A Celebration of Letters
Hosted by your friendly neighborhood calligrafriend…
Tamer
@BlackletterFoundry
What is This Challenge?
Thanks to some serendipitous calendar magic, we have fifty-two weeks in a year (I probably could’ve look up how this happened, but we’re here for calligraphy fun and not calendarology 😉).
What if we wanted to have a weekly creative event (sometimes daily challenges can be a lot to keep up with), with an alphabetic theme?
With twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and after some intense calculations dividing 52 by 26, this works out to exactly two weeks for every single letter of the alphabet – conveniently allowing one week for the lowercase letters and one week for the uppercase versions.
Pretty nifty, right?
Your Mission
Here’s how this is gonna work:
- 1 Letter Per Week – Every week, create some Alphabetastic art based on a single letter of the alphabet. Keep it simple or craft an elaborately intricate masterpiece each week – it’s totally up to you. Here’s the schedule:
Part I – Lowercase (Minuscule) Letters
Part II – Uppercase (Majuscule) Letters
- Extra Credit – write a favorite word (or words) that start with the letter of the week – fun, silly, and even invented words are welcome (possibly even encouraged!)
- Share Your Alphabetastic Work – here are a couple of ways to do this
- Social Media: Tag @BlackletterFoundry (that’s me!) and use the hashtags #Alphabetastic or #Alphabetastic23 on social media OR…
- SHARE HERE! You can share your work right here, on this page (seriously – no social media needed)
New to Calligraphy?
No Problem! You don’t need any experience to participate – I encourage everyone and anyone to join.
Invite your friends, siblings, parents, kids, grandparents, grandkids… Everyone’s welcome, and if you have absolutely no idea where to start, here are two FREE resources to help.
- The FREE Blackletter Treasure Trove – Get a massive bundle of resources and tools for learning blackletter/gothic calligraphy (and more!)
- FREE Blackletter Tutorial – Using the Ultimate Blackletter Guidesheets from the Treasure Trove, follow along with this free tutorial where I walk you through writing a complete alphabet
- Supplies –Â Need a hand figuring out what supplies you might need? There’s an essentials guide included in the Treasure Trove you get by joining my newsletter community above, but I’ve also compiled a list of my favorite tools here
More Resources
For more comprehensive resources, I have lots of instructional products and toolkits available in my shop
Even More Resources
If you’re interested in learning other styles of calligraphy, check out the awesome resources from some of my fantastic calligrafriends like the Loveleigh Loops,  PAScribe, and The Happy Ever Crafter
Why Should I Join?
There are a bunch of reasons that you should participate – as a start here are five:
- It’s easy – the goal is literally to write one letter and maybe a word every week. That’s totally manageable, right? (Never mind my diabolical master plan where the act of consistently sitting to write even one letter and word might encourage even more practice and improvement… shhh… it’s a secret. Oh, wait – actually, it’s the next reason 😉)
- Consistency – what’s the absolute best way to improve your calligraskills? Consistency. Participating will help you build that habit of practicing and playing with your calligra-art regularly.
- Focus – if consistency isn’t your biggest hurdle, perhaps inspiration is. This challenge will give you a specific subject to work on.
- It’s fun! – I’m not suggesting highly specific drills here because I really want you to have fun (I mean, it’s called Alphabetastic, after all, so it’s intended to be light-hearted…). Let those creative juices flow!
- Community – one of the few rules of this challenge is to be kind, encouraging, and supportive of your fellow artists. I want this to be an event that anyone can participate in and for it to be a place of positivity and inspiration.
Ok, I keep thinking of more reasons, so here are two more:
- It’s Flexible – This isn’t just a Blackletter challenge, create any kind of lettering art you want.
- Accomplishment – you know that awesome feeling of accomplishment that happens when you follow through and achieve a goal? For a moment, time travel with me to December 31, 2023, and imagine how awesome it will feel to have participated in and even completed a year-long challenge!? It’s a pretty fantastic (one might say, Alphabetastic) feeling!
FAQ
Any other restrictions or rules?
Alphabetastic is open to everyone, whether you’re a beginner or a master. I encourage calligrafriends of all ages and skill levels to join the fun, and, as such, this is a G-Rated challenge. Please keep this fun, friendly, and supportive, and do not submit any entries with profanity, negative/hateful language, adult content, etc.
I can’t control what pops up on social media, but the community board here is moderated (I appreciate your patience as there will be a delay between your upload and when the post is live on the board)
Why isn't my uploaded image showing up on the community board?
The content on the community board is moderated to make sure nothing inappropriate is added, so I appreciate your patience with any delays in approving the new uploads.
I missed previous weeks - can I stil participate?
Absolutely! Start the challenge at any time. You can catch up on previous posts if you want, or jump in at any time.
I've never tried calligraphy - how can I learn?
I’ve provided some completely FREE resources here and at the bottom of this page that you can use to start learning today!
Share Your Work Here
Remember the whole “It’s Easy” bit from above? Well that doesn’t just apply to the challenge itself.
You don’t have to be on social media to participate and share your weekly images – you can upload them directly into the gallery box below, via full gallery site, or even using the QR code at the bottom of this section.*
*Note: The content on the community board is moderated to make sure nothing inappropriate is added, so I appreciate your patience with any delays in approving new uploads.
