Learn how to draw copperplate, a historical style coming from the English penmanship tradition.
Copperplate is a historical style coming from the English penmanship tradition. Its transitional contrast, created with a flexible nib pen, is easily recognisable. In this tutorial, we will recreate this style based on a print from Universal Penman using the LTTR/INK Plugin.
Prepare template images
Before working on our font, we need to prepare images of each letter to be used in the Glyphs App. Use a screenshot tool of your choice (for example, on Mac, shortcut cmd+shift+4) to extract the letter. Try keeping the height of the art board the same for each letter. This will make achieving consistency in glyphs easier. After inserting an image into the Glyphs app, scale the image so it fits with the baseline and x-height.
Find angles based on a and b
- Choose a few letters. In my case, it’s a “b” and an “a”
- Create guides (right-click → add guides). Align them with stems.
- This will give you the angle of each stem. Those values are an approximation and can vary from letter to letter. Based on my values, I decided that my font angle will be 54 degrees counting from the baseline. Note the angle for the next step.
- The Italic Angle for fonts is not calculated from the baseline, like the guides angle. It is calculated from the Y-axis. To convert it, take 90 degrees and subtract our 54 degrees.
- Go to Font → Font Info in the Glyphs top menu. In the Masters tab, select “Italic Angle”. Put your italic angle here.
Setup basic stroke
For our project, we will be using a brush module for LTTR/INK. To activate it, find the LTTR/INK Icon on the top toolbar and press it. Then, at the bottom menu, click the LTTR/INK logo to activate the plugin. Select the settings as they appear on this screenshot.
For this tutorial, we will not use the global stroke settings but rather adjust the values based on the sketch for each letter. You will need to grab the brush controls for each point and experiment a little to find the correct settings based on the background image.
For “a” my settings look something like this:
Stem (from the top point, going along the line):
- Width: 50 points, height: 0, Angle 360 (This produces the flattened top stroke)
- Width: 50, height:50, Angle: 337
- Width: 10, height: 10, Angle: 45
- Width: 10, height: 10, Angle 45
The exact numbers are not really important here. It’s good to have some idea of the width and height of the thinnest parts and the thickest parts for consistency.
For the Bowl, my settings look like this (going from the top right, alongside the path):
- Width: 25, Height: 25, Angle: 35
- Width: 68, Height: 60, Angle: 330
- Width: 26, Height: 10, Angle: 3
- Width: 59, Height: 10, Angle: 55
Again, the specific angles and numbers are not that important. They come from experimentation, grabbing the point controls and seeing what works. Notice by comparing those values with the stem values how the thinnest points have the same value of 10. The thickest points are slightly thicker, as they usually are in round shapes.
“a” skeleton
Use the pen to place points at the extremes of the shape. As the shape is angled, think of the extreme as being angled as well. Just like in the illustration. We don’t need to be too perfect at this stage, we will correct our mistakes once we will use the magic of LTTR/INK Brush. We should have two shapes, one for the stem and one for the bowl of the “a”. Use the alt + left mouse click on straight lines to turn them into curves and try to place lines more or less in the middle of the shape.
Create reusable "a bowl" component
- Select the “a” bowl shape
- right-click, and select “Component from selection”.
- Name it “a_bowl” and click ok.
