Lesson 3 | Your handwriting is your style

I’m asked again and again in class: But how do I bring my style? What is my style anyway? Or even Sketch&Draw does not allow me to have my own style?

These are all unnecessary worries, why, I explain here.

The style has something to do with the anatomy of the hand.

Then there is also some temperament: so

Style = anatomy and temperament

You cannot adopt any style you want, in the same way, that you cannot adopt the temperament of another person.

Let’s take a closer look at this: almost everyone can recognize a van Gogh, but why?

The style has something to do with the radii of our hand and finger joints, and thus with our anatomy. It’s about the proportions of the length of the bones and the radii of the joints, that is, about this length and this radius and how the two interact. And also with the whole hand up to the arm.

You can minimize them by not placing the ball of your hand on the paper. Instead, you should guide the stroke in a floating position. Then the radii don’t play individually, which by the way is very unattractive – because it is purely motorized. It is not nice to see such radii.

If you want to work a little less scrawly, it often helps to hold the pen a little further back to get a nice sketched line.

This is, by the way, one reason why many artists stand during the work, because then all parts of the anatomy play together, which finally leads to a more complex line.

Back, there is a very simple exercise that brings us closer to our style. This is our own handwriting.

That is the handwriting of Rembrandt. This is a drawing by Rembrandt. You can see the similarity in the line between the writing and the drawing line.

So let’s write one or two letters without characters, just strokes.

The first letter is a meticulous love letter, the second one is an armoured letter in which we complain about something.

The letter has no words, only lines and a mise en page, so a balanced design on the page.

This is my dear letter

.
.
.

This is my harnessed letter.

.
.
.

We notice the line is controlled. Yes, why? Because we have practised these strokes since the first day of school.

I see, why a letter you want to know? Yes, that’s easy. We are also practising the sense of form for the surface.

Try it out, sketch two letters.