Transcripts
1. Hello and welcome!: Hello, I'm Alena from
Creative Field Designs. I've been practicing
calligraphy for over a decade, and I designed this challenge, this five day challenge to help you improve your
deep pen calligraphy. We're going to go
back to the basics. I'll guide you through
some really structured, simple exercises
to help you build your pen control,
confidence, muscle memory. It's packed with so many tips. I really hope you enjoy it all. It will really level
up your calligraphy. I come w to see your work. So let's get started.
Grab your pen and ink and let's begin.
2. DAY ONE: Hello, lovely participants, and welcome to the first
day of the challenge. I'm Alena, and I'm so excited to guide you through
these next five days, teaching you, helping you
build your confidence, and it's going to
be a lot of fun. I promise you'll walk
away feeling inspired, more confident in your skill, and hopefully wanting
to practice more. Today is all about those
foundational strokes. We're going to focus on the essential strokes
of calligraphy, the build up lettuce, and you might be thinking
that you've done this million times
and maybe you're feeling more ahead
in your journey. Trust me, you'll
appreciate this practice, coming back to the basics. It's a lot of fun. It'll
be a good reminder. I always say try to never
stop learning because that's the only way to grow and progress. Today is
going to be fun. We're going to let
out a few words, and then there'll be a
little assignment for today. Also there's a prize
for every day. I'm giving away something small. Today is just going to
be a couple of nibs. One person is going
to win a fresh set of a few nibs that are my favorite and I'm going
to post it to you. That's going to be exciting.
That's extra motivation you might need to go through every assignment,
share your work, so hopefully we can
fill this group with some lovely work with lots of photos, encouragement
and support. Let's dive in. Let's get started
with today's less scene, and I'll do my best
to help you grow in your clipy journey.
Let's get started. Okay, so we're going to start
by warming up our hand, and I mean it in
a literal sense. We are going to do
some exercises. So this has been transformational
for me in my practice because we want to have our
hand as relaxed as possible. So let's do a few squeezes. Let's wiggle our fingers. Let's just stretch our hand, maybe massage your fingers, whatever it is that helps you relax the muscles in your hand. I promise you that this will benefit the flow of
your calligraphy. Your strokes will feel lighter, quite flowy, and that's
what we're looking for. Okay, I think we have
a few newbies here. So let's just get
this out of the way. We are not holding
the pen as we do, when we write in cursive, okay? So if you're using
straight pen holder, and I hope you are, we are going to learn how
to hold it properly. And if you are quite familiar
with calligraphy already, just check in with
your technique. So notice how I'm placing my index finger on top
of the pen holder, and then I grabbing
my pen with my thumb, index finger, and middle finger. The middle finger kind
of rest underneath. Now, the biggest trick, really, is to lower down your pen
holder towards yourself. So it kind of forms like a 45 degree angle from your
page, from your paper. So towards yourself, try positioning your wrist
on the page completely flat, still holding the pen correctly. If that feels very
uncomfortable, try to find a middle ground between having your wrist flat and having your side of
the hand touch the paper. So it's somewhere in between,
but this is, you know, pretty much the
position we want to have our hand in whilst
we hold the pen. Now we're going to
try dipping our pen, and I'll just walk you through, you know, some very very basic. So as you dip your pen, shake off the excess. We don't want to have big blobs. Oh, there we go. That's
a fast little smudge. We don't want to have big
blobs come out of your nib, and that can happen if
your nib is overloaded. And you'll notice that
your ink is getting collected kind of
on the inside with the nib where the
little hole is, and the little hole
is called the vent. You know, in the anatomy of nib, if you want to know, you know, all the parts, and you
can always look it up. But that's what it is.
So that's where the ink kind of gets
collected as you dip, so always make sure you
dip past that hole. And let's just begin
doing this really, really heavy down stroke. So the downstroke is the first stroke we are
going to practice today. And what is a downstroke? Inkleleafy is a thick, heavy stroke made when you move the pen downward
from top to bottom. And Inclepy we want to try and make this movement
very gliding. So see if you can work with your whole arm rather than engage your wrist
a lot as you do it. So we definitely want to move in gliding motions. As your elbow. This really helps for
that extra support. Well done, we're going
to try some of those, make them as big or
as small as you want. You can make them slanted. And when you're ready, we are going to try some
of the upstrokes. So upstrokes are thin
light strokes made when you move the pen upward so they opposite from
bottom to top. And this just creates
like a really thin line, and you can also
call the headline. You might hear that galgafy. And this is where a lot
of beginners get stuck or discouraged because your lines will look a little bit wobbly. If you've never tried it before, or if you're a complete beginner or maybe you've been
practicing for a little bit, your lines will be shaky, and that's absolutely fine. I want you to know this.
So do it this exercise, and it doesn't matter
what it looks like here. You're just
practicing, trying to apply very light pressure, trying to do your best, okay? Take it slowly. So try to finish these two, and I'm just going to title them so we know what
we're doing here. So try to do these two
lines very slowly. Try to constantly remind
yourself to slow down. Calligraphy loves slow, mindful, therapeutic, feeling movements, and that's what we're
trying to resemble here. And again, just remember that it doesn't have
to look perfect. Okay. And when you're ready, maybe you need to
pause the video before you start
the next stroke, we are going to do some
overtaned and under tanned. So let's start with
the overtan and it's going to look like a little
upside down U shape. Now we're going really slowly, and we've got to transition
from thin into thick, which is a big
challenge in itself. So we're going to try to make that transition really smooth. So hold your pen
correctly, take it slow. Don't forget to dip
your pen into ink, and we're going to
start with this one where we go thin up and go thick down before we also
try some under tans, which will be formed by going down first and
then stretching up. Now, what really
helps me here is to slow down before the
transition happens. So try to take it a
little bit slower. As you finish the last
stroke of the shape, try not to flick it. Try to retain that focus
right until the end. So you are going up,
for example, here, and just try to do it really slowly, really, really focused. So a lot of people just finish
this shape, like, really, really quickly, and that's how you let go of that control. So just try to be as focused as you can as you do these
two in particular. And if you're struggling
with transitions, that will come with time. You're building muscle
memory and practicing these individual shapes is the best thing you
can do right now. Even if you are not a complete beginner and if you're struggling
with your technique, coming back to these basics
is really, really harmful. And we're going to get
ready to practice a C shape or you can also call it just
an oval shape or o shape. And it's a very, very common
shape in calligraphy. And we're going to
start it from the side. So we're actually starting
with this little Ostro, then we go down, and then we connect back to
where we started. So this can feel a little bit counterintuitive if
you're not used to it. So there's a lot of
transitioning in a way. You can also just try doing a C shape if you're
finding this a little bit tricky
or if you would like to refine it even more. It can definitely
help. I would say, try to keep your
downstroke straight. It can be slanted,
but think of it as a downstroke rather than a
really kind of curved shape. I see this a lot in beginnings
that they make it really curved and you'll
notice that you're carving it quite a lot if
you're engaging your wrist. Again, we're trying to keep those motions quite glided,
if that makes sense. Let's also maybe add a little embellishment
here at the end, showing that it is an O shape, so you can kind of
extend it a little bit to make it look like
a proper letter. So you might need
to pause this video again before you
continue and try to do it slower
than you think you should so see if you can
slow down a bit more. And the next shape
we're going to try together is a
compound curve shape. So this is where we join
tree strokes at a time, which will probably be the most we ever join
together in calligraphy. So normally we pick up our
ends in between the shapes. And this is really
good practice where we're trying to achieve
a bit more flow. And as you do these
three stroke shapes, see if you can focus on
them being quite parallel. So we want to keep them fairly
kind of similarly slanted. It's modern calligraphy, so it doesn't have
to be perfect, but see if you can try and keep them
quite balanced looking without really wide
middles of the shape. So think of them as
little shapes again. So keeping them quite
narrow together. And you can try alternating
between going up, down and up and then
maybe starting with a downstroke and then
going up and down. So thick, thin, thick
and thin, thick, thin. So try that. Try a few. That's a really,
really good exercise. Before we continue
with two more shapes. So we're going to try
some loopy shapes. So the ones that have
loop at the top, and this one's called
an asenta loop. It stretches above
the middle line, the waistline of
your calligraphy, which is where normally the smaller letters
would sit, right? Like the letter A.
So the letter L, for example, would
stretch above. And you see you can see that
it touches that top line. So this is also something
I highly recommend using rude pages or
drawing some guidelines, even just by drawing
three lines and following kind of the same size of your calligraphy
throughout the exercises and, like, the same similar
slant as well. It can be really,
really helpful. So as you try some of these
loop shapes that stretch up, we're also going to do a
couple that stretch down. And this will be seen
in latter slide GJ. Y. We'll get those desana
desanda loop shapes. So try some of these. And when you join back, see if you can do
it at the baseline, so you can see how I'm
starting from the waistline. I'm going down, touching
a descender line, which would be the
one at the bottom, and then going back
to the baseline. And I'm finishing my loop there. I know that some people
find this really hard. So maybe try making your loop a little bit bigger
or maybe a bit more narrow and just see what fits your style because it
can be quite individual. So some people will struggle, making the look,
que white looking. And also, as you come up, it's quite a different
upstroke, isn't it? We kind of going into the side rather than
all the way up, which can also feel a little bit tricky at first, but
you'll get used to it. Okay, so now we're
going to try and apply this to some lettuce. So we're going to do a
phrase golden light, and let's just break this
phrase into individual lettuce. So I'm starting
the letter G with a C shape or O shape,
whatever you want to call it, and then we stop before we
start to decenda loop shape. Okay? So this letter
has two parts to it, and let's try to
separate those parts. Then we're going to
do the letter O. Remember, we've just done
it. We just practiced it. We can embellish it a bit. See if you can try this version where you make the loop
a little bit bigger. I think it's quite fun to do. Excellent. Well done. And
just notice how I'm still extending that last stroke
of the letter to the side. Imagining there's a
connection stroke. Alright, let's try the letter
L. So the letter L looks really similar to the
Asenda loop shape, but also imagine that we're
merging it with the letter U. So you can see how
it kind of has a little tail at the end, and you can try and make
it you shaped or V shaped. It's really up to you. It
will depend on your style. So if you have more of a
classic looking style, you'll kind of rounding
it up at the bottom, or if you profile
bouncing a af style, you'll enjoy making
it quite V shaped. And when you're ready, we're
going to do the letter D, which starts in the
exact same way as the letter G. So we're
starting with an O shape and then stopping and then attaching the letter
L, essentially. That's really interesting.
So the only thing that can happen here
is that you can create a gap in between these shapes or you can
overlap them too tightly. So try to find a perfect
balance where you do overlap your O shape and your letter L shape in a
very kind of seamless way, and it might take a
bit of practicing. Let's try the letter E. You can think of it as a
smaller version of the letter L. So it definitely just stays in between
these two lines. So if you have guidelines, just focus on two lines. We call this space
between these two lines, between the baseline and
waistline, an X height. So this is where the letter
X would sit and all of these other smaller letters would sit too. Right,
let's try the letter. So notice how I'm breaking
it down into shapes. I'm starting with a downstroke
and then I'm adding on a compound curve.
So up down up. We've done all of these
strokes individually. So a downstroke, stopping, then going up, down and up. It's quite easy to smudge your downstroke
and nstroke here. So you can see that I've
done it in my fast example. It's all a bit kind
of blobb there. And that can happen if you
start the second part of the letter too close
to the downstroke, especially if it's really wet. So just be mindful of that. Okay, so we've done golden. So we've done every single
letter of the word, golden. Lovely. And how we just try
putting it all together. So starting with the
letter G, breaking it up. Into individual
strokes and shapes, doing the letter O, stopping. Notice how often
I'm stopping after every single letter after
every single shape. Letter D, stop in between
these two shapes. Let the E flows
nicely in one go, so we're just kind
of doing it in flow. And the letter N has
two stopping points, a downstroke and a
compound curve shape. Lovely. Let's try
adding the word light. So it's got some really
similar letters. So the letter L again. The letter I is just
like a U shape, the letter G again, which we've done,
and the letter H, start with this Asenda
shape, and then we stop, and then we add a
compound curve, which is very similar to
the letter N in a way. And the letter T
is very similar to the letter I just a
little bit taller because it stretches all the way up and see if you want to keep your cross line quite long
on your letter Alright, so we've done these two, and we're going to
dry them again, so it's always nice
to do a bit of repetition in your practice. And as we do this phrase again, we are going to try and blend in a beautiful long entry
stroke like we've just done at the beginning
of the letter G. And also, as I'm doing this
second version, I am trying to space my
letters a little bit more by extending the last
stroke of every letter. So depending where you
are in your journey, if you're a complete beginner, just try to do the
version we did already and just add longer strokes at the beginning and at
the end of the word. If you're a little bit more
advanced, try adding, like, different stylistic
tweaks to this like maybe keeping
your letter U shapes, a little bit more V shaped to kind of create a
bouncy transition. Like I've done the
letter L here, and you can see how
it's a bit sharper. At the bottom, it looks a
bit more like the letter, rather than letter U as we
transition into the letter I, and I do it at the age. I'll drop it down a little
bit to add a bit of bound, so it stretches
below the baseline. But again, if you're a beginner, just try to do this again in the style you've
tried already. Just add longer entry
and exit strokes. It's a wonderful practice. So we're building up
to the next lesson, which will be all about
your calligraphy flow. So adding these longer strokes will really help you get there. So consider this being, like, a really nice warm
up for tomorrow. Well, done, everybody. So for today, your
assignment is to analyze another short phrase in this style and apply
similar techniques. So we're going to
do a short phrase, quiet morning, so
just two words. And I'll demonstrate
every single letter out of this word, and we can practice
this together. But then it'll be
your assignment to join it all up beautifully, and then the best you can
and then try it again in a slightly more flowy style by extending entry and
exit strokes again. Okay? So let's just start by breaking down the
word quiet together. So we have the
letter Q, letter U. So notice how some of these letters
actually flow in one go, like letter T, I, and E, and just remember that
you can always change the style of your letter
by keeping it more U shaped like this or adding
a bit more of a V shape at the bottom of it to create a
bouncy, edgy looking style. And we're going to try
the letter M together. So it's got quite a few shapes. So I've done a downstroke, I've done the overturn, and I'm just finishing
the letter with a compound curve shape. It's got three
individual shapes, and I highly recommend picking
up your pen in between, so pausing in between. We're breaking down the letter, so it's got two shapes. The letter N, so a downstroke
and a compound calf shape. So we've tried this
together. Letter I. It's a half of a U shape. Let N again, it's a tricky one. You can think of the letter N as part as a half of the letter M. And letter G, something we've done
already as well. Well, done. Okay. So
this is it, guys. So that's for you
to kind of look at, and I might just actually
demonstrate the entry. So let's say you're
doing the letter Q and you want to add,
like an entry stroke. So just start with this kind of thin carved line and then
start your letter Q. And if you want to extend the letter G in
the word morning, at the end, you can just
extend that upstro. You can divide it
into two parts. You don't have to do
it all in one go. And as you do, your
letter M, again, for the one morning,
you can extend that entry stroke so it's
really long at the beginning. Try to keep it quite
horizontal as you do it, it doesn't want to kind of start from the bottom and stretch up. It wants to stay quite
sideways looking. And then the letter I didn't do the letter
T in the word quiet. So that'll be the last
letter of the word quiet, and it can be extending
it to the side. So the upstroke kind of
stretches to the side. So remember, these are called
exit and entry strokes, and lengthening them can just add a really nice effect
to your cligraphy. But then everybody for today
can't wait to see your work.
3. DAY TWO: Hello, lovely participants and welcome today to the challenge. I am so impressed by all of
your work from yesterday. Thank you so much for sharing. It's just really inspiring to
see how much you're trying, how you're showing up,
how you're posting, keep it coming. It's wonderful. Thank you so much for being such an important part of this community that
we've built here. It's just really
wonderful to hear. So today is day two, and today we're
focusing on rhythm, consistency, and balance,
which is the key to smooth, balanced and
beautiful lettering. I'll be here guiding
you through every step. I'll guide you through some
really productive exercises. We'll focus on really
specific topics, and you'll have a
little assignment, same as yesterday to complete
and post in a group. Today's price is
actually very exciting. I'm giving away a beautiful
pink magenta calligraphy ink, like a little 15 mil pot. And there'll be one winner
to win today's prize. So make sure you post your work, that you encourage somebody
from the group and maybe share some insight
from today's lesson. Thanks so much everybody.
Let's get to it. So before we start
today's practice, let's just troubleshoot
our supplies. This is something I do before every single practice session, before every project I letter, I always give my
ink a little star. So maybe you also have it
in a little pot like this, so just give it a
quick little star. I love to use the other
side of my pen holder. Don't forget to wipe it.
I'll get a bit messy. But it's so important because it kind of brings
ink back to life. Sometimes it can be
a little bit thick. It really depends on your ink, but I do find that it
is really helpful. Also make sure that your
nib is nice and clean. Don't forget to wash it. If you have some crusty
ink stuck in your nip, that will interfere
your ink flow. And if all is looking well, we are going to start by
doing a little warm up today. And in this fast exercise, we are going to focus on
spacing of your calligraphy. I'm just going to zoom in
so you can see really well. So we're going to
start by practicing a really simple U shape. So the letter Think of this as the letter So we're starting
with a fast U shape, and then we pick up our pen,
and then we just attach, so we overlap the
previous upstroke with another down stroke. Okay. So what I want you to pay attention to is this
little stroke at the end, which we call the exit stroke. So notice how you can change the size and the
angle of this stroke. Let's try this altogether. How you can change
the size and angle of this stroke to either
lengthen it or shorten it. And this is something we also
call the connection stroke, so it's a joining up stroke. So I'm just
demonstrating this with a little bit more bound here. So notice how I'm stretching the last stroke of the shape here all the way
down to below the baseline. And again, I'm trying
to do it twice. And in the second version, I'm trying to make
my exit stroke, my connection stroke appear a little bit more
open, like here. So what this does is that if we join this up
with another letter, it will change the spacing. So the longer and wider
your connection stroke, the bigger gap you'll have
between your lettuce. And if it's very
short and narrow, you'll have really tight
spacing between your lettuce. So let's just put
this into practice. So I'm trying to join up let's join up three
U shapes at a time. And let's just keep
it simple here. So we're going to position
them on the baseline really nice and neat
and try to really, really focus on the connection
stroke and try to keep it very similar in
all of these letters. So try to follow the
first one you did, and then just notice
if your spacing is looking kind of balanced. So all the gaps between your
letters, you are similar. So let's try this again. And this time, we are going to try and make this last stroke. Of the letter you stretch to
the side a little bit more. So this will create
a bigger opening, so that will automatically create a bigger gap
between your lettus. So this is just
something really nice to observe and practice slowly. This can really help
your letter joining. And again, just notice how
in the second example, the gaps are much wider. So we are controlling
the spacing with one little stroke which I find really,
really interesting. Okay, so let's add a
bit more bound to it. So this time, we are bouncing the last stroke of the letter U all the way below
the baseline, and I'm trying to
keep the last shape, which is kind of a U shape or in bouncy clligraphy it will
look more like a V shape. I'm trying to keep
it quite narrow, and you can see how it
affects the spacing. Okay. I hope this is going
well for you as well. I hope you're finding
it quite interesting, to focus on and observe. We're going to try another
letter in a similar style. So we are going to
do the letter N, and I'm going to join
three of these up again. And just let's remember how we constructed the letter
N out of shape. So remember, we're starting with the downstroke then we're
lifting our pen for a second, just picking it up
from the paper. And then we go up down and up, which we call, which is something we call
a compound curve. So you can see how
this little chain of the lattice end is
quite tight together. So what I've done
there, I've really focused on this narrow opening. So the exit stroke, the last stroke of the letter, always stretched all the way up. And in this next example, we'll focus on spacing our
letters a little bit more, which we can achieve
by making sure that last exit stroke of the letter stretches
to the side, so you can see how it's
much more sideways. So try not to change the way you hold your
pen when you do it, so just guide all your hand, your whole hand to the side,
together with your pen. So your wrist doesn't
really move much, but you're just gliding
your hand to the side. It's a gliding motion. But do you notice a difference? So the fashion's really narrow and this one's really wide. So that's just something you can implement to really improve the balance of your
ciphy to be in control of the spacing
every single time. And lastly, let's just do a little chain of the letters M. So notice how I'm building up
this letter out of shapes. Notice how many
times I'm stopping. And this time, I'm focusing
on bouncy calligraphy. So the last stroke of the letter M is stretching
below the baseline, and I'm also focusing on keeping it really narrow
so close together. So every exit stroke
goes all the way up in a very kind of narrow
looking V shape or U shape. And as you finish the letter, make sure to continue
this kind of thinking, and imagine there's
another letter following. So we're just doing longer
exist at the end, as well. And once you've tried that
and once you feel ready, let's try a wider
looking version next. So just doing the same thing
we did with the letter N, implementing, just
practicing and focusing on this
specific little tweak. And you can see right away
how the spacing changes. And the trick here is to try and do those connection
strokes slowly. We will kind of practice that
a little bit more today, but just try to always be very mindful of doing your
joining up strokes slowly, finishing your exit strokes slowly because that's where
we need the most focus. And the slower you do it
as you practice and learn, the better you'll become. And sure, you might
pick up, you know, the pace a little bit more in the future once you feel
really confident with it. But as we practice today, let's do it really mindfully. And that kind of brings us
to the next little exercise. We're going to practice flow by doing these wave shapes
and as you do the shape, now I kind of pressing my nib at the beginning
to create a little dot. So just apply a bit of pressure before you
start to shape. It's quite a fun little trick. It also kind of ensures that
your ink is flowing nicely. And then we'll continue and
just do this really relaxed. I just want you to relax
your hand here and just do this little chain of
upstrokes and downstrokes. You're going to do
another little chain. And this time, try to do your
downstrokes a little bit faster and try to make your upstrokes
really slow and focused. So try to pick up a bit of
momentum as you go down, so it kind of feels
really flowy and then do your upstrokes
really slowly. Try to exaggerate it here. I just an exercise, but it will really help your calligraphy flow because we're developing rhythm here. So as you go down, do it really slowly and
then drop down, press down really hard to
let that downstroke flow. And we're going to try this
again a little bit bigger. So we're going to do
a lot of lettuce, start with a downstroke and then let's try and do a
little chain of lettuce l. So maybe do a couple, and
then we can do, like, a longer chain, breaking
them up into shapes. So maybe let's start
this one with a long, beautiful, thin entry stroke. And if your ink
flow is playing up, if sometimes your
stroke is like hollow, you can always color it in or you can just
leave it there, especially if you're practicing. That will happen. It
happens to everybody Dvora. Sometimes it's just hard to
predict when you need to dip. But obviously, the
more you practice, the better you'll get to know
your ink and your supplies. So notice how I'm stopping one let up before I
start the next one. And we are really
trying to implement that slow upstroke
and a fast, like, a quick up downstroke here, so slowly going up, rounding up at the top,
and then dropping down. It should feel
really therapeutic if you're doing it slowly, if you're trying to kind
of pause at the top before you do that big
drop as you go down, hopefully, it feels
mindful and relaxing. So as you finish one let start the next one
with the loop. Go up, slow down at the
top, and then let it go. Make your downstroke
really thick. Notice if you can press
down a little bit harder and just see what
your nib is capable of. You can't break it, I promise. And as we finish, let's just do a lovely little exit
stroke to the side, just a complete
this ittle chain. Well, the, everybody. So let's just try and implement
some of this. We're going to let
it the word breeze, and we're going to try
and do it in a very, very kind of tight and kind
of narrow spacing style. So as we start with Letter B, notice how I'm positioning all the lettuce close together, shortening my joining upstroke. It definitely stretches up, not to the side, but
I'm still stopping. I'm still doing it slowly. So see if you can kind of
do it in a similar pace. Take it slow. Pick
up your pen often, divide those letters
into shapes. And as you finish the wad, try to stretch
that last strok to the side to make the whole
wad look quite complete. We're going to let
the wad petal next. So again, starting with the longer stroke
at the beginning, which is nice and
thin, then it goes straight into a
faster down stroke. And here I'm going to focus on widening the gaps
between the lettuce. So I'm stretching
the exit stroke, the last stroke of every
letta to the side, so it creates a really
well spaced kind of look. Do it slowly with a lot
of focus. There we go. And just to kind of make it all flow together
a little bit more, we can also create a really
nice long crossline over the letter and it's going to be that wave shape that
we've practiced. You can actually divide
the shape into two parts. You don't have to do it all
in one go. There we go. So we are going to let
out a few more things, go to go through a
couple more exercises. Just to let it all sink in. It's really, really nice to
do this focused practice. I hope you're enjoying it, and I'm sure you're doing great. Next, let's try and focus on the rhythm of your calligraphy
so we practice spacing, and hopefully you'll
keep implementing all those things
behind the scenes as you focus on something else. But as we focus on rhythm, we're going to do the word rain. And we really want to try
again to do those upstrokes a little bit slower and then add a bit more pace to
the downstrokes. Just notice what it feels like. Try to do it really,
really slowly here. It should really feel like you're doing this
in slow motion. It's so rhythmical,
even if it's slow, it doesn't have to be fast. And let's just pick out
some individual shapes. So the letter C is a
really, really good one. So we're going to start with
a lot of focus as we do that little upstroke with
the top and then go a bit fast as we go down
and then finish slowly. And let's just turn this into the letter A because
the letter C, the C shape or shape is how we start
forming the letter A. So we can just practice
this a couple of times, focusing on slower motions
as we finish the letter, as we do the upstrokes. And we also have little pores in between these two shapes. This is such a good exercise and it's going to
really help you progress because you're kind
of analyzing your own style, you know, the way you do it, maybe maybe you were doing
it really fast before. Maybe you weren't paying
attention on the rhythm, maybe you went kind of picking
up your pen quite often. All of those things are very normal when you're starting out. I just want you to know.
Or maybe you've developed some habits that maybe are not really serving you
in your practice. So by going back to this and really focusing
and refining, you are going to progress. This will really, really help
your calligraphy journey. Okay, so now we're just taking out another little
example like the letter. And let's try and focus
on that end stroke. I know that a lot of
students struggle with this. I've seen this in my
in person classes, in my online classes. I see that it's really hard sometimes to
finish the letter, to finish the word slowly
and with a long stroke. So see if you can put all of your focus into this
and just try to really maintain that focus throughout the letter right till the end, doing it really, really
slowly on purpose, right at the end. There we go. I notice
how that feels. Okay, so lastly, this is what we'll finish the practice with. So I'm going to
demonstrate how to do the word bloom in
three different ways. So the first one is
going to be quite tight. So the spacing is going
to be quite tight. And remember, we are
just focusing on those ending strokes
of each letter. We are stretching them upwards. We're not going to decide
with those strokes. We're keeping
everything really tight together, controlling
the spacing. But also trying to think about
the flow of archaigraphy, and by adding longer
entry and exit strokes, you can really start developing the flowy feeling
in your practice. Well done. So try this with me. And the second version
we'll try to get there is going to
be well spaced. So we're going to stretch those connection
strokes sideways, just like we've been
practicing. So let's get ready. We're going to still start with a really long stroke just to get that flow flowing.
So there we go. And I might actually stylize
my letter B a little bit, see if you want to do the same. So just add it like a big, big loop, wrapping around the downstroke, like
a little flourish. And just now that is
what I'm doing here. I'm just extending
the last stroke of every letta
stretching to the side. Creating a bigger gap
between the letters. Now, it's one thing to
implement this technique, but it's another thing to make sure that all of
these gaps are quite, you know, balanced and similar. Although in modern calligraphy, don't worry too much, you know, the gaps between the letters
don't have to be identical. You can definitely freestyle
that a little bit, but do try to make
them visually, you know, beautiful,
visually appealing, so that they're easy to read. So the word is easy to read. That's the main goal. Okay, and here comes the rhythm exercise. I want you to do
this word again and try to really focus on those slower upstrokes
and faster downstrokes. See? Notice how that feels. And I don't mean to
go down really fast. It's still a fairly
slow movement, but those upstrokes are just
a little bit more focused, whilst the downstrokes
feel a bit more like like flow, like
gliding motions. There we go. And finishing with a long stroke
to the side again. Beautiful. Okay, well,
that, everybody for today. Now, today's assignment is
to letter the word season. Okay, to let the word season
in three different ways. So just like we've
done with this word, this was just an example. So we've done bloom in a very kind of tight,
narrow spacing. We've done bloom in
a well spaced way, and we applied the
rhythm exercise to it. We did it again. So I'm just going to letter
it out in case you're struggling with
imagining this word or, you know, you don't know what the lettuce would
look like in it. So I'm just lettering
it out just to give you a good start, you know, so to kind of motivate
you try and do it in these three
different ways. Brilliant. So if
you got to the end, I just want you to be proud of yourself because we did a
lot of focused practice, and I really hope
that it feels good, that it feels good
that you managed to squeeze in this
practice today. I can't wait to see your work, please share and I'll
see you tomorrow.
4. DAY THREE: Hi, everybody. I hope you're ready for day three
of the challenge. Over the past two days, we've built strong foundation and now it's time to
have a bit more fun. We are going to practice a
little bit of flourishing. Now, flourishing is a very
big topic in calligraphy. I'm not going to overwhelm you. I'm just going to cover some
really important things. The thing about
flourishing is that you can add a lot of personality, a lot of elegance to
your calligraphy. But your flourishes need to feel intentional for them to look
balanced and beautiful. I'm just going to share some of my favorite little
tricks and tips that you can also
implement in your journey. Maybe you're
completely new to it, so it'll be really good
to practice and learn. One thing I want to
say about flourishing is that less is very often more. They should feel
light and fluid. If they feel forced, it's probably time to
simplify and everybody will find their own kind
of starling flourishing. There's no expectations,
no pressure. You're just going to have a really fun and
productive session together and you'll pick up some really useful tips for your own flourishing joining
cafe. Let's dive in. So we're actually going to start today's practice
by using a pencil. So grab a pencil and just make sure that you
have enough room, enough space on your desk. When you flourish,
you definitely don't want to have any
obstacles around you. So just make sure that
you can rest your elbow, you know, you have
enough room to glide your hand up and down. This is quite important. So it always helps
me personally, when I when I can
fully rest my arm. And let's begin by
slowly drawing like a really balanced
infinity sign shape. So try your best. I know it's free hand. It
might be hard to do. But try your best, maybe follow the lines if you're
using, like, a road pad. And then we're going
to try drawing a little oval that's just, like, horizontal like this. And then we can try another
one, so maybe we can do, like a slanted
slanted oval shape. This will be good as well.
So just three little shapes. And this is pretty much the
secret behind flourishing. So this is the shape that we want to think about
when we do flourishes. So ovals always
think about ovals. And we're going to start by just learning to glide our hand. So we want to get used to learning to kind
of move your hands together with your
arm rather than using wrist movements as you
trace these shapes, so we're going to just do
this exercise where we just go over the shapes
with a pencil, and you can also use a dip pen without any incint just
kind of practicing. Now that's what I'm doing here. So I'm not really pressing down because flourishes
are always quite thin. So I am just really
lightly tracing the shape. And you will know
you'll see when you're going too hard because
your nip will catch. And you'll also see when you
go off course because you'll just see that you're
not maybe tracing where the pencil line
is. Just observe. Obviously, it's
hard because you're holding you're using a dip pen. It's different from a pencil. So just try doing
this without any ink. This is how you build
that muscle memory. This is how your hand get
used to those oval shapes. And this practice here
is actually very, very valuable, even
though we are not actually using any
ink at all. Okay. So just remember to hold
your pen correctly. Focus try to focus on
those gliding motions. And when you're ready, let's
pick up a little bit of ink. And maybe let's try just tracing half of
the infinity sign, which is actually a flourish. We see quite a lot
in calligraphy. And we're going to try tracing maybe half of this oval shape. And again, just notice how this could be a
lovely entry stroke. It just creates a really nice, perfect little shape that is just part of the actual oval. It's not the whole oval, and it's not the infinity sign, but because it's part of it, it still looks really balanced. And that's what
we're aiming for. So how about we try
implementing this? We can try doing this sort of shape where we
start with a long, long entry stroke
and just go into this acenda loop really slowly. And then we can
try different one, but again, we're
focusing on ovals. We're just warming up. It
doesn't have to look perfect. We're just warming up our hands. It's a really good
warm up exercise. And then we can try doing
this one, but again, we're focusing on the
infinity design shape. And then we go straight
into that loop. So notice how focused
these movements are, you definitely want
to go fairly slowly, do it with intention,
with focus. And let's maybe try to imagine that we're kind of doing the end
of the letter here. So as we finish, let's
say, it could be anything, it could be the letter vent could be the last stroke
for another letter. Try extending that
last stroke and again, turn it into a little flourish. So the first one was just
like another little oval. This one's more like
the infinity side. So think of this as the ending, so the end of the
letter, end of the word. And you're going to
practice some examples, but this is just a
really good warm up. Now, these will look shaky. If you just sat down and you haven't done anything
like this before, this will be really hard to do. I completely understand. And I know how
hard it is because I've been there.
You will get that. It's just muscle memory. So it's all about practicing. Okay, so let's take
it a bit further. So I'm just demonstrating
something that's called the underline flourish. So you can see how it creates the line that
extends to the left. And this can look really good
in the middle of the word. So maybe you can try and
do this with the lattice N or M. So here's a
example of the letter N, and you can see how it
kind of stretches in that infinity sin
shape to the left. Try doing this slowly. Lots and lots of focus. If it looks shaky,
just try again. Try, try, try, try
again, don't give up. Eventually, it'll be
a bit less wobbly, a bit more smooth, with a bit
more slow, I promise you. If you practice it, there's no other way you
will get better. So in Colgafy there are different places where you
can position your flourishes. And one of the most common ways is the beginning and
the end of the word. So we're going to do a
word awaken in a minute. So let's just practice the
letter A because we will be starting with this little
kind of like a really open, beautiful flourish
at the beginning. So notice how kind of
open it looks quite big. I think it looks really
good when it's big. And again, we're trying to find, like, a part of
the oval in there. So that's how we're forming it. So try to think of those
ovals as you do it. I don't know, this just
looks quite happy. I definitely associate
it with, like, a soft, I don't know,
joyful, happy style. There's something about
it. It looks really good. And we can do a similar thing
at the end of the word. So as you do the letter N, we are going to extend the last stroke in a
really similar way. And I really love adding a little dot at the end of the flourishes or at the
beginning, actually, as well. So now see if this is something
you want to try as well. So as you do the flourish
and as you finish, just press down a
little bit at the end, and it'll create this
beautiful little dot. There we go. So we
just practicing the beginning and the end of the word and then we're going
to try and put it together. So it's nice to do
it more than once because every time you
do it, it'll be better. So the first try you
do of, you know, words or lettuce in flourishing will always
be like a draft. Because flourishes do take planning and through
that repetition, through repeating the
word again and again, you can make it look balanced
and beautiful and tasteful. So yeah, definitely
takes a bit of planning. So don't worry if, you know, the first one you do
doesn't look good. So, entry and exit
stroke flourishes. So here we are. We're going
to do the word awaken. So we're just starting
with the letter A, just off the practice. So focus on that oval
shape at the beginning. And I'm just carrying on carrying on with
the word, you know, as we do it, still thinking
about the spacing, focusing on my technique. There's a lot of focus
going on, always. When you do cligrapy. I'm
sure you know this by now. So we have an A send a letter
here, and the letter K, so I'm stretching it up, trying to keep it
within the lines. I just kind of fairly
balanced for now. Doing the letter E. And as I do the letter, let's
break it down. So let's do the downstroke first and then have little
pause and get ready for this
compound curve shape so you can flourish at the end. It's quite a long movement. You can definitely take little
pause and just, you know, breathe for a second
before you start that second part of the letter N. And let's try this again. So this was just a test, and it's really nice to
just try again and again. So if we're going to
do it this word twice, and I'll show you
a little trick, you can apply to make these entry and exit flourishes even
more interesting. Well, the take it slowly. Remember to relax your hand, try your best to have
that relaxed feeling, but kind of feel the
control that you're holding the pen
and you're guiding your pen where it needs to go. So we're going to
go back where we started to flourish and we're
just going to extend it, you know, with a really thin
line. I love this technique. I call these secret
flourishes in my courses because I just love how
seamlessly just blends in, and nobody would ever know
that you did this in two goes. So yeah, definitely
something fun to try out. So you can always extend them. So let's move on and focus
on the middle of the word. So we've done our entry and
exit stroke flourishes, but let's say we
want to embellish the word a little bit
more like throughout. So there are things you can do. So this is called a
detached acendaFlosh, a detached acenda loop. So this will apply to all of
the Asenda letters like B or D or you can even do
it on the letter L, T. So now it is how I'm just kind of
stretching that stroke. So imagine that you're
just doing, like, a really long entry stroke, and essentially this will
stretch above your word. I'll demonstrate it in a minute. But for now, let's just focus on extending that stroke
really kind of long and focusing on the half of
that infinity sign shape. Imagine you're only
tracing half of it, okay? And then we just go
straight into that loop. So letter H, B, KL, lots of letters
this can be applied to. So we're going to
do the ride awaken again for the third
time because, again, repetition really, really helps when it
comes to flourishing. And we're going to incorporate
this little flourish in the middle with a latte K because we have a
lovely letter there. So every time you have an AC and the letta
that stretches up, you can use this technique, and it looks really nice. It adds a lot of flow. Oh, I love it. It
kind of balances the flourish or the flourishes out a little bit here as well, because we could also add something at the bottom,
but we'll get to that. So for now, we have entry, exit, and one little flourish
in the middle of the wood. And that's how you kind of
start building them up. You can then start adding more but there's
definitely something to be said about some lettuce
being more flourishable. And we're just going to try and practice some of the very, very common lettuce
that you can flourish. And we're going to start
with the letter R. So the letter R is
such a popular, you know, flourish letter. You can definitely do lots
of different styles here. You can do the
underline flourish. You can do, like, a quick little flick,
you know, like this. I love, actually this little simplified flourish.
It looks really good. So try this with
me. So remember, the flourish itself is thin. So just practice doing
the letter a few times. Again, just repeating,
focusing on one letter at a time until it
starts to look better. So again, notice maybe some
areas you need to work on, maybe pick those areas out and you can even break this
letter down a little bit. You can just try
doing the downstroke and they actually flourish. Then another letter that is very commonly flourished is
the letter N and M, so you can flourish
them in a similar way. So again, we can do a
little underline flourish. Again, it is how you can spot the infinity
sign shape in it, which is not complete,
but, you know, we kind of focus on
that as we do it. And we can also try doing the letter Y and maybe doing like an
interesting little flourish. Again, can you see the
infinity sign shape? So that's what we're trying to apply and
think about as we do it. So try this again.
This one's quite fun. So you can see how it kind of goes
through the downstroke, so we stretch to the right, and then we stretch to the left. As you do this flourish, just make sure you have
enough room on the left. So you probably couldn't
do it if you had, like, G and Y because
that will interfere. So the letter G would interfere with Y or if you had
J and Y or Q and Y, you know, two D send the letters together,
that wouldn't work. But on its own, it
looks really good. And notice how all of these are like, really low flourishes. So these stretch
below the baseline. We can also practice some that kind of go above
the baseline in a minute. But let's also try this atiJFlourish. This
one's quite nice. It looks really fun.
We're just adding a little extra loop
inside the kind of usual loop and then finishing with a quick movement
to the side. And I'm going to join
this all up in a word, so we're going to do
the word journey. And as we finish the
flourish of the letter J, we don't really have a
connection stroke there. So try to position your letter out just quite close
to the letter J, not too far, so there
isn't a big gap. So it wants to look fluid. And let's just finish with
that lovely letter Y flourish, which can be quite big
and extend to the left. Now, let's look
at this so we can see that all the flourishes
are at the bottom. So I feel like we are missing something at the top. So
that's another thing. When you do flourishing, you want to balance
the top and bottom. So if you have two
flourishes at the bottom, you can then maybe add
two at the top, as well. So let's just try and
do that together. So we're going to have maybe
one flourish at the bottom, as we've done the letter J. And as we finish
with the letter Y, we could stretch
that stroke upwards, so we could do
something like this. So when we go down, and then we do the fish the actual
flourish above the words, you can see how I'm kind
of doing it in the air. And this really helps. When you're planning your
flourishes, for me, personally, it's really helpful
to kind of do them pretend do them before
you actually do them. And this brings us to
the end of the session, and I'm just going to go
over today's assignment. So the words we are
going to focus on are bird song, okay? And I'm thinking that it will be really nice
if you can try and implement at least one of these flourishes
that we've practiced. And what I'm actually
going to do is maybe demonstrate and part does most flourishable
letters in this phrase. You have something to refer to. So we can start with a lovely
entry stroke flourish. So we can focus on the letter B because it's
the beginning of the word, so the letter B, and you can
do it in different ways. You can just lengthen the
stroke at the beginning. You can do a secret flourish. You can do, like, a
little oval shape. It's really up to you. Now, the next
flourishable letter, I'd say is the letter. And again, we've
practiced it quite a lot. So you can do, like, a little
quick flourish like this, or you can do the
underline flourish and stretch it to the
left a little bit more. It's really up to
you. So you can even get creative and try
something else if you like. The letter D, the letter D gives a really good opportunity to do a detached flourish.
So you can try this. You can also experiment
with this, of course. You can take it further, or you can keep it very simplistic. So can also maybe it's the
end of the word, right? So you can also maybe try showing that flourish
in the exit stroke. So it's really up to you how far you take it
and how you do it, but see if you can try
and blend in some of these flourishes in your phrase as you join it all up nicely. Okay, and the word song, so the letter S is a really
nice letter to flourish. You can always blend
in a little loop. We did the similar
thing with the letter J, if you remember, we got the letter N. So again, I'll show you these too, but you can also try
something else if you like. So you can practice
these a couple of times. It's a really, really
good exercise. And the last letter of the word will be the
letter G. So again, you can kind of focus on
this as the EitrFlourish, or you can flourish, like the bottom of the letter. So this is what we did with
the lettuJ, if you remember. It's really similar. So I'm just kind of blending
in an extra loop. But you can also take
it up. So again, I'm kind of doing
a bit of planning. And you can do
something like this. So we're focusing on the
infinity, sign shape. And if you make it quite big, I feel like I often
find that looks really good a flourish is quite
big if it's above the word. Or maybe you can
actually make it a bit more round looking like this. So I think that might look
really good. So there we go. So just a few examples just to make you feel
a bit more confident, you know, so you have some
examples to refer to. But just try to get creative with this and see what
you can implement. See what you can blend in to this little phrase. I can't
wait to see your work.
5. DAY FOUR: Hi, everyone. I didn't
realize how dark it is. It got dark really quickly. I hope you're all doing well. I hope you're enjoying
the challenge. We have one more day to go and I hope you're
seeing some progress. If you have been practicing
for the past three days, I hope you're seeing some progress and
improvements, and I'm sure. I'm really enjoying
seeing all the photos. I can actually tell as well. I can see some progress, which is amazing because
it's only been a few days. Imagine how good it can get
if you keep practicing. So today is really fun. We'll talk about composition, I'll share some tips. We're going to do I think we can only manage to do
one or two phrases, but we're going to focus. We might embellish them as well. I'll share how you can include some lovely drawings
in your quotes. I think this is where
the fun begins. So when you do
phrases and you get to express yourself
a little bit more, you get to combine everything
we've practiced so far. I really hope you enjoy it. Grab your supplies
and let's dive in. Let's start today's practice by trying to get
into that really relaxed, gentle gliding feeling. So when the nip
touches the paper, try to be really gentle
on your upstrokes or these entry strokes
that are also thin because they
go to the side. And as you go down,
see if you can press down quite hard to make
your hand really heavy. And we're going to do
some individual lettuce. So, focusing on
the word blossom, we're going to try and do
every letter of the word. So we're starting
with the letter B. And as you do the letter B, see if you can
extend the beginning of the letter and the
end of the letter. Practice it a couple
of times before we do the letter L in a
very similar style. So try to work on that
really light touch, and you can achieve that by
relaxing your hand more. We're going to try
some lettuce O, so just extend the last
strou to the side. And if you find that it's a bit too much
that you need to stop. You can always divide this kind of last stroke into two parts. So as you do your letter O, just stop when you
approach the downstroke, pick up your pen for a second, and divide this stroke
into two parts. Maybe you do your letter
O in a different way. Maybe your loop is a little
bit smaller like this, so it's nice to try
different styles. Experiment a little bit,
but the main focus here is to just try to get
into a nice flow. We're going to do
a few lettuce S. I love doing my
letter S quite big. It's quite it's just
something I do in my style. So again, I'm dividing that
upstroke into two parts. It's a really good
habit, especially if your downstrokes are quite
thick and, like, really wet. You don't want to
smudge the ink in them, so I do sometimes divide that last stroke into two kind of sections,
and it really helps. And again, I'm just playing with the letters a little bit here, just trying different styles. You can do this with me or you can just do
this in one style. It's nice experiment. Okay, so we've done the letter
B, we've done L O. So we just have to
do the letter M. And we are constructing
the letter M. Out of these three shapes, so down stroke and then
this upside down U shape, which we call the
overturn, remember, and then a compound
curve shape at the end. But the trick here
is to start with a long horizontal stroke flowing into that first
part of the latter, and then finishing the latter with a longer stroke as well. And that last stroke can be, you know, varied. It
can be different. It can stretch up, or it
can stretch the side. I or maybe it can be a
bit, like, round looking. It's really up to you.
Maybe you don't want to do a loop like I've done
in these two examples, maybe you want to
keep it simple, so you can do your
entry stroke and go straight into down
stroke like this. So without a little
loop at the beginning, that can look really
good, as well. And they're going to do this
very short quote that says, Blossom by blossom, the spring begins.
It's really lovely. And we are going to focus on
a fairly simplistic style. We've practiced all the lettuce
out of the wild blossom, so hopefully they'll
feel quite good. And this one will be
quite free style. So normally I would plan my quote I'm going to
plan the second one. But this one, I
just want to keep this one quite kind
of free flowing. I want you to focus on your
technique a little bit more. So let's just consider this
as part of the warm up still, and it doesn't really matter if your composition
is a little bit. Off santa or a little
bit unbalanced. That's fine. We'll
do it on four lines, and the first line is blossom B. Okay? And I'll just
share some tricks. I'll just show you I can't explain my
thinking process here. So you can see that I've started the Wadblossom with
a longer stroke, so you can do it together. And as I finish the wad B, I'll also extend the last
stroke of the letter. And it kind of balances
it out nicely, so we get a kind of
complete looking, quite like flowy,
fluid looking line. Now, on the second line, we are going to do the
word blossom again, but that'll be the
only word, okay? So notice how I've
started it, like, much more to the right because we want to kind of balance
it out a little bit. It's a shorter word. It's going to be a shorter line. So there's no need to start
it all the way to the left. And again, I'm focusing on
my entry and exit strokes, and I'm actually using them as a little tool
to help me balance this line because you can always extend your first and your
last stroke of the word. And in doing so, you can control how much room your line takes and you can balance
it out if you need to. So I'll show you
a better example, but just kind of
keep that in mind. Now we're going
to do the spring. So that is quite a filler word. It doesn't need
to be big because it's not a very important word, so you can definitely
keep it a bit smaller, and then I'm going to
do spring quite big. So again, I'm just being very careful about my
composition here. So I'm trying to keep my spacing quite tight in the word spring because together
with the weather, it kind of takes a lot
of room on the line. So again, I'm being cautious
because I'm seeing that I'm approaching the end of the line, and I still need
to do the leti G. So this is how I'm
trying to control the line by making sure that my exit stroke doesn't
stretch to the side too much. So I kind of brought
it upwards a bit more. Does that make sense? So if I stretch my exit stroke
all the way to the right, my line would appear
too much to the right. So it'll just look
a bit imbalanced. And the last word
is the word begins, and it's quite an important
word in the phrase. So I'm starting it with
a very long stroke, just to take quite
a lot of room that otherwise it's just
going to be like a big gap at the beginning. I love doing this one that
is like a single word line. It looks really
good when you make those entry and exit
strokes, especially long. And we're just doing the
word. Let's do this together. And again, as you
finish your line, see how much you can
stretch that strop to the side without making it
look off center too much. There we go. So just try this
and see what it looks like. Maybe notice some
areas for improvement. You can make some notes. You know, that's
how we practice. We look at what we've done, and we just kind of
approach it with, like, some constructive criticism,
like in a good way, you know, we're seeing
what it is that we can pick out and improve. And that's how you
progress because there's no point in doing the
same thing over and over. You want to learn from
what you've done and, you know, what you've
tried want already. And that's the most
productive way of practicing. And let's just write author. So the quote is by Algernon
Charles Swinburne. It's really beautiful.
I quite like it. It's just, yeah, very, very appropriate for the
season, isn't it? Lovely. Okay, well done. So that was our first phrase,
like warm up. And now we're going to
do another little quote. And we're going to
plant this one. So just grab a pen or a pencil,
let's just write it out. So we have it in front of us. It's really, really useful. So it says, a bright
yellow primrose blowing in the spring, super short, but
it's very beautiful. I really love how you know, it's quite different.
It's not something. It's not something we see often. And you're going to analyze it. So just write it out first. And let's add the
author as well. So this quote by
William Allingham and, yeah, I think it's
going to look lovely, really beautiful in calligraphy. Okay, so let's plan it. So let's recognize the most important
words of the phrase. So these are the words that this sentence cannot
exist without. So, in my opinion, I think primrose is quite
important blowing and spring. So even by reading
this out on their own, we can understand the context of the sentence,
which is important. The rest are quite fill was, you know, like A, in and there. And let's plan how many
lines we're going to have. So let's say we'll do a bright
yellow on the first line. We're going to do primrose on the other lines line number two. Then we can do, I'm
just thinking we could do blowing because it's
quite an important white. We can have it on town
line on the third line. And then in the spring could
be on the fourth line. Of course, you can do
it in a different way. This is how I would do it. This is, how I think
is the easiest. Like it's quite an
easy way to read, but maybe you'll think
differently, which is fine. And we're going to begin. So we're doing the first line. Just grab maybe a fresh
page if you like. You're going to make
it quite pretty. So it can be like a nice
little thing on its own page. So a bright yellow. So I've started, you know,
I have lines already. Maybe you don't you don't
can draw some lines. So I'm starting glad to aid
with a nice entry stroke. And then notice how the word bright doesn't really
start with a long stroke. So because I'm being very cautious about how
much room I have here, I'm maybe keeping my
spacing quite tight. I'm definitely thinking
about it as I do it. And yellow as well, is not the shortest word. So I'm just being
quite cautious. I'm trying not to stretch my connection
strokes too much to decide and as I start to
do as I approach the end, and I realized that
actually, it's fine. You know, I have quite
a lot of room still. I can loosen up a bit, so I definitely just relax and I even stretch out
my exit row to the side. Okay? So just notice if
this kind of helps as well. Like, thinking about it
this way really helps, whether you need
to save spacing, whether you can stretch
your entry and exit trot is a little bit more naviger. So once you do your first line, you can maybe draw a little line where the
center of that line is. So I love doing this.
So just think about your first line because
all the other lines will kind of refer
to this fast line, and we'll try to adjust all
the other lines to this line. So it's nice knowing
where the center is. So let's do the word
prim rows next. And because it's
just on the town, you know, it's just
one word on this line, we can definitely space
it out a little bit more, make it a bit more
legible, easier to read. And notice that we
can still stretch those entry and exit strouts
to fill in those gaps. Because if we didn't do that, there would just be like
a big edge on each side. But it's nice to fill
that space with a bit more like, fluid movement. And this is about.
We'll actually add some embellishment, as well. So it's quite important to
have those longer lines, so we can attach
something else to them. Okay, so as I do
the work blowing, I'm trying to show a
bit of movement there. So I'm starting my entry
stroke with a little. I wouldn't call it a flourish, but just a slightly curved line. I'm also detaching the
letter L. Remember, we practiced this yesterday. Yeah, we did detach
flourish didn't we, so we can implement
some of that, and then blowing quite
a long word again. So just let's be fairly careful. We don't want to take too much room and make
it look off center. If that happens, that's
fine, of course. You know, you're
just practicing. But that's how we kind
of thinking about it. And here I'm just stretching that exit stroke and filling in that gap that has formed in between the second
and third line. And that's another little trick. We don't really want to see
big gaps between the lines. It's nice to keep everything
quite close together. And if it happens,
see if you can maybe blend in a little
flourish or extend your last stroke and
kind of weave it into that blank space so
it covers it a bit more. Okay, so the words in that are definitely fill of word so
they can stay quite small. And we're going to do the word spring and just being quite cautious again,
I may heat quite big. I don't want to run
out of room here, so I'm definitely kind of
doing it too big, probably. So there's something I'll do. So as I finish the letter G, I'm going to stretch
the upstroke of the letter all the
way up to save space. What a good little trick. Instead of stretching
it to the side, I'm not only saving space
because I'm going up, but I'm also filling in that gap in between the
third and fourth line. And just to balance everything
out a little bit more, I'm also going to add in a little entry stroke
on the latter I, which I didn't
have there before. But because I definitely went a little bit
too much the right, so I'm just balancing it out by adding something at the
beginning of the line, so it looks a bit longer. Okay, guys, well,
done, it might, you know, take you
longer to do this. So just pause the
video, cut you up. And when you're
ready, we are going to add a few embellishment here. So you can take this
as far as you like. It doesn't have to
look like mine, but it's pretty
maday's assignment, just to do this phrase and then maybe add a
couple of embellishments. I'll show you quite a
few things you can do. And you can pick and
choose, you know? You can just apply whatever
it is that you like. You can have your
own You can do, like your own little twist on
this. I would love to see. So I'm just focusing on
the entry and exit strokes of the white prim rows. And I'm just doing some
really simplistic leaves. And these longer
strokes are excellent because they kind of
act like a branch. You know, you can just build
on, and that's amazing. So I'm just doing
a very simple kind of leaf outline shape. I'm not really applying
any pressure here. So just do one side of the leaf and then mirror
it on the other side. And you can always do a
little detail in the middle, just like an extra line. And this lone looks
quite effective already. So we're not pressing
down when we draw. It's always like
mainly like, thin, thin strokes, thin lines and light pressure unless we want to
add some shadow. And I'm thinking actually of
doing, like, a flower head, so I'm thinking of a prim rose. Flower. And I'm just
trying to imagine. So it's got, like, a
soft kind of petals. And I'm just trying to do
five of them at the end of the letter G. So we got
another long stroke there. So kind of hideing
that stroke by going over with a little flour. And you can do
anything you like. So, you know, five or
six simple petals, and then you can show that there's, like, a
center of the flower. You can apply a bit of pressure and do a little
circle in the middle. You can then extend some leaves out of that flower head as well. You can do little shadow lines, just like maybe four lines or
three lines in each petal. It'll kind of look like
the shadow, which is nice. Maybe I'll do, like,
a big leaf there. So I'm just building up the
composition, filling it in. I'm thinking about
the other side. So I'll show you something
else I really enjoy doing. I actually love adding, like, a few flourishes,
like detached flourishes. They don't have
to be on lettuce, but they can be just around,
like in the background. And they look really,
really good and they fill up the space, like the background
space really quickly. So I normally love to turn
my page when I do it. And I just do these like
question mark shapes and there is a little bit of
a pressure there you can see that the line as I
go down a bit thicker. And then I just kind
of tuck it in and do a little like o shape
really in a thin way. And then I'm just
adding these lines. So we can do, like, short lines with a bit of pressure again. They're like, little sea curves. And this look really good. And I think it adds a bit of movement for the wad blowing,
which, you know, is nice. It kind of goes with the
whole meaning of the phrase. And yeah, definitely works. Again, I'm just blending
in some more leaves. And it starts to
look quite full. And I'm just thinking
what else I could add? I could do more
leaves on this side. It does take a bit
of thinking as well, so kind of trying to imagine
what it'll look like, and I love doing these kind of leaves that are slightly different
to those other ones. So these are quite
thick on the side. So you can definitely
play with the pressure. So when you do
something intricate, you probably want to
apply light pressure and when you want to show a
bit of contrast and like, darker color, you can
definitely press down. So keep going, see what else there is that
you can blend in. I'm just doing another
little flower there. Just keep working
around your phrase, finding little gaps, seeing where you can
blend something else. I'm just doing a similar
thing here with the letter A. I'm just extending some
little strokes there, thinking that it's like a
little bouquet and you can just extend some stokes out of it
and maybe do some leaves. Maybe you want to do
a different flower. You don't have to be amazing
at drawing to do this. You don't even have
to know how to draw. You can just use your
nib and just play with the pressure and simplistic, very simplistic outlines
because the thing is, we don't really
want to overfill it either calligraphy already
is looking quite effective. So anything we do in
the background should complement it shouldn't
be the main focus. So if we overdo it, it might just ruin the
composition, as well. So try to keep it
fairly simplistic. You could also add something
at the top and at the bottom of the frase if you feel
like it's missing something. And here, I'm just applying
a bit of pressure to do, like, a filled in leaf. So it's like a teardrop shape, so you can definitely
do that by just pressing down a little bit. And then, again, those kind of heavier looking leaves this is actually a really
good exercise as well. It helps you develop that
muscle memory, stroke control. So you can also just
draw into practice, and you'll get better
calligraphy at the same time because you're just gaining a
better control of your pen. And I just find
this so relaxing. I love decorating quotes and just feeling
in the background, and it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy it, and I hope and I hope
you like it, too. So I might do another little
kind of flourishing element here maybe extend
another longer stroke and do a little flower there. You can always colour
this in as well, once it dries,
obviously it's wet now. And also be careful
with smudging. I know how easy it is to smudge something
happens all the time, especially if you're
left handed, I think. So so once this dries, you can just go over with a
bit of a color if you like. Maybe adding a bit of yellow here and there, maybe
a bit of green. It could be a marker,
it could be a pencil, like any medium would work here, as long as it's dry,
so just make sure that it's completely
dry before you do that. I hope you're enjoying this. I might grab my yellow pen and just maybe coloring
a few elements here. So thank you so much
for watching this and for doing Day four. I'll see you tomorrow, and I can't wait to see
your work from today.
6. DAY FIVE: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the last day
of the challenge. It's day five. How do these challenges always
just whiz by so quickly? I will never understand. It must be because
we've been having so much fun and I
hope you enjoyed it. We have one last
lesson, which is today. Let's give it our all and it's going to be a
really fun session. We are exploring
different styles. This session is
about helping you to uncover maybe some interesting things
about your own style. We'll try different variations. We'll try lettering in a baseline style which
is really simplistic. We'll try bouncy calligraphy. We'll try a really
well spaced style and also a flourished style because we practice flourishing already, so we can implement
a few things. I suppose what I want
this session to be is just a really good
tool helping you decide what it is that
you like or don't like. We're going to
assess our own work and there be some exercises. Try to make those
stylistic decisions. Think of things like whether you like having all your
letters on the baseline, whether you like lecturing at the slant or keeping it
a bit more straight, whether you like
bouncing your lettuce, up and down,
changing the height, whether you love tight
lettering, spaced out. Think of flourishes. Do you
think if you imagine style, your unique style, do you
see a lot of flourishing in there or do you
keeping quite simplistic? All of these little things will really help you build
your confidence in calligraphy because you'll just be familiar with your style. You'll know what you stand for
in your lettering journey, and it's quite an
important process, I think, trying lots of different things and then just picking the things you love, building your own
library of styles. Remember to push your work, give someone else a bit of
encouragement in the group, and I can't wait
to see your work. Let's get started. We'll start today's practice
with some drills. I really love this one. It
really helps your hand warm up quickly and kind of develop that flow as
you do it, as well. So think of this as the
lettters or the lettu J. And we're just going to
do like a chain of them. But notice how I'm stopping every time I approach
the downstroke. So every time I touch the
downstro there little pause. And then we're just
going to do another one that's exactly the same, but notice how you're stopping. I recommend doing this over like three lines if you're
using a similarly, you know, rude pad or
maybe yours is dotted. So try to do it fairly
big and then have your stopping point at the waistline, which
is the middle line. And that would just kind of
help to keep it all balanced. And you will get into
a nice rhythm with this, applying those pauses, having that little
break in between, and it should feel really
therapeutic. I love this one. It really warms your hand up. And next we're going to focus
on the connection stroke. So very often, it'll
look like a U shape, and we'll just try and do it in different styles because we'll apply this later in the lesson. So let's start this
one where we do a downstroke and then we just
round it up at the bottom, keeping it on the baseline, and then we just kind
of extend upwards. So there's like a
thin stroke there. So it looks nice and
open, fairly simplistic. So we're going to
do another one, and we're going to add
a bit of bound to it. So this time, it's going to look a little bit more V shaped
rather than U shaped. So very often when
you finish a letter, you'll get this shape transitioning from one
letter into another. Sometimes it can be
slightly different when you do the lettuce
P, for example. But most of the time, this
is very very common to have a joining upstroke
that looks like this. And then the last one we'll do, we'll try to do a downstroke
and then space it out. So we're going to stretch that upstroke all the
way to the side, so we create, like, a
big, big opening. Okay. So this is quite bouncy. It's quite V shaped. So let's try this same kind of example where
it's quite spaced, well spaced, but we're going to round it up at the bottom. So this is more of
a baseline style. Well, done when you're ready,
we're going to continue. And the next exercise will
be to join up lettuce A, B, and C in all of these
different examples. So you can see that we are
finishing the letter A, and we're catching the letter B. So the connection stroke. So the joining upstroke
is quite simplistic. It's on the baseline, it's quite round looking. And as we finish the letter C, we are also trying to apply
that technique where we're rounding it up at
the bottom and we're stretching the exit
stroke to the side. Okay. And when we try
the bouncy version, you'll see how that U shape
transforms into the V shape. And it looks quite,
you know, up and down. It's definitely a
bit more sharp. There's, like, sharp
stroke at the bottom. So again, it's more V shaped. So try to apply this, see how that feels. We're also going to do, like, a really well
spaced version. And here, the trick is to stretch the last stroke of
the lettuce to the side. So we're definitely stretching. Remember, we practice spacing, so we're trying to get those bigger gaps
between the lattice. It's just a really good warm up. Keep going. And we're
going to do A, B, C again, one last time. And this one will
be quite round. So the connection
strokes are round, but also very well spaced. And as you finish the letter C, again, just show that as well. Imagine that there's another
letter after the letter C, so we're finishing fully with a beautiful
long exit stroke. Well, then, it's just a
really, really good exercise. And what we'll do next
is we'll pick one w, and we're going to
do the word garden. And this first style is going
to be quite simplistic. I like to call it
a baseline style, so everything's going to be
sitting on the baseline. Quite simplistic.
We're not going to stretch the lettuce too far. So we're starting with the
lettu G. Nice and slow. Stop. In between the shapes, it's really good practice. Build each letter out of shapes. And notice how everything is positioned neatly
on the baseline. You can apply a bit more slant. My lettering is
definitely quite upright, which is very common
in modern calligraphy, but maybe yours is
a bit more slanted. My ink is really
playing up today, but I think it's my nib because I'm using a different nib today. Just a good example, it shows how you get used to one nib, and then when you try
another, it's playing up. Okay, so that's
the first version. Now we're going to try
doing, like, a lovely, bouncy style where we apply
that V shaped technique, right, so we can bounce
the lettuce up and down below the
baseline and back up. So, starting with the letter G, I might add a really slight
bounce to the letter A, but I think it will be the
letter R that I really go for and just stretch all
the way below the baseline. The letter D can also stretch a little bit
lower and then back up. We can also apply a bit of
bounces to the letter E, just like a subtle bounce. See how it kind of
stretches below as well, and maybe a bigger
bounce on the letter N. So this is definitely
my natural star. So again, observe,
see which one of these felt like easier
or more natural. Okay, so it's time to practice this word in a flourished style. So we're going to think of those flourishable
letters again. So the letter is
quite a good example. The letter N. We can do a detached flourish on the
letter D. So nothing new. We covered it all the other day. I'm starting the letter G with a little kind of it's
not an entry flourish, but I love flourishing
the bottom of the letter. I'm doing a bigger
loop on the letter R, and I'm going to Dtach the letter D. So it's
a bit tricky there because we don't have
a lot of room if we make the loop of
the letter quite big, but see if you can
work around it. You can do it in your
own style as well. It doesn't have to
be as mine here. And we're going to
do the letter end flourish to finish it nicely. So see how you have
a nice balance. There's some
flourishing at the top, and there's some
flourishing at the bottom, and it looks quite
nice and neat. There we go. Well,
the everybody. So we're going to do one
more style in a minute. When you're ready, you
can pause the video, of course, just to catch up with everything,
and we'll continue. When you're ready,
we're going to do this in a really well spaced style. So this is where we'll be stretching those
joining upstrokes sideways to create a bigger gap between the lettuce, okay? So I might start this with
a little entry stroke. I feel like it looks
a bit better when you start with a nice stroke at the beginning, when
you do this style. So I'm trying to
space my lattice. So this is a good example. There's definitely something
wrong with my nib. So if you ever notice
that suddenly, your ink doesn't flow
properly or, you know, something just feels a bit off, maybe change your nib
and see if it persists. If it does, it might be
your ink or your paper, but if it doesn't, it's
definitely your nib. So I've actually
changed my nib now, so we'll see if the flow
is a little bit better. Okay, so now we're going to do this again with another word. So we're going to practice
the white butterfly. Really beautiful.
It's a bit longer. It's on the longer side, but we've got this, okay? So we're going to start
with the letter B and then just do all the
lettuce nicely spaced. We're starting with
the baseline style. Okay, so everything's nice
and neat on the baseline. Now, because it is
a fairly long word, I am keeping my letters
close together. Otherwise, I just find
that if I space them well, if I space them more than this, the word is just going
to take the whole page. So for longer words, it's nice to control
that spacing. So see if you can do that. Keep everything nice and kind
of tight together in a way. And then I'm going to join my cross line over the
lettuce T kind of in one go. I do find that it's
a good little trick. Okay, so there we go. So that's just like a
really simplistic style. Now we're going to
do a bounty style. So definitely adding a lot
of bounds, keeping those, joining upstros a bit more
sharp, taking it slow. Now, I've changed my name, and I can see it's
still playing up, so it must be my ink. The thing is, we've been
practicing for five days, so what happens is,
'cause, you know, these sessions are
not very long, but if you have your ink
uncapped for more than, you know, like half
an hour or 1 hour, it will start to evaporate. Obviously, it evaporates
when it's uncapped. So it thickens up naturally, and I think because it's been quite a few days and we've
been practicing consistently, maybe you're noticing something
really similar, actually. So from time to time, I love to add a few drops of
water to my ink, just a few drops, literally, like two or three drops, and it's such a game changer. So if you're struggling
with ink flow, that might be the
case. So give it a go. Just to start with one drop, then add two, and then maybe
three and see if it changes. Okay, so there we go. I'm going to do a florish style, so let's try this to get there. So I'm starting.
I'm thinking again. So I haven't planned
this, so you can definitely spend a bit
more time planning it, or you can just
follow my example. But I've started it with a
little kind of entry flourish. We've practiced some
of that before. And then, obviously, the letter
R is quite flourishable. Now, R and F combination here is definitely a
little bit tricky. So notice how I'm trying to flourish the letter
F with this, like, detached stroke, but I'm also realizing that I am kind of
running out of space there. So it's definitely a bit tricky. It's nice to try this
in pencil first. But just see if you can try
this and see how that feels. You can definitely try
this more than one, so you can even try this in pencil and just kind
of plan it out. Sometimes that really,
really helps when it comes to flourishing.
But there we go. Okay, just notice how you
feel about this style. Like, for me, I think it's just a little bit over the top. My natural style is
definitely the second one. But notice, again, we're making those tiny little
decisions and just notice if you like
something from this one. Okay, so let's do
the last version of this style, number four. So everything is going
to be quite spaced. And in this particular style, I love to keep my lettuce
a little bit shorter. So now the time my lettuce use is quite small, quite short. And I want you to notice this, and I'm sure you know, a lot of you will resonate
with this a lot. So over these past five days, have you noticed that some days your ink
was flowing better. You were feeling better. You know, everything was just
going a little bit easier. And some days, you'll notice that the ink
flow is in there, the nip feels scratches,
something is just off. And that's just how it is. Some days, you'll feel easy, and some days, it'll
be really hard work. So if I was going
to observe mine, I would say that today feels
a little bit off for me. But I'm just sharing
it authentically because it's very normal
and it does happen. And we all get those days. Even though I've been
practicing for ten years, I still get those days, and I've just learned to know that it doesn't mean anything that I can
come back tomorrow. Maybe I'll be more relaxed, maybe I'll be more in flow, just in general, you
know, maybe I'll have a lighter touch and
it'll be better. So just remember that and try to think of it
that way as well. Okay, my lovely participant. So this is the last
challenge of the challenge. And the last assignment
is to let the word grow in four different styles,
following this example. So just like we done with
the word butterfly, okay? Actually, let's do growth
because it's a bit longer, and there's a bit more potential
for, like, flourishing. So yeah, that work
will be better. So yeah, I can't wait to see. I can't wait to see your result. And do let me know. How you're feeling? Have you noticed any progress?
I'm sure you have? And let me know which style feels the most natural to you. At the moment, it
can always change, but which one are you leaning
towards to right now? Maybe it's a blend of both.
Maybe it's a blend of two. I I would love to hear that. Thanks so much,
everybody. Well done.
7. Well done!: Then for completing
the challenge, I hope you're feeling
much more confident. I hope that you've
picked up some really, really important
tips that you can carry with you throughout
your practice. If you'd like to learn with me, if you'd like to continue
learning with me, check out my Instagram at
Creative Field Design, where you'll find a
lot of inspiration, stay tuned with the upcoming
challenges and courses. And I just love to see
what you've created. If you don't mind sharing, you can always post on Instagram, tag me, and I would love to have a look
how far you've come. Thanks so much for joining
me and see you next time.
Alina Snepste
