<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A good starting point
Review: After many years, I restarted calligraphy again with this book. It is straight forward and easy to use. If you are thinking of learning calligraphy on your own, this is one of the books to have. It gives you practical guidance, not just alphabets.
Rating:
Summary: A good starting point
Review: After many years, I restarted calligraphy again with this book. It is straight forward and easy to use. If you are thinking of learning calligraphy on your own, this is one of the books to have. It gives you practical guidance, not just alphabets.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book for learning
Review: I am learning calligraphy and have looked at a number of books on the subject. This book is, for most purposes, excellent. She gives you so much more than alphabets: key exercises to do before you start the alphabets, typical beginner's problems (most of which I have experienced!), practice pages you can reproduce. Her sections on swashes and "accessorizing" Gothic capitals are also wonderful - what had always seemed highly mysterious to me turns out to be a matter of combining building blocks, creativity, and - who would have thought - a lot of fun.The only small drawback, if it is one, is that the book doesn't contain a lot that is good to know about techniques of setting up a drawing table, selling, etc. For that (as well as an excellent chapter on type design by Hermann Zapf himself), the book "Calligraphy and Illumination" provides more than you ever wanted to know. I don't think that book replaces this one, however - I find Margaret's explanations well worth the small amount this book costs. She'll even autograph it for you (see her web site for details). This is a wonderful book that every calligraphy student should have.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good Book
Review: I simply LOVE this book: it's fun and easy and improves your lettering and calligraphy in an easy way. I practice calligraphy since 10 years, but still I found in this book some "shortcut" to make my works more accurate.
Great space for practicing, lots of alphabets shown, a nice way to introduce arguments ... a must have book for all calligraphers.
Rating:
Summary: A classic...
Review: This is the book I use as a text for beginning calligraphy students at the local community college. All the text is handlettered and there are many examples of how to use calligraphy in everyday life. I've used Margaret Shepherd's books since the '70's, and this is the best one she's done for beginning to intermediate students. It is both instructive and inspiring.
Rating: 
Summary: Not good
Review: This isn't a good book. There are much better ones on the market. To have a book printed in calligraphic hand seems to be
interesting, but it actually turns out to be methodologically not so. Much better is to have the book in normal print and the
examples in calligraphic hand. There is no contrast to help the
learner see differences. Moreover, this author may be a good
doer but to put the message across is quite a different thing:
her explanations aren't that clear.
One more point: this author needs to be urgently introduced to
copperplate hand. She does not mention it at all. As an author teaching beginning calligraphy it's
your moral obligation to show the hands. After all, copperplate
isn't one example of a hand; it1s a hand in itself.
<< 1 >>
| 
