[Scriptoris] Nib question

[Elaine]

Three cheers for Therasia! Great info and very practical.

She can't write like that without having been through the required  
hoops to get to that level! My greatest respect.

HL Lete Bithespring
............................................

On Dec 16, 2008, at 6:39 PM, Cat Clark wrote:

>
>> I'm working on a baronial scroll and was wondering what size nib  
>> you like
>> using. It's going to be on a 8x10.
>> Thanks
>> Celestria
>
> Well, there's the short answer and there's the detailed answer...
>
> The short answer first:
>
> Start on a practice piece - not on the paper for the final  
> product.  First, for 8x10, give yourself an inch of white space all  
> the way around (I'm assuming the paper size is 8x10 - disregard  
> this is that's your working space with a margin already  
> subtracted). That gives you a line-of-text length of 6 inches.  I'd  
> say start with a c-3 or equivalent for a quaddratus/"blackletter"  
> or a bastarde formata and a c-4 or equivalent for a secretary hand  
> (gothic or bastarda), a spanish insula or a italian rotunda.   
> Callig the whole text on the practice piece to see how much room  
> you use up.  Then budget that much room for the text on the paper  
> for the final product and then fit your art/cadel/seal/signature  
> spaces around the text block as appropriate.  Caveat: If you have a  
> lot of text, consider going one nib size smaller to start off.
>
> Now the long answer (also know as the over-engineered approach).   
> This is an interesting question actually.  My personal experience  
> is that there are different approaches to picking nib size.
> I. Writ design by building up.
>
> The first approach is to start off not by finished scroll size but  
> by letter size.  This approach builds up instead of deconstructing  
> down and is my personal preference to scroll design.  This probably  
> won't be a good approach if you already have a paper size  
> constraint ahead of time (for reasons that will soon be obvious) so  
> I will be brief.  You start by saying: "I want the letters to be  
> this big..."  For the sake of an example, let's say that you want  
> letters where the body of the letter (e.g. the round bit of a "b"  
> or all of an "e" or "c") is 1/4 inch tall.  I start with that size  
> and then I pick what hand I'm going to use.  Let's pick anglo- 
> norman secretary hand (also known as early gothic charter hand in  
> some paleography books; it's the chancellory version of "early  
> gothic" in Drogin).  In that hand, the body of the letter is four  
> nib-widths tall.  So then I take out my nibs and find the one that  
> is closest to [(four nib-widths tall) = 1/4 inch] (it will probably  
> be C-4 or medium if  you're using a Braun nib or "italic" if your  
> have some Osmiroid or Panache nibs).  Now that I know how tall the  
> body of the letters will be, that will enable me to appropriately  
> size the ascenders and descenders of the rest of the ductus to fit  
> the hand I picked - and that will tell me how much room I need per  
> line of text (don't forget to leave some white space above the  
> ascenders on each line).  Then I figure out how many lines of text  
> I need, which multiplied by the room needed per line of text tells  
> me how much room to budget for all the text.  Throw in what ever  
> room you need for signatures, seals, illumination and/or cadels,  
> add at least an inch white space all the way around and that gives  
> you how much paper/vellum/whatever you need for the whole work.
>
> There's a variant of the above that starts with the nib size  
> instead.  Pick the nib. Then pick the hand.  The bodies of the  
> letters in most medieval hands are usually 4 to 6 nib-widths high.   
> Picking the nib therefore controls the size of the letters and the  
> size of the letters controls the line spacing and ultimately the  
> amount of room those lines will take up on the scroll.  I mention  
> this because most calligraphers have a natural letter size their  
> own hands perfer - and that natural letter size preference has  
> everything to do with how they write normally in their everyday  
> lives.  This a topic of paleography that I can go on and on about  
> so I'll stop here while I'm ahead.  I'll only say that you probably  
> already have a preferred letter size that your writing hand prefers  
> and you can make your life easier as a calligrapher by figuring out  
> what that is.  Once you do that, then you'll have an idea what sort  
> of nib size matches your naturally preferred writing style.  Did  
> you notice that Carletta said she liked to use a c-3 on 8.5 by 11  
> scrolls?  I read that and immediately thought "too big! Use a C-4 -  
> maybe even a C-5!"  So there you have it: I like to write small...   
> Carletta probably likes to write bigger than I do.
>
> II - Writ design by blocking down.
> You have a certain piece of paper/vellum/lochac pergammon/whatever  
> and you need to fit a certain amount of text and illumination onto  
> it.  First, mark off the white space that needs to go all the way  
> around.  I use an inch but if you're cramped for space, a half inch  
> will do.  Any good framer worth their wage can frame given a half- 
> inch "gutter" of white space.  Now block out space for signatures,  
> seals, illumination and/cadels, etc., depending on how many of  
> those non-text elements you need (every kingdom/principality/barony/ 
> other-group has different requirements).  What's leftover is your  
> space for the text.  Now we're at the not-so-easy part.  You have a  
> text and you have to fit it into the space.  Here's the painful  
> part: you have to get the text into the space.  You know how long  
> each line is going to be but you don't know how many lines yet  
> because you don't know the letter size yet.  There is no easy way  
> around this other than actually writing the text out.  (With short  
> texts you can usually just wing it but with long texts it can be  
> fatal not to write it out on a practice piece first)
>
> At this point I ask myself what hand do I want to use.  Then I take  
> out my nibs, make a guess at which one will work, and write out the  
> first two or three sentences of the text in that hand.  That will  
> give me an idea of how many letters per line I will use up using  
> that hand.  Once I know how much text I can fit on a line, then I  
> can estimate the total numbers of lines the entire text will take  
> since I can count up the total number of letters in the text and do  
> the math accordingly.  Once you do that, then you see if you can  
> fit the number of lines you need into the space allocated for the  
> text.  If you can, great!  If you can't and you need more room,  
> then you have some choices to make: 1) decrease the room for the  
> signatures and art to increase the room for the text; 2) pick a  
> hand that isn't as tall in the ascender/descender department so you  
> can fit more lines of text into the space allotted; 3) decrease the  
> nib size.  With choices 2 and 3, you have to repeat the "write the  
> text out" step and recalculate the total number of lines of text,  
> etc etc...
>
> Regardless of approach, I almost always calligraph out the entire  
> text on a practice piece before moving on to the paper/vellum/ 
> whiteboard/chunk-of-rock/whatever that I have set aside for the  
> final piece.  For short texts on paper I may wing it, but for long  
> texts and for anything on vellum, I will always do practice pieces  
> for the calligraphy.  For any hand other than anglo-norman  
> secretary hand or early gothic, I personally need to write out the  
> whole text to make sure I can make the text fill out the whole line  
> on every line without having to break a word in two (and yes,  
> ligatures are my best friends!)
>
> That was probably way more information than you were looking for...
> ;-)
>
> ttfn
> Therasia, old used-up scribe
>
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