's way too much, but it does begin to come up this way, and I think it's the only letter that does that. I haven't gone back and made sure that that's correct, but I think it's the only one that hooks back that way and stops there. Now, the second stroke is very much like the second stroke in the letter J. It comes down and basically runs parallel to the first stroke all the way to the bottom so that we just taper out, and it doesn't start going back up the other way. You understand? It just stops right there where it's skinny. So, that's the top of the first post of our letter P. Now, back up to the top, we're going to do essentially a diamond shape. There's an elongated diamond, a vertical. Now, we stop before we get to the baseline, come down at an angle, and then this stroke comes in at an angle. So, we have a lot to fit in right down here. Angle, angle, vertical. Okay? So, make sure you have enough space in here. That's why this has to be long enough so we have room for all this at the bottom. Angle, angle, vertical. Got it? And then we do a vertical stroke, and this vertical stroke goes all the way through the baseline. This is the only one of these that does this, I believe, all the way even with this, and then we put our diamond actually below the baseline, and then our hooks go up here. Now, let me point out that these hooks in this, normally I say, I would say that our hooks fall halfway between the base and the middle, so they should be right here. That is still the case here. We do not want to put our hooks halfway between here and the bottom of the P. If we do, they would be down here, you see, and they wouldn't line up with all the other hooks in the line of alphabet in the Gothic script. So, keep them just like all the other letters, halfway between the base and the top, not halfway down to that. And then the ladder mark, and the ladder marks, and we're all done. Let's do that again. S-curve, long stroke going all the way below the baseline, and then curving up, and I'm going to draw this one the correct way, pulling the pen instead of pushing it, then back here to the top, long diamond, vertical almost to the base, but not quite, stop there, and then do this diamond and this angle. Got it? And we have room here for a vertical and a diamond there, my two hooks, and my two ladder marks. There you go. I hope you're using your pencil as I am. It's a great tool to help you really see the letters and become accustomed to their structure, their bones, their skeleton, so that when you move to a pen, as I'm going to do now, you'll really understand what it is you're aiming for. S-curve, vertical stroke below the baseline, stop there, and draw the rest of the curve this way. Second stroke runs parallel to the first one, stops there. Elongated diamond here, vertical stopping short of the bottom, so that we have room for a diagonal here and a diagonal there. Back to a vertical angle on my pen, below the baseline, and a diamond there. Then my two hooks, one, two, and my two ladder marks. Okay, I think you've got that. You're going to have fun practicing the P. Let's now look at the lowercase p back to my double pencil tool, back to your double pencil tool, right? A little bit of a tiny serif hook up there, diamond, and then as you can imagine, this goes, has a descender, so goes below the baseline, and then simply curves to the left. If you have a header and a baseline, that's what we typically call them in calligraphy, the header is the top of the X height, the baseline is the bottom of the X height, then your ascender is about half again as high, and your descender about half again as low. Got it? You can do that without drawing those, you can just eyeball it, but I want to make sure that you understand why I knew where to pull off that P, okay? Now, the next little diagonal, and the next stroke is very much like we did with the letter O. Instead of doing a simple diamond up here, I want us to do a curve, like an apostrophe tipped over. This is an apostrophe, apostrophe goes that way, so I really have to make it a mirror image of an apostrophe tipped over. This is getting very complicated. And then a vertical stroke. Now, here's where we get to do a stroke that I'm not sure we do anywhere else in the Gothic alphabet, and it is another curve, because of the letter P being unique, it actually curves this way. You see that? I'm not sure that we do that anywhere else. We may, I didn't go back and look to make sure, and then an angle here finishes off the letter P, so that we have this nice little hook out here to the left. Does that make sense? Let me draw that again. Diamond, vertical, curve off there at the end, angle, what I'm calling an apostrophe, and I'll correct myself and say it's a, okay, mirror image of an apostrophe laid over on its back, then a vertical stop about there, and then we do a curve here, this way, and then these two connect like that. Got it? That's letter P. Let's look at it done with a pen, and you'll be knocking out the letter P when friends influence people by your stellar Gothic P. Diamond, vertical stroke, one third below the baseline, with a little curve, extender there, curve, vertical, stop about there, another curve, and a diagonal there. Got it? Let me do that again. My pen's actually releasing just a little bit too much ink. Let me do it again. Angle, curve, stop somewhere above the baseline, then this curve actually starts at the baseline, and finishes at the baseline, and then an angle. You do it right, you get these nice little hooks there, and it looks very much like a Gothic P. This is fun. Let's keep going.