I learned about fraktur* while reading a biography of Christopher Dock. He would create these beautiful pieces of art using paint and the lettering style called fraktur, and then give them to his students for rewards. Here is a picture of an actual one that he made.
I studied it a little more when I found a large capital fraktur "S" at a thrift store and then hung it in my classroom.
I thought it would be educational for my students to learn how to do this sometime. So, after we had made our homemade journals, I figured this would be the perfect time. I gave each student a copy of a relatively easy fraktur alphabet and asked them to make at least one fraktur initial for a Creative Art Journaling Friday assignment. As usual, several of them did way more than that and surprised me.
The next week, I found these examples of hearts, birds, deer, and a horse from other fraktur examples and printed out small copies of them for the students to use. Their next assignment was to add at least one of these drawings, with color, to their name or initial page.
Here are some of the results from my students' homemade journals. Two of them were done by gentlemen :-).
I looked like so much fun that I made one as well.
*From Wikipedia:
Fraktur (German: [fʁakˈtuːɐ̯]) is a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter type faces derived from this hand. The blackletter lines are broken up; that is, their forms contain many angles when compared to the smooth curves of the Antiqua typefaces modeled after antiqueRoman square capitals. From this, Fraktur is sometimes contrasted with the "Latin alphabet" in northern European texts, which is sometimes called the "German alphabet", simply being a typeface of the Latin alphabet. Similarly, the term "Fraktur" or "Gothic" is sometimes applied to all of the blackletter typefaces (known in German as Gebrochene Schrift, "Broken Script").
