Beginner’s Guide to Blackletter Kuligraphy

You want to learn Blackletter Kuligraphy but you don’t know how to start?

Don’t worry this tutorial will help you.

I’ll show you how to hold the pens, tell you about the basics and tell you what you have to pay attention to.

You don’t need special pencils or tools for Blackletter (Gothic) Calligraphy.

Two ballpoint pens or two standard pencils are enough.

If you are unsure which calligraphy style you want to learn, you should check out this page first – Learn Kuligraphy – Different styles

The Basics

People usually use a special fountain pen nibs to write Blackletter scripts. There also special “Parallel Pens” which are special made for this kind of lettering.

But there is no need for those tools!

Especially if you are a beginner you should use just normal pens.

Everyone has ballpoint pens lying around in the house, so just grab two and start right away.

In my opinion, it’s also a lot easier to write Blackletter script with the technique of two connected pens.

You don’t have to pay attention in which direction you move the two connected pens when you write like you have to when you write with a pointed pen or a parallel pen.

If you still want to try such a pen, you can get them on amazon. Here: Parallel Pen 6 mm*

Let’s start…

What you will need

You will need two ballpoint pens and one or two elastic bands.

You can also use two standard pencils instead the ballpoint pens if you don’t have any.

1. Prepare your pens

Grab the two ballpoint pens and secure them together with two elastic bands like in the picture below.

Now your two ballpoint pens should look like this.

Make sure the two pen tips have the same level.

2. The Blackletter script

There many styles of Blackletter script out there.

I’ll show you two of the most common and in my opinion easiest scripts.

I recommend you to pick one and start to practice with just this script.

After you get comfortable with it, you can start to practice the next one and so on.

3. Download the Worksheets

I created a couple of practice sheets for you which you can download here: Kuligraphy worksheets

4. Start practicing

After you download the sheets you can start learning Blackletter Kuligraphy.

Here are some tips which should help you to have a good start.

How to hold the pens?

Hold the pens in a 45° angle and try to hold them like this while you write.

The movements

You should always move your whole arm instead of moving your wrist.

That’s how you will get more straight and neat lines.

Where to Go From Here

After you get better and better with the Blackletter script you could check out the other script styles here on the page.

And if it does not work from the beginning on, don’t worry, keep practicing and be patient.

Everything comes with time.

Start now and learn Kuligraphy!

Didi “Let’s learn Blackletter Kuligraphy” Peters