Gothic Calligraphy with Instructor Dan Nelson: Letter "T"

The Gothic T is unique in a couple of respects. You can cheer and say yay! It doesn't start out with a little s-curve at the top. We get to do something a little bit different. Okay, it's the only letter, as you probably know from every other font there is, that has a great big crossbar across the top. So instead of a little s-curve at the top, it has a very long s-curve. Basically the same thing. Start below the top line, go up, meet it, come back down, and go back up and meet the top line again. You see where it's meeting that guideline right there and there? Now the next stroke is exactly like the letter O, the letter C, the letter G. It's an arc that starts. I would say don't touch that first curve. Start down beneath it somewhere and draw a nice arc just like the letter O. Got it? And then now touching this first stroke, we come down and do a vertical and an angle to come into the arc there. Then we have a vertical line holding our pen in the number one position with two hooks right in here. There's not much room for them, so make sure you've got enough room for those hooks and two ladder marks. That's the letter T. Let's do it again. So a very elongated letter S. S-curve, not letter S. I've got letter S on the brain, don't I? And then an arc just like that. Angle straight down, angle, vertical stroke, and hook. Now in case I forget to mention this later, I haven't said this yet. Oh, let me do the ladder marks, then I'll start talking. There is a tradition in Gothic where you can make this vertical stroke go below the baseline and add a diamond down here. You probably seen that. There are a lot of Gothic alphabets that will have that on many capitals, and I want to let you know that's an option that you have. I would say that it depends on the context, what's happening around this letter. There are times when that would be a really cool thing to do. It's certainly not necessary, but it's an option that I want you to be aware of. If the very first word in your word were the letter D, the very first word in your document was the letter D, I'll get it yet, the word D, the very first letter is a T, then because it's the first letter, you might want to just fancy it up just a little bit. So let me give you that option. Let's go then to our pen and do the same thing. Here are my guidelines for the pen. A long curve. How long? You're going to figure that out by doing, practicing over and over and over again. An arc, a nice sharp point, and an angle, a vertical, and an angle. My vertical stroke, stopping at the arc most of the time, and my two little hooks. Got it? I'm quite sure that you do. Let's go right on to the lowercase T. Here are my guidelines for the lowercase T. And the lowercase T in my Gothic alphabet has just a slight ascender, a half ascender. And so we don't go all the way. Here's my header. Here's my baseline. We don't go all the way up here. We start right about there for the letter T. It goes up just a little higher than most of the other letters, straight down, and then definitely an elongated diamond here with a little bit of a barb on it. Got it? And if we did the top of the letter like that, then the next stroke, we're going to change the angle of our pen. Because if we do it at a traditional angle, in my opinion, that crossbar is too fat. If you do it at a number five position, that crossbar is too skinny. So you're going to figure out exactly the angle that you want to make your crossbar on the T, just the angle that feels right to you. I think it's about a little bit flatter than what we've been doing for the rest of the letter. We've been holding it at about three and a scrunch. That's the technical term, three and a scrunch, three and a bit. So I would flatten it just a little bit to get this crossbar. Let me do that again. So starting just a little bit above the header line, stop a little short of the baseline. So we have room for this nice, elongated, and I think in the letter T it's a little more important than ever that that be an elongated diamond or a foot. If that's a foot, then that's the toe. Got it? And then holding my pen at about a number four angle so that I get that crossbar just the width that I like. And yes, it goes without saying, if this by any chance were the last letter in your line of type, you could extend that just a little bit for just a little bit more class in your document. Let's do the letter lowercase T with a pen starting just halfway above the baseline, I mean above the header, vertical, elongated diamond or foot with a toe, and then a crossbar. Got it? There we go. I think you've got it. That's the letter T. We are cruising. Way to go.