Post #1460521

2026-04-09 15:02 UTC

@dominika I don’t think there are ‘correct terms’, only more or less useful ways to talk about things. It is often useful to be able to make distinctions by using different words to mean different things, but sometimes words gravitate to being synonyms. I think that is where writing and painting are with rergard to brush lettering: it isn’t easy to make a useful distinction between them, such that one could look at any given piece of lettering and say ‘This is painting’ or ‘This is writing’. Then, sometimes, someone like Titian comes along and uses a medium in a way that changes our understanding of that medium, and potentially our terminology (although most people still call the da Vinci work a painting).

Replies (1)

@dominika@typo.social 2026-04-09 15:44

@TiroTypeworks I’m thinking about the correct terms because someone already corrected me when I said *painting letters* for *painting* Roman Capitals. This triggered me a bit, and I didn’t want further discussion with this person. I think that *writing* for this specific case is a perfect term. I’m used to terminology from the University of Arts, so when you were using a brush it was *painting*, and when using a pencil, charcoal — *drawing*. Making it about tools seems easy. When it comes to letters, I see that some expressions have a different meaning. In Poland we have one word for doing it, it could be translated as *drawing with precision*, but then what about a process before, maybe it’s just *sketching*.

Open ##1460522