IAMPETH 2024 - 3,500 Years of the Western Alphabet & Calligraphy Meditation Workshop - Paul Antonio

Class Overview - All Skill Levels

3,500 Years of the Western Alphabet
This is an overview of the history of the western alphabet starting with Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Sumerian Cuneiform and their confluence around 1,600 BCE to form Proto-Sinaitic which led to the development of the Phoenician Alphabet which then influenced the Etruscans, Greeks and Romans. From here we start the journey from the Roman alphabets to the present day. The aim of this lecture demonstration is to give you some context for these wonderful scripts we love and how these historical scripts in turn gave rise to the scripts used by the American Penmen in the Golden Age of American Penmanship. This presentation is roughly an hour long. You can either sit back and enjoy the lecture or bring pen and paper to make notes. We will have 30minutes for Q&A.

Calligraphy Meditation Workshop
This is a fuller experience of the opening evening’s presentation. In this workshop we will run through some basic techniques for getting into ‘the zone’ for writing. A little guided meditation and some more pencil writing. From here it is up to you to continue with pencil and paper or switch to pen and ink. You are free to choose any script, even a new one from your conference classes (bring the proper supplies). Please also note, you can only choose to write one script as altering the script will change the practise and cause unnecessary disruption in the calm of writing I will demonstrate how my ‘breathwork with line’ can be applied to writing a script and get you to practice this whilst fielding questions and helping you connect deeper to your writing practice.

CLASS SUPPLIES
• Pad of paper with lines (P54, P80, P38)
• HB or 2B pencils (PL38, PL2020)
• Sharpener (PL13)

OPTIONAL SUPPLIES
• Pen and ink of choice