Mayank Baranwal is a freelance calligrapher indulging in scripts such as Fraktur (modern Gothic), Italics and Brush-Script. He has conducted workshops on Fraktur and Brush-script. Recently, he was invited for a workshop on his favourite Fraktur at SAARANG- the annual cultural and social festival of IIT Chennai.

Basics: Fraktur is a German modification of the Blackletter type. Commonly, it is known as 

“modern Gothic”. As opposed to Gothic, which has fixed structure of a letter, one can indefinitely go on to play with the shape, length, height and other possible dimensions of the letters depending upon one’s artistic abilities and that is the reason why he likes it the most. The basic structure of each letter is composed of “broken lines” which are arranged in a way to depict the letter.

Supplies required for writing: A flat end tool, either a steel nib or a flat brush is required. 

There are pens such as pilot parallel pens which come with an ink refill and dip pens like speedball, manuscript poster nibs, brause bandzug nibs as well. Depending upon what paper is used, different kind of inks are available. There’s a whole lot of experiment that goes into finding the requisite paper for an ink. In case you’re using a flat brush, you can use gouache. All supplies will be provided at the workshop.

Poster colors work great as well.