It’s week 5 of Yves Leterme’s Built Up Capitals class, and students are conjuring up letter variations. Using an HB pencil, we’re dreaming up different ways to draw a selection of letters. I chose two of the most common occurring in the English language—’A’ and ‘E’—as well as the letter ‘B’ whose top bowl will inform sibling letters ‘P’ and ‘R’.

We were asked to devote an hour of focussed effort to each letter. After two hours, I was still happily drawing letter ‘A’ variations—I know…geeky!

One ‘A’ (top line, third from the right) looked like a chair Frank Lloyd Wright might have designed, so other letters were designed to accompany that furniture line! See bottom row.

Here’s a close-up of a variation where John Lennon ran into Cousin Itt from the Addams Family! It’s in row 2, second from the right. Most of the letter forms in the second row are inspired by the work of Belgian calligrapher, Liesbet Boudens.