Traditional and Modern Slavic Calligraphy. A Guide for Beginners and Beyond
Dear reader, welcome to the world of Slavic calligraphy!
This guide is a compilation of online articles, resulting from my many years of intensive work. These articles were created to assist calligraphy beginners, artists, craftspeople, lettering artists, and font designers. When I started my creative journey, no similar material was present on the Internet, so I decided to create it myself.
In 2023, I combined materials and released my guide, “Modern Slavic Vyaz — Calligraphy workbook.” With a more than 170-page guide, it’s rich in examples of compositions, ligatures, proverbs written in various languages, and much more. At the end of the manual, you will find worksheets you can print at home to practice your calligraphy skills.
Pursuing the goal of popularizing Slavic culture, in this guide, I have gathered and structured my knowledge concisely. My work does not claim to be precisely academic, and this is not a paleographical study — it’s more of a guide for beginners and a collection of my specific artistic work and design experience. I hope it will be helpful and exciting to you!
I wish you luck and inspiration!
Table of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. Vyaz Fundamentals
🔹 Section 1.1 Monospace Letters
🔹 Section 1.2 Adding Complexity to Letters
🔹 Section 1.3 Ligatures in Vyaz
🔹 Section 1.4 “High Style Vyaz”
Chapter 2. Calligraphy Scripts
Writing Vyaz with wide pen nib:
🔹 Section 2.2.2 Vyaz by P. P. Chobitko
🔹 Section 2.2.3 Vyaz by D.I. Petrovsky
🔸 Section 2.2.5 Vyaz by V.A. Pushkarev
Writing Vyaz with a pointed brush:
🔹 Section 2.3 Iconography Vyaz by G.A. Marakuev
Writing Ustav with wide pen nib:
🔹 Section 2.4 “Blackletter Ustav”
Chapter 3. Historical Examples of Vyaz script
🔹 Golden and silver artifacts with Slavic Vyaz inscriptions
🔹 Liturgical embroidery
Chapter 4. Additional materials
🔹 Section 4.1 Collection of Vyaz Letters
🔹 Section 4.2 List of Online Archives and Libraries
🔸 “Svobodniye Propisi”
🔹 Scan of the book “Slavic Scripts. Part One”
My notes
🔹 Defining your own art style
🔹 About free and paid content
🔸 — paid material
🔹 — free material
Some of the information presented in this guide may be considered unique but by no means universal. Any field requires analysis and constant research. I hope my point of view, analysis, and synthesis will be useful to you, but please do not consider my claims to be universal.
In addition to technical information, you may encounter my philosophical thoughts about my craft, which is an important part of my approach to my beloved job.
I wish you patience and creative inspiration in your studies!
