Vincent van Gogh's Handwriting

Everyone knows of Vincent van Gogh's paintings... fewer know of his incredible sketches... and fewer still have explored his eloquent letters written primarily to his brother, Theo.  Reading these letters, I am struck with the profundity of someone who is completely honest and has a gift for self reflection: a combination that makes his musings glimmer.  What I have learned from his letters is this: the most important thing in life is to breathe, to let the world in, to let it saturate... and then to return it, to create, to exhale.  It was his life's work: to take in a sower in the field, and then to recreate him on his canvas. 

It is with this in mind that I was moved to create a font of Van Gogh's handwriting.  It's tricky business to translate someone's script into a font, for even the most even-keel person's handwriting alters drastically from day to day and year to year-- and Vincent was anything but even-keel.  But, using letters found in tomes at my local library, I have created a font that holds up pretty well when compared side by side with the original letters.  Just a few notes about this font:

• It's free, please pass it along to anyone who you think might enjoy it!
• As with my font of James Joyce's Handwriting, I have replaced the ampersand (shift+7) with the author's signature.
• I've added a few sketches to the font replacing @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, [, {, ], and }
• The lowercase "t" takes some getting used to... but, I think you'll shortly find it to be one of your favorite characteristics of his handwriting.
• Some letters were impossible to find and others were on documents with a great deal of visual noise, with these I tried to replicate his style as best I could.

Right click on the link below, chose "Save Link As" and save the font to your desktop (or other preferred save destination).  Find your "Fonts" folder - this is usually found by going to "My Computer" then the C drive then into the "Windows" folder.  On some computers you'll have to tell the "Windows" folder to show its contents.  Then just drag the new font into the fonts folder and it will be available when you open your word processor.  Feel free to e-mail me if this doesn't work.  On the Macintosh under OS X, with the Finder, open your boot volume (typically called "Macintosh HD") then open the Library folder, then the Fonts folder. Drag the downloaded file from your desktop into the Fonts folder.

Click here to see the font used on one of my favorite Van Gogh passages.  Click here for a website that has archived all of his letters, and click here for a great resource for Van Gogh drawings and paintings.