Dip Pen Calligraphy for Beginners: Master the Basics with Confidence

1. Hello and welcome!: Hello, everyone, and welcome to my beginners Dian Calligraphy course. You are at the right place. If you want to progress with this skill, maybe you've never tried anything calligraphy related before, that's absolutely fine. This course is super beginner friendly, or maybe you're here because you just want to go back to the foundational work to just make sure that you have very strong basics and foundations that you can then build upon, which is very important in calligraphy, especially because without those foundations, without those basics, it's really hard to make real progress. So here we are. We're going to refine everything. We're going to take it step by step. We'll start with some really basic exercises like just practicing some drills and learning about the basic strokes of calligraphy. Then we're going to learn to form Lorics latte, and I'll show you how all of those basic strokes make up so many lettuce. It's really amazing when you see it all come together. It's really exciting. He'll also practice some uppercase lettus that are really beautiful. And that's when you can really kind of start making your calligraphy flow a little bit more. We'll then dive into letter joining, and I'll share some tips on how to make your spacing a bit wider or a bit more narrow, how to be in control of your spacing, and we'll try some different styles. It's going to be a lot of fun. From there, it's all about just practicing some short words, some short phrases, try not to overwhelm yourself with really long pieces. So we're going to keep it very kind of step by step, and by the end of the course, you'll be able to letter your own greeting card, short quote. It's going to be exciting. So if you signed up for this course and you've never seen my face before, I'm a leaner. I'm a calligraphy artist and teacher. I'm also a creative business mentor. I have been practicing calligraphy for ten years, over ten years, over a decade, which means that I've learned so much and I want to share it all with you. I want to collapse time for you so you don't have to go to all those little bits that come up in your practice, and then, you know, it takes time to kind of overcome them and learn how to work around them. So I'm here to really kind of put everything on a plate for you in a very structured course that will help you progress. I'll be sharing everything you need to know. So it's really up to you how much time you can dedicate for your practicing. I would say shorter sessions have better the longer sessions. So even by doing like 20 minutes a day is excellent. If you can squeeze that in, that's absolutely amazing. I'll keep it fresh, I'll keep it fun, and I'll keep it productive as well. I hope you're excited. I hope you've got your tools ready to go. So let's begin with the first lesson. 2. Supplies: In this lesson, we're just going to get familiar with all the supplies you'll be using. So we'll need our pen holder, and I highly recommend using the speedball pen holder. It's a straight pen holder, which is important, and it's very beginner friendly. So it's suitable for lefties and right handed people, which is wonderful. There are also oblique pan holders, but I highly recommend starting with the straight one. They'll also need our nib, and I highly recommend learning with a Nico G nib. So this nib is just wonderful for beginners. It achieves beautiful thick down strokes and very, very fine hairline strokes, which is what we want in Caligafy. And it's fairly flexible. It's really, really good for beginners. I can't recommend it enough. I use it for everything. Then we'll also need ink, and I normally buy this sumi ink, and I've tried countless black calligraphy inks, and this is what I always come back to. And I really, really love this ink. So I normally just get a little pot, like a glass jar, and I pour it in there, and then I keep it in there. Just remember to shake it. Before you pour it. Always always give it a good, good shake. So that's our pen, nib, and our ink, and also paper. Paper is very important. In calligraphy. We want to letter on smooth, fairly thick paper. And I really love this HP color choice. Paper, it's in 160 GSM. Again, you can find all the links, all the supplies. Just check the materials needed section is right at the beginning. I highly highly recommend this, especially if you're printing your worksheets. Now, if you want to just practice and have a book, like a little notepad to keep everything together, I highly recommend these rodeo pads, and this one's dotted. So I highly recommend the dotted ones in particular. They're really good. I absolutely love them because you have those dotted lines, and they just act as baselines when you're lettering, and that can be really helpful. So you'll need to insert the nib into the pen holder, and this is how you do it. You just kind of slot it in there. Nice and snug, so it doesn't fall out, obviously. And this is where it kind of wants to be. So you push it as far as it goes. Try to be gentle when you're handling your nib and try not to handle it too much because it can just interfere with the ink flow later on our hands have like, natural oils, so we don't want to handle it too much. And here we are ready to practice. 3. How to hold the pen: In this lesson, I'll demonstrate how to hold your pen to achieve beautiful flowing calligraphy. So we're going to begin by just positioning our index finger right on top of the pen holder. Then we're going to grab it with our thumb and middle finger on the side. Let's position our wrist flat on the page with the nib pointing down straight. Okay, so the wrist is flat. The nib is pointing down. So the idea is that you want to find that perfect sweet spot in between having your wrist flat and then resting your side of the hand on paper. So somewhere in between, your wrist doesn't need to be completely flat. So the angle we'll be holding our pen at is really important. So we don't really want to hold it upright. What we're aiming for is a nice 45 degrees slant from pay Pot. So if you point your nib down, try to look for this like 45 degrees slant. Now, the lower, the better I'd say. So so having your pen holder slanted down will just make it so much easier to achieve thick down straw and just make everything flow a little bit more. So just try to slant it towards yourself, so it's pointing at your chest. Now again, your wrist is kind of flat, so try to find that perfect spot that feels comfortable. Try to relax your hand, try not to grip your pen too hard. And again, just make sure that your nib is pointing down, so it's straight. So you're not rotating it to the right or to the left, it doesn't want to be just kind of flat on the page, if that makes sense. When you're lettering, you might notice that you're pointing your neighbor towards the corner of the page, towards the right or the left corner. That is fine if you're trying to achieve a slant. You can also try to rotate your page. Some people find it very comfortable to rotate your page. Now, again, this will come in handy when you're trying to do calligraphy at a sat and slant, which we'll do a lot, you'll just notice that sometimes, you'll kind of naturally adjust and sometimes your neighbor won't be pointing down straight like this, and that's fine. Now, let's try applying some pressure. So when we apply pressure, when we press down hard, you'll see that the twines of the nib open up and you'll see that they kind of split. You see there's like a split happening. So let's try this together without any ink. We're just going to press down hard and then imagine that we are doing a downstroke, so we're just gliding up and down. So when you go down, you apply a bit of pressure. Now, let's also try going up where we don't actually apply any pressure at all. We're just gliding our hand really gently up. So just try to get used to holding your pen correctly, applying pressure when you go down and gliding your hand up very gently with no pressure. So these are so this is the number one rule in calligraphy. But we go down when we do downstrokes, any downward movement, we're going to press down harder. And when we go up, we're going to release. So we're going to go really, really lightly. So all the downstrokes will end up being thick and all the upstrokes will end up being thin. So just play around with positioning and pressure, and I'll see in the next lesson. 4. Basic strokes: In this lesson, I'm going to demonstrate how to dip your pen into ink, and we're going to practice the basic strokes of calligraphy. So let's go ahead and dip our pen. So you'll see that in your name. There's a little hole, and it's called a vent. So as you dip, try to dip just past that little hole, submerging kind of like half of your nib just above that little went hole. We definitely don't want the actual pen holder touching the ink, and I highly recommend either shaking off the excess or maybe just wiping your nib on the side of the jar after dipping just to kind of get rid of the excess. You can always have a look, so you'll always see there's a bit of ink. On the back of your name, it doesn't need to be a lot. Even just like this is actually quite a lot. So you'll get used to it. So the inkflow is something that will come naturally slowly. So this is where we just trying to be patient and gets to know it, gets to learn a little bit, and adjust as needed. So let's just practice dipping and creating these down strokes. So we are dipping our pen, and then we're applying heavy pressure as we go down, gliding our hand down. Now, if this happens, if your stroke kind of looks like an outline, that just means that you run out of ink, and that's fine. You just need to re dip. We always want to try and dip in advance, you know, if possible, it's really hard at first, and you'll get used to it the more you do it. Now, if this happened, if you get a big blob coming out of your nib, that just means that there's too much ink in there. So try to dip a bit less. So try not to go past that little hole too much. So just practice a little bit. And sometimes, if you do over dip or if you just want to clean your nib, you can always use a bit of tissue to gently wipe it. And while we're talking about ink, let me just share a few tips here. Sometimes it's a good idea to give you in a little star, especially if you're practicing for a while, especially if you're using colorful or metallic inks. And I love using the other side of the panhodaT star. It's a nice little trick. And try to be quite mindful of your inks consistency. Sometimes it'll thicken up, especially if you're leaving your jaw uncapped for a long time, and you'll just need a couple of drops of water. Okay, if you're feeling ready, we are going to go ahead and start practicing the basic strokes, and we are going to begin with this fast page. So make sure your wi book is printed, or if you're doing this in your own guidelines, you can always refer to the video and just copy me here. And we're going to start by practicing down strokes. As we glide our pen down, we are going to try and go slowly. We're going to press down hard so the split happens and a lot of ink flows through. Let's not forget to dip our pen. These are fairly big. You might want to dip your pen quite frequently. It'll be obvious when you run out of ink. Again, just adjust. It's very normal to run out of ink or to have big blobs coming out of your nib. If you're doing this for the first time, just let's be patient and you'll only get bet as you practice. So keep going. So on these guidelines, we have a slant. We have a slant line, and it's at 60 degrees. So in modern calligraphy, you want to go for, like, a 55 to 60 degrees slant. So these are 60 degrees. Now, it's quite slanted. It might feel quite unnatural. And this is where you can definitely rotate your page a little bit. So depending whether you are left handed or right handed, you might want to do this clockwise or anticlockwise, it's really up to you. But it can really help. I find that rotating it slightly anticlockwise helps me get the slant a little bit better. And just for the sake of following the guidelines properly, I'm doing it here, but I wouldn't recommend slanting or rotating your page too much. It can get a bit confusing later on. So normally I just try to keep it fairly straight. So there we go. So these are downstrokes, really juicy, really thick. Don't be afraid to press down. Now we're going to try upstrokes. So these are the opposite. These are going to be super light, maybe even a little bit quicker. Now, these will look super shaky and not very pretty. If this is the first time you're doing this, I just want to put it out there. That's very normal if they're shaky, if they're inconsistent, if it's hard to keep them straight, just now that it's very normal and we're just warming up here, we're just practicing. It's definitely not about what it looks like. Here, we're just practicing. Mine as well, sometimes are quite inconsistent and it's very normal. It's really hard to get that control, especially if you're warming up or if you haven't been lettering for a while, or if you're new to this, obviously, just go with it. Whatever happens, just give it go very light, thin upstrokes. Now, this is interesting. So we're going to do another thin stroke that also goes up, which is called the entrance stroke, and this is something you'll see often when we begin the letter. So it just makes it look a bit more complete. You'll also see this when you're joining letters up and the connection stroke looks just like this very often. So let's just practice this one with a lot of precision. It's much easier than the previous one because it's smaller, it's shorter. And we can just make it a bit more focused and do it a bit slower with a bit more intension. Still taking it fairly slowly. There we go well done so that's the entrance stroke. We're going to practice some under tant as well, and it's just a U shape really, but it's such a good stroke to practice, and this is why it gets a little bit tricky. So we're going to transition from thick into thin. We're playing with pressure here, so we're starting thick and then we are starting to lift the pressure as we go down and then finish, really thin. Now, take your time here. I'm doing quite a few of these. I've been doing this for a long time, so I've definitely got that rhythm going already. So please take your time. You can definitely just do maybe four or five or just do the whole line, whatever feels right for you. I keep going to demonstrate it. You can look up and you can always see that I'm demonstrating it. So just refer to this example, but you can go five times slower if you need to. And I actually really encourage going slowly. Calligraphy loves slow, gentle movement. This is definitely not something we want to rush. So to help you make that transition a bit more smooth, just make sure that you're kind of thinking about it in advance. So as you go down with your down stroke, try to think ahead and start lifting that pressure a little bit earlier than you think you need to to get into the thin stroke. So it all happens kind of at the bottom of the stroke when we shift from thick into thin. Well, the, just do a few of those. If you need to pause the video, go ahead. It's a self pased course. You can definitely do that and be in control of how quickly you're watching this. And when you're ready, we're going to try some overtons. So overtones are really fun, so they're just pretty much the same as the undertons, but they're upside down. So this time we're starting with a thin stroke. So we're starting thin, going slowly up and then rounding it up at the top and then dropping down with a heavy, heavy stroke. Now, we are still trying to follow the guidelines, try to follow the slanted line. You can always start your shape on the actual slant line just to help you with that slant. And also try to keep both of these strokes quite parallel. So a very common mistake is to open it up too much so that it looks quite open and stretched almost. So we definitely want to keep both strokes parallel to one another, like train tracks. So everything is very parallel. That's the best way to think about it. But keep going. Again, do a few and try to do it really, really slowly. Well done. When you're ready, we're going to try some compound curves. Now, this shape is really interesting. We're going to see this a lot in lettuce like and H. And here we're going to try two different ways. So there's one that starts with a thin stroke, then goes into thick. And there's one that starts with thick, then goes into thin and back into thick. So maybe let's just pick one and just do one way a couple of times. Otherwise, it's just too much multitasking and thinking. So let's just maybe do thin up, thick down and thin up. Again, it's like we're joining both of these shapes that we practice, overtons and under tens together in one go. These are quite small, so it shouldn't feel too hard in a way that you need to stop or dip your pen. We can definitely just do them in one go. Again, try to keep everything parallel, maybe try to focus on the slant again, follow the slant lines as much as you can. You don't have to be super strict with it, but it's nice to try and keep it quite consistent and take it slowly. There are a lot of pressure changes here, and you can help yourself by just slowing down, focusing, making these intentional. Slowing down really, really helps. And they're going to try some ovals, as well. So it seems like a little shape, but there's quite a lot to it. So now it is the point that I'm starting the shape from. So I'm starting it with a thin line, then going down and then going thin again, joining up to that initial thin. So we're starting it kind of from the middle on the right side, so going up, down, up, up, down and up and just joining those two thin strokes up at the end. So again, take it slow. Breathe. Remember to breathe. Try not to hold your breath. This is something I hear a lot. A lot of students just hold their breath because they're focusing so much. So this is my reminder for you to breathe. Just let go. Try to relax your hand a bit more, drop your shoulders, rest your elbow, just make it comfy and try not to overthink. It's not about what it looks like. I'll keep reminding you because I know that a lot of students get frustrated when they have big blobs of ink on their page or things don't look very consistent. That's very normal, and I just want you to know that right from the beginning, you're just learning. Well done. Okay, when you are ready, we are going to try some of these ascending loop shapes. So at the beginning of the workbook, I talked about guidelines. So I hope that you're familiar with the way the lines are called. So this shape goes all the way to the ascender line, and there's a little loop formed at the top. Hence, it's called an ascending loop. So it's a really common shape. Again, we'll see this a lot in Licase lattice. So let's practice this thoroughly. So we are starting the shape from the baseline of the guidelines, and then we're forming the loop at the top and we are positioning the actual shape on the baseline. Again, trying to go slowly. So starting with the loop, see if you want to slow down there at the top, slow down a little bit and then drop down a bit quicker maybe with a downstroke. So we're starting to apply a little bit of rhythm to our lettering as well. So maybe start the loop really, really slowly and then just go a bit faster as you go down. That might help you kind of build up that momentum. And wherever you are, see if you can slow down a little bit more. I always see my students rush, and it can be actually really, really hard to slow down. But that's when the magic happens. Trust me, the slower you go at the beginning, the more everything will sink in. You don't need to do as many as I'm doing here. Just do what feels comfortable. Let's remember to dip our pen, as well. It's normal if you run out a thing. It's normal if you dip too much and a big blob comes out. All those things are normal. Just keep going, keep practicing. And we're going to try the opposite or we're going to do a descending loop, which means that we are dropping the shape below the baseline and it stretches all the way to a descend line, which is the fast line right at the bottom. Okay, so we're starting with a thick downstroke, trying to follow the slant lines, even a little bit. Doesn't have to match the slant lines. It's actually quite flexible. In modern calligraphy, your slant can be whatever you want. It doesn't have to follow anything specific. These are just recommendations. But because modern calligraphy is so expressive, you can definitely just play around. My calligraphy, for example, is quite upright naturally, but I love using slant lines because it keeps everything quite consistent, and that's why that's why we are practicing the slant line. There we go. So there's a big pressure change at the bottom, so try to go a bit slower and then just lift again, maybe a bit earlier than you think you need to to get that smooth transition. Well done, so these are the basic straws of calligraphy. You can do some extra practicing in the space below. 5. Lowercase alphabet part 1: Now that we practice the basic strokes of calligraphy, we are going to go ahead and form each letter. So we're going to start with a lowercase. And in this worksheet, you'll see that every letter has its own little formula, if you will. So you'll see that each letter is built out of shape. So we have a look at the letter A. So we can see that it starts with the O shape, followed by the U shape. And when both of these are put together, we get the letter A, and let me just demonstrate. So the reason we are trying to find shapes within lattice is because we stop in between the shapes. So now is how I've done the fast shape, I stopped, and then I attached the U shape, and obviously it's not all way up. We're kind of finishing the U shape a bit earlier, so it does look like the letter A. And again, starting with the one shape, stopping and then attaching the neck shape. So this little pause in the middle is super, super important. Now, you might feel a bit strange at the beginning, and you might think that, that would just take me ages to do any words or phrases. But the truth is, you get into a nice rhythm, the more you do it, and these little pauses just become really automatic. So carry on practicing the letter A free hand a few times. Try to go really, really slowly. Notice how slowly I'm going here, focusing on each shape, trying to follow the slant line, keeping everything consistent. And that little pause in between the shapes is the perfect opportunity for dipping. So you can dip your pen when you're pausing. And when I say pause, it doesn't mean that you need to stop and go make yourself a cup of tea. That little pause is really quick, like one or 2 seconds just to kind of help you reset, prepare for the next shape. So now that you've done one line, just have a look at your letters A and pick one that looks the best for you. They might look rubbly, they might look shaky, and that's very normal if you're just starting out. Well done. We are now going to have a look at the letter B. So the letter B starts with the Asenda loop shape. And then we're attaching this little shape that we haven't really practiced. But if you have a closer look, it looks like the overturn. It starts in the same way, we go up, thin, thick down, and then we're just attaching a little loop at the bottom. You can also think of this as an inverted C shape. What's important here again is that we're pausing in between. Now, another place where you can pause is when you're doing the last stroke. Now this is what I'm doing here, I've done the first shape. I'm just re dipping my nib to make sure it has enoughing. Now I'm doing the second shape, and I'm stopping when I get to the downstroke and then I'm starting that little tail at the end, which is called the exit stroke of the latter separately. So again, getting to the downstroke, stopping, and then kind of avoiding that downstroke and then starting the little tail on the other side. So once again, doing the second shape, getting to the downstroke point. Stopping and then extending that little upstroke separately. So we're having a little pause there. There are actually two pauses here. One after the first shape of the latter, and the second, when we hit this downstroke, of the second shape. And then we stop there and then extend the upstroke. So the reason we're making that little pause at the end is because when you go through your downstroke really quickly with an upstroke, you might smudge the ink out of your downstroke. So sometimes it's a good idea to kind of avoid it, but you don't have to do it always. I normally just judge and see how wet my downstroke is. And then if it's really wet, I'll try to avoid it or if I haven't dipped for a while, I'll just go through it. But it's definitely a good habit that you can start building having that little pause there. Well done. So we've done two lettuce so far. Now we're going to car on, and we'll find the lettuce C. Now, the lettuce C is just kind of like a shape in a tone, so we are not really dividing it into any particular shapes. We're just doing it as one flowy, flowing shape. So it starts in a very similar way to the letter O, to the O shape. So we're starting with a little upstroke at the beginning and then going down thick and then finishing with thin. Now, let's try and do it very slowly. So as you start your upstroke, try to be very precise, very intentional. As you go down, pick up a bit of momentum there. And as you finish, and this is important. As you finish the shape, you want to slow down even more. So you might feel a bit counterintuitive to slow down right at the end. So I see this a lot in beginnings that they kind of, like, flick the last stroke. They kind of have that fog for the first part of the letter. But then they're kind of losing up and just let go at the end. So let's try and keep that focus right till the end. Well done. When you're ready, we're going to have a look at the letter D. And here we can actually find three shapes. So let's have a look. Let's break it down. We're starting with the O shape. We're attaching this acenda loop shape, and notice how this acenda loop shape merges with the letter U with the underturn shape. And we kind of merging them both together and they become one, forming this like L shape. So in theory, there are kind of two shapes here, forming the letter D, so we're doing the first shape. The letter O, then stopping and then starting with a loop up down and up. And it's, so useful to be able to understand how every letter is formed. So keep going, fill in this line with this shape, try to go really slowly. You don't have to do as many as I'm doing here. Even if you just do one or two, even if you just trace in the example ones, that's good already. But the idea is that we want to make sure that we understand these letters, we practice them again and again, we do a lot of repetition before we move on to anything else. So this could be something you definitely do again and again. Well, done. So let's have a look at the letter E. Similarly to the letter C, this is a one stroke letter, in a way, so we can attach a little entrance stroke there. And that's what we're going to do. So we're going to start with the entrance stroke, stop, and then start forming the loop with a thin stroke. Again, I'm just making sure that my nib is loaded with ink. Sometimes it can be hard to dip when you're focusing. You're going to forget to dip. Okay, so the entry stroke first, loop pause, and then we're starting to form the letter E with the loop. And notice how this letter sits within these two lines. So this is the X height, something we call the X height space, and the letter E just kind of sits there. So we're practicing like a very simplistic baseline style here. We will be exploring another expressive style, which is called bouncy calligraphy. But to do that, we need to make sure that we understand the balance and the proportions of the letters first. Well done. Okay, so the letter F looks scary, but we want to break it down. So again, we're going to start with the same stroke like the letter E, so the entry stroke. And then we're going to do this kind of like the ascender shape. So we go up down, but we're also attaching this upstroke and a little loop, like extra loop, and all of that is thin. So the only thick part of the letter F is the down stroke unless chart this again together. Notice how tall this latter is, is the only later that stretches all the way up to the ascender line and all the way down to the descender point. Super big. It's quite long. Let's just make sure that we're following the proportions. I think having it quite big as it is, makes it a bit easier to kind of separate the shapes and make them flow a bit more. It's definitely quite a flowing letter. So just explore a letter bit. It might be a bit hard to keep within the slant, but that's okay. It doesn't need to look perfect. Please remember that. It's very normal if all of this doesn't look good at all at this point. Well done. When you're ready, we're going to carry on with the letter G, which is much more simplistic than the letter F. So we're starting with the O shape, stopping. And then we're just attaching a descender loop. So notice how we're also extending the last stroke of the lacta. So see how we do the first part, starting with the shape, stopping, then doing the downstroke. And then as we go up, we stop again to separate that long upstroke. So we're just giving ourselves a bit more time, and we're being cautious of, you know, going through that downstroke, especially if it's really, really wet. We don't want to smudge it, so we're kind of avoiding it. We're doing that last shape of the latter into two parts. So down up, stopping, and then finishing and continuing with this long upstroke all the way up. So again, just try to build up this habit of doing it already, and you'll just kind of become automatic when you do it later. It's that muscle memory. Okay, let's carry on with the letter H. It's my favorite letter of all times. I love this letter. It's really satisfying. To form. So we're going to start with the ascending loop. Then we're going to stop, and then we're going to attach a compound curve. So very, very clear. So we definitely have these two separate shapes that we are putting together like a jigsaw to form this latter. We could have attached the entry stroke here as well. But let's just keep it simple for now. Now, just a quick tip. So when you finish your first shape, and then you start a second, I love to imagine that at the bottom of this downstroke, I'm kind of going to the right a little bit. So I'm going down, and then as I start the next shape, I kind of go right up down and up. So I'm actually going like one tiny, tiny millimeter to the right to try and kind of stay away from the loop a little bit. So going up, down, stopping, and then quick little maneuver to the right, just really short stroke to help you kind of start that compound curve. With a bit more momentum, so it definitely helps. It helps the ink flow. It helps to get that transition beautifully. So I hope that makes sense. At the bottom of the downstroke, just imagine that you're going to the right very, very slightly before you start the upstroke. Obviously, it doesn't want to be very visible, but it's kind of like the thought process behind it. Lovely. We're going to do a few more letters before we pause for the fast part of the letter forming. We're going to do the letter I, which is fairly simplistic. We're starting with the entry stroke, stopping, then we're attaching the U shape, but again, we're not finishing it all the way up, so the upstroke is quite short. This is where again, we really want to focus on that last downstroke. Try not to do it really quickly. As you finish the letter, we want to actually slow down a bit more. Keep that focus. There we go. As you do the dot on your I, I love to do it after I finish the letter or even the word if you got the letter in the word. You can just apply a bit of pressure and point your nip down and a bit of ink will come out. You don't have to actually draw the circle. We're going to carry on with the letter J when you're ready. So it's quite a nice later. We're starting with the entry stroke and then we're just going down, forming a descending loop, and then we're extending the upstroke. Again, this little trick where we are trying to avoid the downstroke. Again, getting to the point where you're touching the downstroke, then picking up your pen after you've formed the loop, and then we're continuing the exit stroke, the last thin upstroke of the letter kind of separately on the other side of the down stroke. I hope that makes sense. Again, we're just trying to build that habit early on. Doesn't mean that you always have to do it, but it can be very handy. Okay, so we're going to finish this practice with the letter K, which does look scary, but let's break it down together. So we are going to attach a little entry stroke at the beginning, and then we're going to form the ascending loop. And then we're attaching this I like to call it a little ribbon like a bow shape. Again, something we didn't really practice, but again, it's quite similar to the overturn and undertan shapes. So after you do a downstroke, just kind of find that spot where you'll start forming this little ribbon shape. So as we go down, we go back to the downstroke and then we keep this shape within these two lines. So that's important for balance for proportions. Let's try again, let's take it slow. So we're going up down, back to the downstroke and then down and up. Notice how I'm separating everything. Notice how slowly I'm going here, especially right at the end, as we're stretching the upstroke to the side, let's do it slowly. And this is where we'll finish today's practice, and we'll carry on in the next lesson. 6. Lowercase alphabet part 2: In this lesson, we're going to carry on with the Larges alphabet and our next letter is the letter L. Let's get started. I'm dipping my pen, getting ready, and we are going to start the letter L with the entry stroke, then stop, and then just form this acenda U shape, merged look together. Remember this is very similar to letter E. It's just a little bit taller. Now it is how the top of the loop touches the top line. We're trying to keep everything balanced and proportional. Start with your entry stroke right on the baseline. Following these guidelines is the best thing you can do. I will really help your muscle memory and help you form balanced letts. Well, done. Okay, so here comes the letter M, such a good example of demonstrating how calligraphy is all about just drawing shapes and putting them together. There are a lot of shapes in the letter M, which means there are quite a few stopping points, those little pauses that we make. So let's just break it down together. We are starting with the entry stroke, stopping, then doing the downstroke on stopping, then attaching the over tan shape, stopping, and then attaching a compound curve shape. Okay, so let's just try it together slowly and notice how I'm stopping so frequently, those pauses are important, especially when you are practicing and just learning you really want to pay attention on those pauses, you might merge a few strokes together here and there when you're doing longer words or phrases. But normally, these are the actual stopping points we have, even if you're doing words, even if you're doing something really long, we'll always always stop in between the shapes. Okay, so let's carry on with the letter N, which is actually very, very similar. So we're just skipping that middle part, but it's exactly the same. So just do a bit of those as well. They are very similar. We can also try forming the letter O, which, again, is something that we practiced in the fast exercise. So it's essentially just the O shape, and then we can embellish it. So I've showed two ways of doing it here. I personally really love this way where you're starting with a downstroke and then you are doing a big loop at the top. I love starlizing it this way. It looks really good. So this is how I do my lattice O. You can also make it smaller, a bit more simplistic and start it the way we started. Practicing the actual O shape, remember, we started with an upstroke. It's really up to you which style you decide to go for. You can try them both. Feel free to pause the video if you need a bit more time before we do the letter P. So the letter P is actually quite similar to the letter B. So again, we're trying to spot those similarities. So by practicing one letter, you're actually improving some other letters as well. So we're starting with the entry stroke, stopping, then doing the down stroke, stopping, and then attaching the same shape that we attach to the letter B, if you remember, just going up down and stretching to the side. Now the biggest struggle with the lettuce P is to make the downstroke beautifully slanted. So try to pay attention on that early on to just try to follow the guidelines, the slant lines to make sure your downstroke is looking proportional, balanced, and beautifully slanted, well done. Lovely. So we've got a few lettuce left. So let's turn to another page, and we are going to do the letter Q. So the letter Q starts with a very familiar shape. So we're going to do the O shape. So we've done it so many times. Hopefully, it starts to feel a bit more familiar. So here it comes, and this looks really similar to the letter F. So we're going to go down up and form a little loop and then stretch to the side. It is important to stretch that little stroke to the side because this is essentially what will connect this letter to another letter. So try to always imagine that you're catching another letter as you're stretching this letter to the side. Let's try to do a few of these to just make sure that you downstroke touches the descender line at the bottom. Again, trying to keep everything proportional, super important. That's what we're focusing on here, trying to make these balanced, try to understand all the shapes, try to follow the guidelines, and understand where every latte sits so that we can then do it free hand and it still looks proportional. It still looks consistent. That's the trick. We're building muscle memory. Well, done. Okay, so here comes the letter R. Now, remember, we are practicing like a very simplistic baseline style here. I will show you what the stylize, what the stylized version of the letter R looks. So it looks bigger. So the fast part of it will be bigger. But we're trying to stick within these two lines for now and trying to do the smaller version. So now it is how I'm doing the little loop shape, and then I'm doing this like U shape. So you can connect them both together. You don't have to stop necessarily, especially if you're doing it very, very small like this. But if you're making it bigger, if you do like a bigger version, you definitely want to separate these strokes with a pause. So for now, let's just stick with this fairly small version. You can stretch slightly above the line just to make it kind of easier for yourself to separate these shapes. But in a simplistic calligraphy style in more of a classic looking clapy style, that's how the latter R normally would look like. So it's quite small. The beginning part is sometimes even smaller than that. But just keep this in mind that this will differ when we do bouncy calligraphy, which is more of a modern, kind of bouncy looking style. You are doing great. You've done so many letters already. That's a huge achievement. Let's keep going. We are going to try the letter S, and the letter S just flows beautifully, and this is where we can try and extend our entry and exit strokes just to kind of get into that flowy feeling. Do try to keep this letter within these two lines, but again, try not to be too strict either. It can definitely stretch slightly above or below. Especially when we are stylizing calligraphy, which is something we'll do a lot later on. This particular letter will normally be quite big with bigger loops. But for now, let's just keep it simplistic, maybe slightly bigger. Well done. Notice how the letters just flows in one go. Then we're going to move on to the letter The letter T is fairly simplistic. We are just doing a straight downstroke and then we are stretching. It's like a U shape. We're just not finishing it all the way up, so a downstroke and then we're attaching a little upstroke to it as well. Now, after you do your downstroke, upstroke, we are then going to do the cross bar to the cross line of the letter Now, now this where it sits. It's just kind of below the Acandline and above the waistline. And now it is what I'm doing here. I'm separating this long stroke into two parts. Do you remember we've done a lot of this already, so you can definitely go through your downstroke in one stroke. You can try that and see what happens with your ink. See what happens with your downstroke. Does it smudge through? Does it create a smudge? Sometimes that can happen, but you can also just separate it to be safe. You can also try doing the cross line the other way around, starting from the right side. I actually like it recently. It feels more natural to me in a funny way. I don't know why. But yeah, try doing it from left to right and from right to left and see what works better for you. Again, remember, you can always pause the video just to catch up if you need to, and we're going to carry on with the letter So the letter U consists of U shapes. That's quite straightforward. But it's quite interesting how they merge together. So let's just break it down. We're going to start with the entry stroke. It's a nice and slow, beautiful entry stroke, and then we stop. Then we form the fast part of the letter and then when we do the second one, we're kind of overlapping. That previous upstroke. So see how they merge together. So we do stop in between. But as we start the downstroke, we're hiding that previous upstroke. So try that a few times. When you're ready, we also try doing the let V a few times, which got a really sharp bottom of the letter, it's a little upside down triangle. Again, the entry stroke, slanted downstroke and then we're finishing with an upstroke and a little loop at the top. Now it is how this downstroke slants in a different way. We're not following the slant lines here, but we're just slanting it. In an opposite way, which can feel quite strange. And that's what makes it a fairly difficult letter because you don't really want to move your hand to adjust to the position. You want to try and keep your hand where it is and then just kind of glide your whole arm in that direction where you want the slant to go. And the letter W just consists of two letters V. So we are breaking it down. We're starting with the entry stroke, doing the first V shape. And here you can join them together. So down up, stop and down up and finish. So you can also, of course, just pause out of the down stroke, just like we did in the letter. But with such a small letter, I think it flows just nicely as it is. So we can definitely just do two part, one letter, and then another letter V next to it. Well, Dan, we've got a few more letters to go. You're doing great for practicing, for showing up, for being here. Don't worry if it looks messy, messy is good. Messy means that you're learning, that you're getting better, that you're practicing, you're pushing through, I will get easy I promise. Okay, so let's try the letter X. So the letter X is really interesting. So we are going to start it with a compound curve, so you can go up down, up. And then we're going to stop and we'll realize that once we do the first part, we've already done most of the letter. All that we've got to do is just go through the upstroke. So let's do the compound curve, stop. And then we're just going through that downstroke with a wavy upstroke to finish the latter. And again, you can go straight through the downstroke, or you can separate that upstroke into two parts. So you don't smudge the ink out of your downstroke. So again, just see what works for you and always remember that that's a possibility that you can always always stop. Two more letters to go. You've got this. So we got the letter Y and the letter Z. So the letter Y is quite satisfying. It's quite a nice letter. So we're starting with the entry stroke, then we're doing the U shape, stopping. And then we are forming this descender loop shape, so downstroke, forming a little loop at the bottom, and then stretching off with the upstroke. And again, you can separate that upstroke into two part. I hope it's starting to make more sense. So just because it's very long, we're just making it easier for ourselves and just separating it into two parts. So take it slow, try a few more times. Take your time with this. Again, you don't have to fill in the whole line all at once. So maybe your hand is starting to get tired. It's better to do just a few, but do them properly, do them with focus. So it's definitely quality or quantity here. And we're going to finish with the letter Z. So the letter Z has one stopping point and it's right in the middle of the letter. Now, let's be mindful and try to stretch the letter all the way down to the bottom line. So again, focusing on proportions, and it should flow quite nicely. So these are fairly different shapes, so we haven't done a lot of these shapes. But again, it's actually quite similar to the letter P to the letter B. So that second shape, that we've practiced. But here we go. You've done the whole alphabet. That's such a huge achievement. Now, there's a bit more space for you to practice freehand, if you like. And this is what you can always come back to and practice again and again. I would say, try to get familiar with these lattes, try to do them more than once. Try to get fairly comfortable. Maybe you want to print these worksheets and do them again before we move on to the next. 7. Uppercase alphabet part 1: Now that we practice the bracse alphabet, we're going to move on to the uppercase lettters. And here we're going to start and loosen up a little bit, so we're not going to be as strict with our guidelines. We are going to apply a little bit more style, a bit more movement, and float or lettering. So this is where it's going to start flowing a little bit more, hopefully. Now, just be mindful of dipping here. Obviously, these lattices are bigger. So notice how big they are. They're up against lattices. They tend to be bigger, and we are going to need to dip our pen a little bit more. So if you start tracing and it feels like the ink flow is just off, it's normal. I'll take a bit more time to adjust to this new size. Okay, so let's maybe try forming a couple of these opergas A's. We're starting with this thin first part and then we're just adding the second part or the top is where the pause happens. After you do the actual letter, you can go through with the cross line and again, you can separate the cross line into two parts to avoid a very wet downstroke and smudging. I'm only going to do each letter a few times. You can, of course, just carry on and fill in the line if you like. You're in control. You can pause the video and just carry on. But even if you just do them once for now, that's really good. If you can do it a bit more, that's excellent. See how your hand feels and how far you want to take it today. And let's try forming the letter B. So the letter B starts with the entry stroke and flows into the down stroke. So we can join those two up. If you like, you can also stop in between. And then we start attaching the second part. You can create a little loop in the middle if you like. You can do the top part first and then stop and then do the bottom part. It's really up to you see what feels comfortable. If you need that pause in the middle, feel free to stop. I notice how I'm making this big, big loop at the bottom of the latter. So this is where we're starting to stylize it a little bit. And it looks really good. It can definitely stretch below the baseline, and that's fine. Let's try doing the letter C. Let's play with rhythm here. Notice how slowly I'm starting the letter C, and then I'm going a bit faster on the downstroke and then finishing the letter super, super slowly again. So it's all about the rhythm here, trying to develop that flow. I'm dipping my pen after every single letter here. This is quite big. It takes a lot of ink. So the dipping is definitely more frequent. Well, don't see if you can do a couple and let's move on to the letter D. It starts in a similar way as the letter B. Quick entry stroke. You can stop there and do the downstroke and then start attaching this inverted C shape almost. Then we're looping it at the bottom, going through the downstroke. There we go. See what happened here. This is very common with capital Ds and whenever you attach a thin stroke or a thick stroke, so there's a bit of pooling going on. I just had too much ink in my nip. What I normally try to do when I have the situation where the downstroke meets the upstroke in this way, I'm normally just leaving a little gap in between. So as I start the upstroke, I'm just leaving a little gap there, just a really tiny gap. So it doesn't actually touch the downstroke. You can always color it in later or just fill it in later. So this is something I've found very useful in my practice, especially if I know that I've just dipped my pen and a lot of thing is going to come through. Okay, let's try doing the letter E. What a flowy letto. So we're starting with a thin entry stroke. And then we can stop and actually form it in the same way as the lavacaseE. So remember, we always start with the entry stroke. We stopped, and then we started forming the loop. So there's a little pause there at the top, and that can be very helpful. Relax your hand. It'll be so much easier if you try to loosen up your hand a little bit. I know it's really hard, but try your best to sink into those strokes, to relax your hand. Let's move on to the letters F. So the letter F is fairly simplistic. It just starts with a downstroke. I mean, there are so many variations. This is how I do it. So this is how I do it in my own style. As you start practicing, you'll probably be exposed to so many different styles. You'll start spotting different letter variations, and that's how you start building your own library of styles. But it's nice to learn from something structured like this and then always be open, just be open minded to variations later on. I started the downstroke and then we just did two lines crossing through. We're going to do the letter G, so let's be mindful of proportions here. Notice how it sits on the baseline. And then we are attaching a descending loop. We can show that beautiful loop at the top, that can look really, really good. I love this letter. It looks quite good. Again, I'm just being a bit more mindful and making sure I don't overstretch the downstroke, so it keeps its proportions, and that's why we have guidelines. And as you're practicing? Start being your own little detective, so you could always apply some constructive criticism to your own practice and just be your own teacher in a way. Just go through what you've done already. That's very important. Just look back and notice what actually needs practicing more. So make notes, make lots of notes. So it's really important to also spot what it is that worked that's worked really well and make a note of that, as well. So I really liked my last G. On my lines I've added a little hard, but I did make a note where I overstretched my downstroke. So this will just really help you progress. So instead of repeating, you know, the whole letter or the whole alphabet, you can just focus on those individual strokes on those individual parts that, you know, you need to practice more because you made a note and you know that you want to improve. So you can refer to these examples of the letter H practice, and notice how I'm stopping on here. So when we reach the first downstroke, we stop, and then we continue with the second shape. It's quite a flowy letter. It's quite nice. It does look really good as well. So you might want to watch this slowly just to kind of get it right, but once it clicks, it really, really clicks. Well done. So let's do a couple more letters in this session. So we're going to carry on with the letter I. And again, it's quite simplistic in my own practice. I just love doing this thick downstroke and then adding on these curved lines. Okay, so everything that goes to the side in calligraphy is always also thin. So just like upstrokes, all the side strokes are always thin as well. So that's something to remember. All the cross lines, all the crossbars, all the lines that are horizontal. They will always always be thin as well. Well done. And the letter J is fairly similar. We're just carving this first stroke slightly. So we're starting with the downstroke, try to follow the slant line, and we're just adding like a curved line at the top. Now we go, just try to do a couple of these we're going to finish with the letter K. So we're going to start the entry stroke, stop. Then do this curved stroke just like the letter J. And then we're going to start from the very, very top and go back to the middle of the down stroke. Again, just refer to the lines to help you keep it balanced. Notice where every single stroke sits, and then try tracing, try doing it free hand once or twice, just kind of get that muscle memory, get used to these lattice. Remember to stop, remember to dip. Hopefully, your inkflow is starting to feel a bit better now. But here we are. We are going to finish and wrap it up here today, and then we're going to continue in the next lesson. 8. Uppercase alphabet part 2: In this lesson, we are going to continue with the uppercase lattice and our next lattice is the letter. So let's start it with this nice kind of long entry stroke, which is quite sideways. And then we're flowing down at the slant, try to follow the slant line and then a big movement to the right again. It's quite a big letta. Notice how it's touching the top line, how it's sitting on the baseline. Try a couple of times free hand. And remember, this is just one variation of doing the lattice. We are then going to move on to the let M, and we are going to divide it into strokes, just like we did with the lowercase. We're going to go up and stop, go down and stop, go up again and have a pause and then go down and finish the lettera. Quite a few stopping points. It's a little bit different from the lower case, the strokes, we're separating more, we're separating the actual strokes because they're quite long. That lip pause just really, really helps to refocus. But it does start to feel quite nice after practicing for a few times. So just try doing a couple free hand, it might be very difficult, which is very normal. Again, just remember your learning with every practice session, you'll make a bit of progress and then it'll all compound There we go. So the letter is fairly similar. I love stylizing it slightly in a way that I'm stretching the last upstroke really high. And it creates like a nice little umbrella. Look for the next lettuce to follow. It looks really good. There we go. So again, we're just setting a very strong foundation here. So you can always learn flourishing later on. You can learn to stylize them more. But for now, let's keep them fairly simplistic. They're still really beautiful. And fairly stylized, I'd say, for the beginning stages. So it might feel a little bit out of your comfort zone, which is fine. Just keep practicing. Okay, so let's try the letter O. So it's quite a big later here. I'm really stylizing that top of the letter with a big, big loop. I notice what happens. So we are starting with a thick downstroke and then we just doing a really big thin stroke around the downstroke. The letter P is very similar to the lowercase. It's just big up. It's reaching up to the top line and then we're taking that space in between these two top lines. Notice how the actual base of the letter sits on the baseline, just like all capital letters sit on the baseline. Just being mindful of those proportions of the guidelines, that's why we're practicing the guidelines. Well done, so we've done another page, and we've got a few more lettuce to go, so just reflect, maybe practice these a little bit more if you like. And when you're ready, let's move on to the letter cube. What a beautiful lettter. It does look a bit confusing, so let me just guide you through it. So we're going to start from the right side here with a thin stroke. Then we're going to go down, and then we're going to kind of curl it in a little bit. So we are definitely just carving that last stroke inwards, and it creates this beautiful shape. And then it's got a little cross line. That goes through the bottom part of the latter. And again, we're trying to avoid that downstroke. You can definitely just be mindful of that. So we are separating that thin stroke into parts, going through that downstroke. Give it a go. When you're doing it free hand, it might look a bit funny at first. So just try to find out sweet spot where it's looking round. It's looking beautiful. Or even if, you know, you don't like the end results, don't be too hard in yourself. I'm sure it's looking better than you think. And when you're ready, we're going to carry on with the letter, which looks very similar to the letter. The difference is that we are making the second part a bit more big, so a bit more flowy and kind of a bit more detached from the actual downstroke if that makes sense. So imagine that it's stretching a bit more to the side. So we're doing the entry stroke, stopping, down stroke, stopping, and then you can do the second part in one go if that feels comfortable. Give it a go. And then we're going to do a nice big letter S. The letter S can look really good. I normally make my lowercase a bit bigger as well, but this is capital. This is definitely quite big. It's reaching to the ascender line at the top. You can also stretch below the baseline a little bit if you like. That can look really good. Relax your hand a little bit more as you go down. You want to get that heavy hand feeling so you get a beautiful thick down stroke. See if you want to pick up a bit more momentum as you go down and be a bit slower on those upstrokes. And we're going to try the letter T. So we're going to start with a long thick downstroke and we're positioning it on the baseline. And we're just trying to go over the slant line as we do the downstroke, just to make sure that it's consistent. You can also just maybe try doing it next to the slant line to add in a bit more challenge and see if you can make the slant fairly similar and balanced. Give it a go. And then we're just finishing with the top, which is just a curved stroke. And a capital U. So it's a big letter. I can definitely feel like you're doing a lot here and you need a lot of things. So just be prepared, dip in advance. You might want to dip for every single letter as you practice here. And as you do the entry stroke here, see if you can start it with this little feeling that you just kind of flow into it. There's a bit of a momentum there for sure. And then slow down on that down stroke. So every lector kind of has its rhythm, and you'll find that in your own practice. The more you practice, it's really hard to achieve at those beginning stages when you're just trying to focus on your strokes, trying to, you know, go from thick into thin and focus on pressure on all of those things like inflow. But once you start getting comfortable with those things, it'll add in more flow into your calligraphy, and that's a really fun part. Well, done to just referred to these examples for the letter V, and we're going to do the letter W in a very similar way. Very similar to the lower case here, so just stopping in the middle again. And try to be super mindful as you finish this letter. So try to really slow down right at the end. It's always a good idea to slow down right at the end, be extra intentional there. Super focused. I maybe try one or two free hand let's add a lot of flow and movement with those long entry and exit strokes. Well, done, only three more lettuce to go. You've got this. So the letter X is just the same as the lowercase, bigot we're starting it at the waistline, or you can also start it at the baseline. It's up to you with this entry stroke, and then we are just adding on another stroke. You can make the stroke. The second stroke quite curved, or you can keep it straight. It's really up to you. I think it looks quite nice when it's slightly curved, and it just sits on the baseline. Well, done. So two more lettuce. We're going to do the letter Y. As most of these lattice, we're going to begin it with a long stroke at the beginning. The reason why we're adding this long stroke is because it just makes the lettuce look finished, more complete and adds a lot of movement as well. Let's do the entry stroke. Stop, do the U shape, stop, and then start forming the senda loop shapes are going down, forming the loop. And as we come up, we know that we're going to separate the a stroke into two parts because we've done it so many times. And hopefully, it starts to sink in a little bit more and starts to become a bit more natural. Well, done. And the let z. So you can do your letter z in a similar way to the lowercase. But I really love this style. It just looks a bit more elegant, I think. So again, we're starting with a thin sideways stroke and then going down. And you can stop again, as you do the last outside way stroke, which I'm going to call the upstroke. So as you finish the last part of the letter, you can divide that long stroke into two parts. And same with the cross line, you can divide the cross line into two parts as well. And hora, we finished the alphabet. That's very exciting. So we've done a lot of work here. And remember, this is something you can always revisit again and again. 9. Entry and Exit strokes - bouncy style: As we progress with the course, we're going to start focusing on letter joining. But before we begin joining the lattice, we are just going to focus on these connection strokes. So just have a look at these connection strokes at the bottom of the page and notice the difference. So the first one is quite V shaped, and the second one is quite U shaped. I notice how all of these lattices are slightly different from what we've practiced. So you'll see that these look really bouncy. So if we call this style bouncy calligraphy purely because of its bounds, you can see how satin strokes bounce below the baseline and they bounce back up above the baseline again. And this is my natural style. This is how I teach modern calligraphy, and I really want to focus on this style a little bit more. So now that we practice very kind of baseline looking lowercase lattes, we can go ahead and just explore a little bit more and try to stylize them. And in particular, we are going to focus on the very first stroke of the letter and the very last stroke of the letter. And let's just have a look at the letter A, as you trace. Noice how the last down stroke of the letter is kind of going below the baseline and then stretching back up. So let's just keep that in mind. In bounty calligraphy, we want to try and replace all those U shapes when we're joining the lattice with a V shape. So everything is a bit more angled. You can see that in the lettuce C as well in the letter D. So all the bottoms of the lattice are quite sharp looking, especially the last downstroke. So normally we would bounce the last down stroke of the lattice. Now, some lettuce are more bouncable the letter B isn't very bountable, but I've just stretched some part of it below the baseline, and that's kind of adding movement as well. But lettuce like A or H or they are so bouncy. You can definitely stylize them a lot. And as we practice these lattice, you'll notice that every letter has a long entry stroke, which is the first part of the latter and a very long exit stroke, which is the last stroke of the letter. So understanding entry and exit strokes is super important. It's very crucial when you're starting to join lattice because what happens essentially is that these entry and exit strokes become the connection strokes in your lattice. So imagine that there's another letter beforehand and another letter afterward. So we would join them up. With an extended stroke, right? That's what we're focusing on. We're doing this lowercase alphabet again. So yes, there's a lot of letter practice, but because we're trying to learn this skill and practice as much as we can before we start doing something different, like putting letters into words. We just want to make sure that we understand the basics. As we trace, we're going to extend every single entry stroke and every single exit stroke, and just try to be curious here, trace each letter. Notice how it sits on the line. How it stretches below the baseline, how it's full of character. There's a lot of movement there. It's very playful. It's very different from that baseline style that we practice, but we had to do that so that we understand the very basics first before we start stylizing. I personally really love bouncy calligraphy. This is my natural style. I think it looks very elegant, full of character. But I also know it can be really hard for beginners to make it look good, that's very normal and that's why we're tracing. We're building that master memory. And this worksheet is here for you to practice again and again, and I highly recommend printing it more than once and just filling this in. You could spend a whole week just focusing on the alphabet worksheets because they are the ones that will aid the most progress because, again, these are the basics. Dog in discourage if you tried it once and it doesn't look really good, if you're still struggling with transitions, that's very common, very, very common. I see this all the time. In my beginning classes, people really struggle to go from thick to thin in a smooth way. They struggle to control the ink flow, and just take into account all the tips I've been sharing here, and it will get easier. Think about your strokes in advance, try not to lose the focus. Try to go super slowly as you're tracing, as you're practicing, follow the guidelines as much as you can. It's just practice. Just like any other skill in life, this will take a bit of practicing. So a lot of movement here really stretching those thin entry and exit strokes to the side. Relax your hand, lobby your pen holder. Check that it hasn't traveled all the way up and it's not looking upright. We don't want it to be upright. Remember, we are looking for that low slant. So I'll keep reminding you because it's easy to just maybe not even notice if you change the position of your hand. So just check check in, you know, with yourself and notice if it changes, remember to breathe and drop your shoulders. Position your feet on the floor flat so you feel grounded. Try to keep your back fairly straight and cross your legs if they're crossed. So all of these things can really, really impact your calligraphy. And we're going to finish today's practice by just practicing these strokes. So this is a very important stroke in calligraphy. So you can think of this as a U shape and a V shape. So I bounty calligraphy, we try to make it to be sharper like this. And in baseline style, we are rounding it up. So this U shape and V shape essentially becomes the connection stroke. So we're just practicing this before we do the next exercise where I teach you how to join up Loricase lattice. And this will come in really handy. So if you understand this and you practice these long flowing strokes, it'll just be so much easier to then join the lattice. So again, I've done the letter A, and we can try this together. So you can see the first one is on the baseline. So it just sits on the baseline, and the second one is bounced. So you can see that we've stretched the last down stroke of the letter A below the baseline and then use the upstroke to stretch it back up. So here we are. I hope you enjoy this lesson, and let's get ready for the next session where we'll be joining everything up. 10. Letter joining: This lesson is all about letter joining. So now that we practice entry and exit strokes, we can start joining some letters up, and this is what will help you build confidence when you start joining these letters into words and creating phrases and doing some longer pieces. So let's just recap. So here on the top line, we have some examples of just a simple ABC in baseline and bouncy calligraphy style. And we remember the main difference between these two styles is that we are altering the connection stroke and the down stroke. We're either keeping it round in a U shape or we're making it a bit more sharp in a V shape. So let's go ahead and trace these examples on the second line. Notice how slowly I'm going. So to join ABC together, we're not doing anything different, really. We are just constructing each letter out of its shapes. So you can always have that letter formation sheet in front of you if you ever forget how each letter is built. So we're starting the letter A, attaching the U shape. And if you widen that stroke, that exit stroke. I'll create a bit more space between your lattice. So this is how you can control the spacing by widening or shortening that connection stroke. You can stretch it to the side or you can stretch it a bit more upwards if you want tighter spacing. If you stretch it to the side, it will open up the gaps between the lattes. Just notice how slowly I did that, how many times I stopped. So we're definitely having those pauses again. The worst thing we could do here is letter everything in one long chain without stopping. So that's what makes calligraphy different from handwriting. So we are stopping in between. And we'll also try this bounty style where we're just making the downstrokes. So each last downstroke of the letta a bit more bouncy. We're stretching it below the baseline. And now it is as I'm doing these connection strokes, they're kind of digging into the next letter. And then we're overlapping that previous stroke with the next letter. So again, I'll just show it slowly. So as I do this U shape, I'm stretching the stroke into the letter B, and then I'm overlapping that stroke with the downstroke of the letter B. I'm finishing the letter B, and I'm digging that downstroke into the lettuce C, and then I'm overlapping that stroke with the lettuce C. So that was a bit dramatic and I probably overdid it. But you get the idea. You can overstretch your exit strokes and you can then overlap them with the next shape. I'll just create a really nice smooth joining up point between the letters. We are going to do this exercise, which is actually quite difficult. That's absolutely fine. We are ready for it. I've practiced enough, but I want you to be open minded. It doesn't need to look amazing the first time you try, especially free hand. When you trace in field bit easier. I do recommend maybe starting with tracing. And when you're ready, you're going to really slowly do the whole chain free hand. You can trace with me whilst I do this and you can do the free hand exercise a bit later if you like. But the idea is to just practice each letter slowly. Not changing the way we do the actual letter. So we are still building it out of shapes. I'm going to sound like a broken record, but it is so important to make sure that we are dividing those letters into shapes and not doing everything in one long chain, just like when we do it in cursive writing. So take your time. The pauses can be as long as you like. Maybe you need to dip your pen. Maybe you just want to stop and refocus. Maybe you want to stretch your hand and reposition your hand. That's absolutely fine. Just take your time. Although it's one, it's like a long, long chain. We are doing it in short, short bits. So it all kind of joined up together. There we go. So taking our time. So this is all positioned on the baseline, so this is a baseline style, and there's a bouncy calligraphy example underneath. You can always try that as well. But as we're doing this, here, we're just purely focusing on each exit stroke and trying to keep our spacing consistent. There's so much to think about here. So well done for doing this. You're doing amazing. For even trying this. That's a huge step already. We've come so far, so just remind yourself of how far you've come already, and this exercise you're doing here is quite advanced already. So this is not a very beginning stage anymore. So you've done a brilliant job, and it will only get better with practice. Remember, practice makes progress. And the best thing you can do here is to just go slowly, try not to rush through this exercise. Even if you just do one chain today, that could be your whole practice session. You can easily divide this worksheet into three, 20 minute practice sessions. That could be really productive. There's no need to rush. Again, we want to get this right before we do words and before we start doing phrases, so you can spend another week just practicing letter joining. I know how tempting it is to just rush and start lettering your favorite song lyrics. That's something I used to do a lot when I started learning, but it actually just overwhelmed me. I remember this so much. I would do lots and lots of song lyrics. I would put on my favorite song and just letter away, do calligraphy, do these long, long phrases, but I wouldn't actually improve because my practice wasn't focused. Sure, it felt good, but I wasn't progressing until I started practicing with a bit more intention and refining my work along the way. That's also very important. So well done, if you manage to do one chain, that's a lot already, and just be proud of yourself. That's a huge achievement. Even if it looks shaky, even if it looks inconsistent, that's very normal. So, that could be your draft, and the more you practice, the better you'll get. Now, again, you can have a look at which bits actually didn't quite work out and then refine 11. Lettering short words: This lesson is when the things start to get a lot more fun. So now that we practice the alphabet so many times, it's time to put everything into practice. So we're going to letter these short words. And again, you can trace just to help your muscle memory, and you can print this worksheet, and we're going to do these short words in baseline and bound calligraphy styles. So we're starting with the word moon and again slowly constructing each letter out of shapes. Then we're going to do the bouncy version for contrast, just to see how it changes and how we can play with these letter forms to make them a bit more jumpy, add a bit more character. The lettuce M and N are excellent for bouncing. That last downstroke of these lattice is just perfect for stretching below the baseline. And when you're ready, let's do the ward love, and we're going to focus on a very long entry stroke so that it looks beautiful and kind of flowing. And we're going to finish the letter E with a long exit stroke. So the word looks complete, fairly stylized. It does look really, really good when we lengthen our strokes. And let's carry on with the bounty version and we can clearly see that the letter L stretches below the baseline. We are keeping the lettuce O and on the baseline, but then the letter E stretches below the baseline as well, and we're finishing with a longer exit stroke. As I said before, some lettuce are definitely more bountable and this will come with practice. But normally lettuce like O or B, they're quite small lattice, the height lattice can sometimes just be a bit smaller in bounty calligraphy style. Let carry on with a wide smile. So these are all really short just to kind of give you a little taste of lettering words. Obviously, not every word is going to be the short, but this is a very good starting point. And again, as we do the bounty verse, notice that we've got the letter M again, and we're bouncing it down in the same way as in the wide moon. So hopefully that has given us some practice. Now it is how the bottoms of the lettuce are quite sharp looking. We are implementing that V shape that we talked about before. Let's carry on with the wt bloom. And here, I've given you some room for some freehand practice. So give it a go. Try doing it freehand. We've done so much tracing here, and tracing is just excellent for building up muscle memory and pen control. But it's also nice to just try it freehand and you are ready. You can refer to the guidelines. You can see where every single letter sits and just give it a go slowly, try not to rush. And here's the thing that some days calligraphy will feel really difficult, and some days it'll flow will be better. And that's very normal. It happens all the time to all of us. And just be mindful of that that if it feels really frustrating today, it doesn't mean that, you know, it's the end of your practice. It might be much easier tomorrow. And sometimes those struggling points are actually when you're making the most progress, and that's when the breakthrough happens. So now notice how the bouncy version of this word is a lot more jumpy. So we started the letter B with a big loop. Then we've stretched the letter L below the baseline. We've kept the lettuce O quite small. Remember, those X height lattice can be quite small sometimes, especially Os and E's. And we've done, like, a big, big stretch and drop on the letter M. Let's try this free hand. So take your time, see if you start to develop a bit more rhythm. You can always start playing with that rhythm a bit more. You can start doing certain strokes faster and certain strokes slower. So it's normally the end of the word that you want to do a bit slower, the last joke of the word. And then if you have a long entry stroke at the beginning, it's quite nice to do it fast because then you kind of flow into the fast letter with a bit more momentum. And I personally love doing my down strokes a bit faster. And doing my abstrk a little bit slower in general. But then again, it always varies. So it is quite personal, and I think it just takes time to develop that rhythm, and that's very normal. So as you start to accumulate a bit more experience, you'll notice that your calligraphy flows a bit more and just becomes even more relaxing. I know it might not feel relaxing at this point, which is fine and very normal. But it is a very relaxing skill. It feels really therapeutic. I don't know about you, but when I'm practicing, the world just disappears. I'm able to switch off, and it just feels really good. I hope this resonates with you. So the word smile in bounty style is very kind of dramatic looking, so he jumps up and down. So we have the letter M in there. I've also made the letter S quite big at the beginning, so that's quite fun. It's still lowercase letter, but it's just stylized with a big, big loop. You can play with the width of your loops. That's also another way of stylizing your lettuce. And again, just observe each free hand practice and make some notes. See what needs improvement. Maybe you're struggling with particular lettuce, and that's very normal, very common. I used to struggle with letters K, letters R, letter C, round my friend at all. But now I love those lettuce, so it just proves that it would just take a bit of time. Let's do it about happy. So just notice how we're focusing on the downstrops of the lettuce B being fairly similar. So they want to look the same, so that they look balanced at a similar slant. So just try to focus on that as you as you do it free hand. Remember to stretch them low enough maybe when we do this freehand, we can focus on the super, super slanted version where everything is a bit more tight together, and the word kind of appears a bit shorter in a way, because the spacing is very tight, that can be quite fun as well. Just playing with spacing, experimenting. There are a lot of guidelines that I've included in your workbook that you can print in different ratios, so you can just experiment and do these words again and again freehand. Well done, you're doing great. 12. Short phrases: In this lesson, we're going to go ahead and put together a few phrases, and I'll show you how you can start doing calligraphy on your own stationery. So you've got this lovely worksheet that you can practice on, you can trace. You can do it free hand. It has some guidelines here. So I just added a baseline. Sometimes you don't need to have, like, the whole set of guidelines. Sometimes having the baseline is also really helpful. So I got out some gift tags here in different shapes, in different textures. So some are quite glossy and some are quite smooth. The craft ones are always be textured. So it can be hard to letter in them because you get lots of, like, paper fibers and, like, texture being caught in your nib, but it can be really, really fun. So I'll add a couple of links where you can source these. So normally, even on Amazon, you can buy a bunch of these, you know, the hobby craft and some online marketplaces sell stationery like this. And let's just practice together. Let's create something fun. You can also just do a little mock ups of these. If you don't have the actual gift tags. You can always get them later, but we can just practice some of these phrases freehand, and we're going to do thank you. As in this example, but we are going to stack our calligraphy. So in this worksheet, all of the calligraphy is on one line. But I also want to show you that it's really, really fun stacking your lettering, so you can do one word at the top and then another word at the bottom. And this always looks really good, especially in bouncy calligraphy style. It can be a bit tricky because sometimes some longer strokes from the top line can interfere with the bottom line. Talk about that a bit more when we do a greeting card design. But for now, let's just do some of these. So you can see how I've lengthened the entry and exit stroke of the word, which is a good trick to fill in the space if your second line is much shorter. We can try doing well done together. These are really lovely little gift tags. I really love these craft tags. They look really good. You can always try some white ink. On these as well, it's just the best combination. Craft, paper and white ink always looks amazing. And if you can get your hands and some more inks, I highly recommend exploring, trying different inks, especially colorful inks. You can mix them yourself, if you like, with some gouache paint. That's also an uphone. I also sell inks on my website if that's something that interests you. But it's just a lot of fun just getting creative. And even if you just have black, that's already amazing. You can do a lot. You can add some drawings. I love drawing with a nib because you can obviously alternate the pressure, and it's really lovely to be able to do some thin, delicate strokes and some thicker ones. And as we just touch basing on composition, I want to maybe share a few tips here. So if you have a bigger tag, so I've got this hard shape, it can be a bit hard to make sure that your lettering is scented, so we can use some pencil guidelines. So whatever you create, be it a greeting card, be it a gift tag or a place card, I always recommend finding the center point. And this can be quite rough. You can eyeball it, obviously, or you can measure it out. It's really up to you. But this little circle where the ribbon goes is my center point. And I've also marked some margins. So on the left and on the right, I've just done, like, a little line with a pencil, so I know I'm not going to go over those strokes, and I've also done a little line at the bottom, kind of marking, again, a little frame that I'm not lettering outside of those lines. And I'm just doing a short phrase. You're capable of amazing things. And you can see here that I'm doing four lines. And sometimes it's nice to do more lines on little shapes like this because you can stack your calligraphy and you can make your letters bigger. As opposed to having it all in one line because that would be impossible on this little hard. So it's a lot of fun. It always looks really effective. I'm just referring to that center line, and it really helps as I do every single line. I try to refer to it and I try to position the word if it's like a single word like here. I try to position the middle of the word, the middle lettice right where the center line is. And this will take practice, and it can be a bit hard, but that's why you can use a pencil. You can always sketch it lightly, and then just go over with your ink. And this looks really good. You can always add ribbon, attach it to a gift. Calligraphy opens up so many possibilities for projects. I always, always do a lot of calligraphy for, like, my kids. I always do like nursery cards or gift tags for all the seasons. You can always attach this to a little plant or use this for wedding stationery as wedding favors. The possibilities are endless. A lot of people start selling these on Nets as well. If that's something you would like to try, that's definitely a possibility. That's definitely an option. Or even just for yourself. You know, it's such a wonderful hobby, and it's also very useful because you'll be able to create your greeting cards, your gift tags. You won't have to spend money on them anymore. It's a lot of fun. And there are so many different surfaces that you can do calligraphy on. And I had this little bag, and I thought I'd just show you. So even by just writing something really simple, like treats, you could use this for events, weddings, parties. You know, you could fill this up with some goodies. And that could look really lovely. And place cards, of course, always look really wonderful in calligraphy. And I thought I'd actually demonstrate maybe two names because we haven't done a lot of we haven't done any uppercase and lowercase letter connections, and that can be a bit hard. So I'm going to show you two examples. So in this first example, we're going to do a name Robert. So you can see that we're starting with the letter R, and we have a lovely exit stroke here. So the last stroke of the letter flows into the letter O, which is great. So we have a nice connection stroke and everything is joined up. Okay? Now, I'm going to show you a different example. And this can happen with certain letters, and I just want you to be ready for it if it happens. So as you're doing names and you've got a capital letter, let's say, we've got the letter So now it is how here, we don't really have a connection stroke of the letter So I'm doing Thomas, so, Tom. So I am attaching the letter H, but I'm also starting it with, like, a long entry stroke. I'm not attaching it to the base of the letter but it still looks joined up. Modern, really fun. So it looks effective. So sometimes you won't have that connection stroke, but you can always position the next letter just very close to the uppercase letter. 13. Final project: In this last lesson of the course, we are going to create something beautiful together. So you can grab a blank greeting card in any size. I'm using this a six size or just fold the page and consider this to be a little mock up. And we're going to begin by planning our design, and you can use this planning process for any project. So I'm beginning by marking the center of the page horizontally and vertically. So you can see that at the top and at the bottom, and on the side, I've done a little line showing where the center is, and I'm eyeballing this, but you can always measure it out, of course. And then I'm also kind of drafting this little frame. So on each side and also at the top and at the bottom, I'm just doing a little line, and it kind of looks like we've got a little frame now, and these are our margins, so we know we're not going to go over them without clicker fee. Now, let's just think about the word happy. So we're going to count the letters. We have five letters in this word, and let's find the center point. So the third letter, so the letter P is where the middle of the word is. So it's really helpful to sometimes do that, especially for shorter words because now we know that the letter P should be approximately where our center line is. So this is super helpful. And I highly recommend doing this for short words. Obviously, you're not going to be counting every word every time. But especially if this is your first line, if it's the top line, it's quite nice to start it in a straight way. Okay, so now I'm just refining the second word. So we got the word birthday, which is much longer. So for such a long word, we can start playing the spacing a little bit, so we can definitely make it a bit more tight so that it doesn't stretch too wide. And let's be mindful of the letter Y and the letters P on the top line because they can interfere with our T, H, and D on the second line. So I'm just rubbing some pencil lines out and trying again, and this is very normal. You'll take a few tries. And because we're keeping our lines fairly close together, which I recommend doing because it always looks really nice and colligahy when both lines are quite close, and there are no big gaps in between. But it also means it can be a bit hard to position those Asenda letters on the second line. So the idea is that we want to have the letter T kind of on the side of the letter P so that it's not right underneath, but it kind of slots like, towards the side of it, if that makes sense. And happy birthday is actually quite a tricky example. So don't worry if some of your strokes overlap the first time you try it, but let's just try and avoid having our letter P and T overlap. So I'm just testing my ink flow before I begin lettering on a card. Highly recommend doing that. I do it all the time. When I'm lettering place card, I would always do, like, the first stroke after dipping somewhere else just to ensure that my nib is not overloaded. And we can start tracing our pencil lines slowly and you might already kind of alter a few things as you go over your lines. You can always consider our pencil line to be a draft, and then we're improving upon that draft when we are actually going over with ink. So I'm definitely going to bring the letter T a bit more to the left so that we can clearly see how P and T are not underneath one another. And then the letter H slots really nicely in between the Ps and the letter D. Is on the side of the loop of the letter Y, so it's not underneath. So this just allows for both lines to be closer together, and that looks really good. So it's like we're working around our first line. And you can clearly see here that we're just trying to slot in and make those ascenders and descenders look very snug. Right by each other's side. I hope that makes sense. So again, this will take a lot of experimentation, of course, but just give it your best and have fun with it. Lovely. So I also highly encourage you and recommend trying a few colorful inks. You know, if you're able to get some colorful inks, I highly highly recommend. They are so much fun to use for drawing. So you can always embellish your colega f with some simplistic drawings in the background. It doesn't have to be anything difficult. Even doing something really simplistic, like this little flower. So I'm just doing two down strokes as a pet. And then I'm just joining those two strokes at the top with like a wavy line. And then I'm just going to add a little stem and maybe draw a couple of leaves. Even if you just have one ink colour, that can look really good. It doesn't have to be like a huge collection of ins. And then I'm using very light pressure to add a bit of shading in there. So that's why I love drawing with a nib. You can control the pressure. You can mix thick and thin, which just looks amazing. Just like in calligraphy, it can also look really effective in drawing. And then I'm just doing some simplistic leaves. You don't need to know how to draw to do this. This is very simplified. You can also just do simple dot or little stars or anything to decorate your background. If you can draw, that's amazing. The possibilities are endless. So you can always mix. All of your skills together, and by learning calligraphy, you might become a bit more curious about drawing as well. I certainly have. I could not draw before I started practicing calligraphy. But since then, I've learned to love watercolors and drawing, and it all just comes together really nicely. I'm just doing some simple dots in the middle for the center of flower. And we can do a few here. We can definitely just experiment and try doing these five petals and then adding a stem and then doing some leaves. You can do as many as you like. Drawing is also a very useful way of filling in the gaps in your composition. So let's say your word birthday just looked like it's a bit too much of the right side. You can then fill in the left side with a nice drawing and it'll just balance it out. It's definitely very, very useful. And I always use this technique where I'm just filling in the background just to balance something out. I can look really, really good. So just continue doodling, continue drawing. You can decorate this as much as you like. I might just do a couple more branches just some simplistic leaves. At the top, again, to just balance out the composition a bit. If it's a bit heavy at the bottom, it's nice to balance it out with some drawings at the top, as well. And by drawing, you're still practicing the pressure control. So it's also very productive. So we're not focusing on the actual letter forms, but we are still working with a nib, and that can be like a nice creative break. But you're still using an ab and you're still working with ink and ink flow, but you're not focusing on anything particular on any particular lettuce. So there we go. I think I might just finish with this one. Now, obviously, we have some pencil lines, so I don't recommend touching anything before it all dries fully. So let's just leave it there for a good amount of time before everything dries, and then we can rub out the pencil lines, and that'll be the finished. I also really love adding little dots like it clusters of three dots around my calligraphy, around the flower drawings. I always freshens everything up and just makes everything look nice. And I can never stop, of course. So it does. The creativity does kind of take you. And sometimes with drawings, it can be hard to know when to stop, and I'm sure you'll experience that as well. So now I've waited patiently. I know it skips to the stage, but I waited patiently for this to dry, and it's completely dry, so I'm going over with my eraser and I'm just rubbing everything out. So make sure you use a good quality eraser. This one's by tumbo, and it's a really lovely brush calligraphy. Brand with lots of lovely brush pens. And if you ever happen to use dark color card, when you rub your pencil lines out, you might leave white marks. You can always get dark erases. I've seen some black ones, that you can use them like dark card. So there we go, just a quick tip. But here we are. I hope you're happy with your project. I hope you're happy with what you've achieved. Well done. 14. Well done!: Well done for going through the lessons, for completing the course. You should be very proud of yourself if you've gone through all the lessons, if you completed worksheet. That's a huge achievement. From here, remember your journey doesn't end here, from here, it's all about just exploring and practicing. There's so much more that you can learn in calligraphy. Flourishing, different styles and lettering quotes and some longer pieces. And it's all really wonderful. I hope you keep learning. I hope you keep practicing, and you're definitely at the stage where you can start making your own stationery, like reading cards for friends and family. It's always really really fun or start working on your Christmas cards ahead of time. It's always a good idea. So hope I hope you'll keep yourself busy with some funnel projects down, just kind of keep the spark going, and I hope you enjoy your new hobby more than everybody.