Faux calligraphy 101 - a beginner's guide to Lettering

1. Aloha and welcome!: Hello and welcome to another aloha Skillshare class. I'm Keiko, and you may know me as the Aloha studios on Instagram. If you'd like to learn lettering. Faux calligraphy is a great and fun way to start. It certainly was for me. You don't need any fancy supplies at all. You can just grab the next best pen and paper and start. Folk calligraphy is also a great way to decorate surfaces other than paper, where it might be difficult to work with a brush pen, flexible nib, for example, chalkboards, flower pots, mugs, windows, or even door mats. I provide worksheets here in this class. You can find them in the project section and print them out. If you don't have a printer, you can use regular copy paper or lined paper or dotted paper. It's good to have some kind of line to base your letters on. I'll take you through both the lower and uppercase alphabet, letter by letter in real time. And we'll show you different fun techniques and how to load our words and how to add little decoration elements. At the end of this class, I'd like you to create a word of your choice in faux calligraphy and share it in the project section. By practicing faux calligraphy, you will develop good muscle memory that will come in handy for all your future lettering and calligraphy project. No matter which pin you use. I use faux calligraphy all the time, mostly because I love lettering on all different kinds of surfaces. For this class though, we'll stick to just pen and paper. Mostly I'll be using a Staedtler fine nano 0.5. But please feel free to use any pen you like, or just a pencil or even a ballpoint pen. All right. Let's get started. 2. Faux? Fake? Say what?: What is faux calligraphy? Fall comes from the French word for and can be translated as fake or false. And it just means that will be imitating calligraphy, which is usually created with a dip pen and a nib or with a brush pen. Calligraphy can also be done with a brush, such as here, or even here in this piece, which was created by my mom. The distinction between lettering and calligraphy can be very confusing. You can look at lettering as drawing letters, and at calligraphy as writing letters in one fluid motion, including thin upstrokes and thick downstrokes. So strictly speaking, what we'll do in this class is lettering or drawing letters in order to achieve the look of calligraphy. I'd also like to mention that there's traditional calligraphy such as copper plate, with its own strict set of rules. And then as modern calligraphy and lettering, which is way more open and lets you experiment more. With faux calligraphy. You can choose whether to go a more classical route or to experiment more. In this class, we're doing kind of a mix, taking the best out of the two worlds of traditional and modern. 3. The 2 Golden Rules: There are two rules to remember. I mean, they're more rules than just two, but those two, I think are the most important ones. Number one, the most important thing to remember in calligraphy is upstrokes are thin and downstrokes are thick. Using a brush, brush, pen or depend with a nib, you can achieve this look by simply pressing down harder on the downstroke and then lighten the pressure on the way up. To recreate this look, we'll be drawing our letters and thickening the downstrokes like this. The thick downstrokes are also called shades by the way. Number 2, pay attention to the space in between letters. Try to keep the space between letters consistent. It's tough to do. And even after years of practice, I still have to remind myself to keep an eye on that. 4. What about cursive?: I'd also like to mention formal cursive as this question comes up a lot in my in-person workshops. Can I just write cursive and then add the thick downstrokes? Yes and no. Yes. Because I'm not here to tell you what you can or can't do. And if you love cursive and you want to try and do faux calligraphy with it, then please go ahead and try. However, in formal cursive you're not supposed to lift your pins. So you basically write the whole word in one go without ever lifting the pen. This is how I was taught cursive as a kid growing up in Germany. So it looked like this. And with some practice it can look really neat. But in my opinion, is just not very flexible. Lettering and faux calligraphy, on the other hand, allow more freedom. And it's not about speed or getting whatever you want to write over it fast. You can totally lift your pen in between letters and you should take your time. You can add flourishes or bounds. So all in all it's way more open to experiments. I recommend don't restrict yourself to just write in cursive and then shading the downstrokes. There's so much more to explore with lettering and calligraphy. 5. style STYLE sTyLe: The style here on my worksheets is just one of many possible styles. I've tried to create a basic set of letters that will allow you to take it from there. And later on, explore your own style. I've set up a Pinterest board for you to get inspiration from. You can see that there are many different ways to shape letters. You can write Aloha like this, or leave more space in between letters, or make it more narrow. Explore different ways until you find one that suits you best. And maybe there will be more than one style that you like and practice. And that's totally fine too. Whatever you do, it takes time and practice. And I know you've heard that over and over again, but it's true. So let's get started with the basic shapes. 6. Basic strokes - don't skip ;-): Before we start with the basic strokes, going to wiggle my hands. We go I think she got my hands. Just to loosen everything up a little bit. Alright. So in calligraphy, every letter consists of single strokes, just like these ones. And you can think of calligraphy is creating and connecting single strokes to form letters and words. So let me show you a quick example of the letter a. As an entrance stroke, an oval, and a show called underturn. Quick note on the entrance stroke. This one here, also the first stroke on your worksheet. It's not really necessary to add those to every letter which is at the beginning of the word. You can. And once you're a little more advanced, then you can actually do something a little more fancy with the entrance stroke. So something like this, like a flourish. And then continue with your lettering. So that's just a quick word on the entrance stroke. This is a thin upstroke, so it's very good practice to just fill, align with US thin upstrokes. I'm doing this very quickly. Please feel free to go at your own pace. So you can do this real slow. If that makes him more comfortable. Just be aware that sometimes when you go really slow, the line can also get wonky. So if you're too fast or too slow. So when you do this a few times, after a while, you'll find your good tempo to do this. Try to be consistent with your strokes. You can see I wasn't really consistent. These are kinda falling to the side and these are more up. And once you find that you like a particular shape, tried to imitate the one that you like over and over again. Moving on to the next basic stroke, the underturn. You do not have to memorize all the names of the strokes. I just wrote them down. So you can, if you'd like to. The underturn is this U-shape. And again, find the speed that is comfortable for you and try to make the shape nice and round at the bottom. And as consistent as possible. Once you're done, a row of them, you can look at which one you like the best. So for me it would be this one because this looks pretty consistent in itself and you split it in two, then both sides are almost the same. So I would continue this looking at this shape and try to do another one, another row, another line with this underturn shape. So we've already had the underturn and the letter a up here. So entrance stroke, oval and the underturn. And if you remember that one golden rule I mentioned before, the downstrokes are thick. So in this case, because we went down here, you would think in this downstroke and then same thing with the underturn. We went down here. So thick downstrokes, thin upstroke. Next step is the overturn or just basically just an underturn upside down. All right. A lot of people tend to favor one side of the shape. So I, I should I explain this? So you would see that one side is really even and then it gets kinda wonky like this. Try to be aware of that. Really look at your shape and try to make it as even as possible. And I know I'm repeating myself, but this is really important for your letter shapes later. Going a bit too fast, so I'm kinda slow down. Okay. You can see that in the letter M, for example. So it's overturn another overturned. And you can see that already kinda looks like an M. But then we have a compound curve to finish the letter. So overturn, overturn, and then a compound curve. I get to this in a second. When you follow the strokes, this is where we went down. So you'll thick in the down strokes here and here. Then you follow the line down here. And there you have your m. The next shape is the Oval. Try to make it oval and not, not completely round. So not like this. Try to make an oval and also try to make it so that it doesn't, it doesn't lean over like this, should be pretty much a fright. Later when you develop your own style and you might have a slant to your letters. Then of course, all the letters would have the slant and then you would do something like this actually, but for practice purposes, tried to go straight M, consistent with your shape. So this shape comes up in a lot of lowercase letters in the alphabet, for example, and of course in the old. So to an oval and then a tiny, tiny under turn like this. And, uh, one more thing. I've seen people do the loop like this. So they start somewhere else and they go clockwise. For our purposes here, I would like you to go counterclockwise like this where you start and then you go like this, this way. So here with this example of the O, we went down here. So you would think in this joke here. And with a tiny underturn, we went down here and you'd thicken this one. Next is the compound curve, which I've already mentioned when I drew the letter M. So the compound curve is basically a combination of the overturn and the underturn. And it's probably one of the trickiest ones cause you you will want to have both of these shapes and the same width. And that can be kinda tricky. So try to practice the compound curve until you get an even looking shape. And also tried to avoid going small on one side and then large on the other or doing kinda like a pointy tip. And then something like this. You really, you really want to go like this, very consistent and both width. Okay? So we've had this in the letter M, the compound curve. So do the letter M one more time. Or I'll show you the letter M because it has a compound curve 2. So we'll start with the overturn. And then you add a compound curve following your strokes. This was a downstroke. And then here, depending on how you drew your compound curve, you can put the shade on both sides of the downstroke like this. Or if you've drawn your compound curve, maybe a little smaller on one side and little bigger on the other side. You want to see that it looks it looks kinda rounded. So you would add the downstroke just on one side of the compound curve stroke here. So I'll be going through all the letters later on. I just wanted to give you kind of a quick overview how faux calligraphy works, but we'll look at every letter individually later. So we have two more shapes to go. Next up is the ascending loop. So you start with kind of an oval and then you just go down like this. Looks kinda like a candy cane. So for practicing the ascending loop, it's actually a really good help to go to that graph paper that I provided you with. Because then you can, you can see how far how far to go. It's easier to see what a letter that has the ascending loop would be the k. So you have the ascending loop and then this was a downstroke. So you would thicken the down stroke here. And then you add kinda of a half oval, kind of a little underturn here and thicken the downstrokes like this. Okay? The reason why there is a gap here, you might have wondered about that is that when you shade in the stroke here. And if you want to leave it like this, just with some white in here. It just looks nicer when you don't have the stroke going through here. So what I mean by that is you could have also drawn this and then just close the shape and then add the thick downstroke. Then you have this little line here, which is totally okay if you plan on filling out the stroke than you won't see it of course. But there are so many fun techniques you can use with us, where you can, for example, add colors to your strokes or a little, little patterns. So the way I'm going to teach you the letters is to leave gaps for the downstrokes. Our last basic stroke on worksheet as the descending loop. So it's going down like this. And again, I'm leaving a little space here for filling in the downstroke. This looks like a J, and I think that is also the first letter that comes to mind using a descending loop. Oop style with a bit wonky. Then you would use, you would add a connecting stroke on to the next letter. The only stroke I didn't include here is simple. It's as simple as downward motion. Like this. This is also really good practice for consistently drawing a line. And you will need this a lot. Basically every time you do some kind of a downstroke here, or even with these terms here, you go down. So you can practice just the simple strokes also the other way around, going from from the bottom up, like this. All right. That's just one more tip. Okay. I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. alphabet: lowercase a - g: Hello, hi and welcome back. In this lesson we're going to look at the lower-case alphabet. So you can see here that I've broken down all the letters into their respective basic strokes. So you remember the basic stroke worksheets and all our basic strokes and shapes. You'll find all of these within all the letters and the lower-case alphabet. Maybe they don't look exactly the same. Maybe they variated. You're recognized most of the shapes. When we look at this grid a little more closely, you can see both horizontal lines and then there's also this dotted slanted line. This grid is just there to help you where to place your letter and define the width of the letter and also the slant angle. I chose a slant angle because I feel that it's very natural. Of course, later on when you develop your own style, you can choose your slant angle. You can make your letters stand out more straight for Lean older more. If you just have some lined paper, you can basically just take a ruler and make your own joy ohms, landlines in whatever angle you like for some variation. But for now we'll stick to this angle here. Then all these lines here have names, which I don't think you have to remember, but I've written them down anyways. So you've heard them once. So this little x here marks the so-called x-height, which is just the height of your letter. The letter sits on a baseline, which is this one here. This is called the median line. I've also heard it being referred to as the mean line. Up here you have the ascending line. And down here you have the descending line. And one more thing, you look closely, you'll see that I added a dotted line. This is just to show you where you have to thicken the downstrokes. All right, let's start with the letter a has an entrance stroke, an event have open oval and an underturn. Kay? So entrance stroke. And then you put your overall into this space here in between two of these slammed Lyons. And then you finish with an underturn. And again, you'll put this to one of these boxes here. Like you can think of these as little boxes where you can put your strokes and then you add the downstroke here and here. Okay, One more time. Entrance stroke, oval, under turn, and then fill in the downstrokes. So when you do this, you should try and keep the width of your downstrokes consistent. I didn't do that here. This is a little bit thicker or wider than here. So I'm going to try another one. Entrance stroke, oval, underturn and fill in the downstroke. Okay, so this looks better. For the letter B. We have an entrance stroke, and then we have an ascending loop, kind of a weekly oval here. And then this is where you fill in the downstroke. One up and over. Then we'll leave a little gap here for the downstroke. At the wiggly oval. Again, leave a gap here for the downstroke and finish like this. So this was a bit too fast. I'll do it again and I'll use my pink. So then you have the ascending loop, you leave a little gap. This is where the downstroke. Comes in and the little loop leave a gap. Again. Downstroke. They can the downstroke. And this is at the reason why I'm leaving the gap is so I can fill out the downstroke and then I don't have anything crossing here and do this just in case I want to leave those down-strokes white like this. Don't fill them out. If you however fill out your they can downstrokes thin. You don't have to worry about leaving gaps. You can you can basically go on like this and then just fill out the downstroke like this. So it's a matter of preference. If you want to leave this space open or maybe even fill it with some designs like dots or circles or stripes. Then you can leave, then you can leave the gap. And if and if not, you can just go ahead and write out the whole letter. Just fill in the downstroke like this. The letter C entrance stroke. And then kind of an open although this then, then the downstroke comes in here and I'll explain about those tiny little bit here in a second. K22, the basic shape, first entrance stroke. And then just go around like this. So as you can see, I started this C here, and this is clearly an upward motion. But still I have filled out this part here just as if it was an downstroke. This is basically just optical. I'd say, I think it looks nice. You can totally just fill out this part of the downstroke here and then leave the sea like this. Totally fine. I just personally think it looks kinda cute with us. Little add on. So again, entrance stroke. And then add the little dot here and fill in the day and stroke. Thick in the downstroke one more time. And again, I'm trying to fit the C in to this box here, following the slant. Okay. Next up is the d. So these are the basic strokes and this is where you fill in. The downstrokes are thick and the downstrokes entrance stroke oval, fit this into the box. And then finish the letter like this. And fill in the downstroke here. They can the downstroke here. If you're unsure where to add the downstroke, I mean, you can see it here, but later on, if you let or maybe just some, a blank piece of paper, you can always just follow the movement that you made and wherever you append goes down, this is where you have your downstroke and this is where you thick in the stroke. Okay? And again, you can leave this open or you can fill it in. Next up is the e, which is pretty similar to the C, with the exception that you connect here and stroke. And then if you want to if you don't want to fill in the downstroke, you leave a gap here. Okay. Again, with leaving the gap here. And then this is where the downstroke is. K one more time. Leave a gap here. And they can the downstroke. Okay. All right. Next up is letter F. We have an entrance stroke and then kind of a combo of an ascending, in a descending stroke. And then this is where you have the downstroke. So we go in like this and then kind of looks like a open bracket a little bit. Then you can leave a gap here for the downstroke. Finish like this. Okay, One more time. Trying to fit the loops into the boxes. So downstroke. You could also write this with a little loop on the side. I'll show you same bracket. And then down here, over add a little loop. And then I'm like this at the downstroke, so I forgot to leave a gap. Kinda fill it out. If you want to not fill out the downstroke, just have to leave a gap. So leave a gap at the little loop. And then you can finish the layer like this. For the letter G, we have an entrance stroke, oval, descending loop, and then you fill in the downstroke here. Fit the oval into the box, then go down and around. Leave a gap for the downstroke here. One more time. Oh, descending line, down, struggling with the gap. And here, for a variation of the letter G, you can make the good make the loop down here bigger or smaller. So let me show you an example. Why you go down. You just make the loop bigger, right? That's leave a gap. And then add The thick and downstroke. Or you can make the loop smaller, oval, and make it narrow like this. Do you think app? They can the downstrokes. Alright. We financed page one to page two. 8. alphabet: lowercase h - n: Up next is the letter H, entrance stroke and a ascending loop and introducing the compound curve. And then here along the dotted line, this is where you fill out the downstroke. So entrance stroke, a ascending loop up here and down. This is we leave your gap for the downstroke and then homes to compound curve downstroke. And then another one here. One more time. Entrance stroke up and around, leave a gap here. And add the compound curve. Compound curves is more narrow on this side. You can also add the downstroke on the other side, just look at how the letter turned out and then decide where to thicken your downstroke. Okay, one more time. It might be easier for you to add downstroke first and then continue with the compound curve. Because then you know exactly where to start up and around. They can the downstroke and the compound curve and thicken the downstroke here. Next to the letter I, which is just an entrance stroke and then an underturn. And adopt 12. And the dot, make it a little bigger. And then the downstroke. I'd say that is probably the easiest letter stroke. Okay, making a few more dots here. For the letter J, we have an entrance stroke, descending loop, and then the rest here with another connecting stroke. And here's the downstroke. One down and around. And leave a little gap here. And finish This. And this is worth a thick downstroke goes right one more time. And trends. Descending loop, round, leave a little gap and finish like this. And a little dot where you'd add the downstroke, m and trans stroke tone and around. And just like with the letter G, You can vary the size and shape of the loop. So we can make it bigger. Or you can make it really slim and add some variation like this. You can also see that I made it bigger towards, towards the bottom as well. So in here I pretty much kept it here on the descending line, and then over here on the lower edge below it, which is totally fine. You can use this to develop your own style later on too. So you can just make, I mean, you can actually really exaggerate those loops and make them really big like this. Alright, next letter is the k. Here are the basic strokes. This is where the downstrokes go. Can trend stroke, ascending loop. You guessed right? Yes, we leave a little gap. Again, it might be easier to fill in to thicken downstroke first before continuing with the rest of the letter. And have this kinda half oval here, cleaning towards the side. And then tiny underturn like this. New thick in the downstrokes here. So with this letter, you don't have to make those down-strokes in here too thick. Otherwise, you might not be able to read the letter correctly anymore. So just be mindful of that stroke. And then the downstrokes here. Those tiny downstrokes. So yeah. Okay. One more time. Little cap and continue like this. So you can see here I added the data, the line inside the shape. But if I added it here, it might be low too squished. So I'm just going to add it on this side. This is another example of how you should just look at the overall look of your letter before you decide on which side of the line you, you'll fake in it. Next up is the letter L, entrance stroke, a ascending loop. And then this is where the downstroke gets thick and one and then adjust basically looping around like this and leaving a gap for the downstroke one more time around and downstroke those. And then I really tried to follow slanted line, exactly. The slanted line here. This is where I want to have those line of my L. And forgot to mention that both with this loop of the k and also the loop of the L, pretty much as what the J and G is. You can vary the size of this loop. Can make that a lot bigger and then go above the assembling line like this. You can also make this pretty narrow. So wherever you have a loop like this, like these loops, you can add some variation. Then letter M is up next to overturns and then a compound curve. Then you add the downstrokes here that they can downstrokes. Alright, overturn one, overturn two. And then compound curve. Towns strokes here. One more time. 123. They can the downstrokes here to compound curve. In this case, I think I'm going to add it here. The letter N is kinda similar to the M, just without one of the under turns, excuse me, overturns. If I said underturn here for some reason, I meant overturn, over k. Overturn, add, add the compound curve. That can the downstroke here and here. One more time. Overturn compound curve. So you can see that I made this hump a little skinnier than this one. So I'm going to add downstroke on this side, but over here, edit on the inside of this shape. Cows try again. Try to make the compound Kurt really, even. Now. Those one more time. These guys look easier than they are. And we're done with page number 2. Let's move on to the next page. 9. alphabet: lowercase o-u: For the OL show you two different variations. But first, this variation has entrance stroke oval and then tiny underturn. This is where you fill in the downstrokes. So and trends. And just add a tiny underturn up here. Towns stroke, downstroke. Okay, one more time. And trans stroke oval, tiny underturn. So instead of the tiny underturn, you can also make a loop. And then it's almost as if you would just move the underturn over an inside like this. And then you add the downstroke here. You can decide whether or not to, to fill in to thicken the downstroke here, it might look a little too crammed. So you can basically just leave it like this with just thickening the downstroke here. And then just leaving the rest like this. I think that I personally think this looks best, but you can decide. You can also just feel I'm a little bit stroke loop. Okay, I'll do one more with the other variation. We just attach the little underturn like this. Our next letter P. These are the basic strokes. This is where you fill in the downstrokes. And yes, we'll be leaving gaps again. And trans stroke. Then you go down along the dotted slant line and you leave a gap here at a weekly oval, leave another gap. Finished a letter like this. Thick in the downstroke here. Oops, that, that's where it's like, Okay, Try that again down here. And might be easier for you to add the down-stroke that can the downstroke right away like this and then continue the letter o Around. Fill in that they can downstroke and finish like this. One more time. 12, downstroke, 3 and around TO stroke and like this down. I'm going to fill it out this time. The letter Q, kind of like a p backwards. So these are the basic strokes, nurses where the downstrokes come in. And again, yep, We're going to leave a gap here. So entrance stroke and then oval. And then you have a descending loop like this. Go over to the right, then you leave a little gap and finish the letter like this and here, thicken the downstroke. One more time. 123, leave a gap. And for the downstroke. Oh, I forgot the other downstroke. So within the loop, of course, we have a downstroke as well. So goes in here. One more time. The oval and a box follow the slant line down over and add the thick and downstroke. Next is little r. So there are just two strokes and then the downstroke here, there is however, a variation and I will show you one and then kinda just go down and It's almost like a variated underturn here. Then you add the down-stroke that they can downstroke here one more time. Or maybe in this case I'll add it on, on this side up like this. So instead of this thing here, you can also make a loop. So it just do your entrance stroke. Then instead of going down like this, you'll just make a loop. Thus in then go down over downstroke. And if you like, you can add, I can add a little thickness here. I wouldn't do it too much though. One more time. Up. Make the lobe. And finish a level like this, and add your thick and down-strokes. The letter S, these are the basic strokes. This is where you add the downstroke, the thick and downstroke. One, curve down like this. And then add to your downstroke here, thick downstroke. K one more time, 123123. So for a more modern version of the S, you can exaggerate the S shape a bit more and I draw an actual S like this. And then thicken this part here. Our next letter is the letter T. And I'll show you a few variations on the TI strokes. To try to fit this 12, those two boxes here. Then you add the downstroke and your keystrokes, the tea bars. All right, one more time. Add thickness here. And then instead of doing the straight, you can also create a little wave here like this. One. Too. Thick, downstroke and then cross your t like this. One more time. Follow the slant line. Thus. The last letter on this page is the EU. So by this time you should recognize your, your basic strokes, right? The entrance stroke. And then two under turns, K1, 2, and 3. And the downstroke thickness here and here. One more time. 123. Have the thickness here. 23. Alright, let's done with Page 3 onto the last page of the lowercase alphabet. 10. alphabet: lowercase v-z: For the v, we have a compound curve and tiny underturn. So you start with the compound curve and add a little underturn. Some adding a thickness here because I made this a little wider than this 11 more time compound curve. Just like with the O. You can make a loop here. Start with the compound curve and then go over and add the loop. Instead of just going over right away, can also make a compound curve and then stop here. Can then add the loop. Might be easier, especially in the beginning. And thicken your downstrokes. Again with the loop, you can choose whether or not to add some thickness there. Maybe just a little bit. What compound curve. And loop around and over. So we can apply a similar methods, method here with the W, t, So the basic strokes. And then this is where you add the thick and downstrokes, entrance stroke, underturn 12 and then tiny underturn. And thickness here, here and here. One more time. 1234. And add a thickness here, here and here. So instead of this one here, I can also make a loop just like we did up here with the V entrance stroke on the turn. And then with the second term up and around. And do this at the thickness here and here. And again, this is up to you if you want to add thickness within the loop as well. Just a little bit like this. Okay, Let's try this one more time. 1, 1, and then the second underturn goes right into the loop and out. And just like we did here with the V, can also stop here. Take a breath, and then finish with the loop. The letter X is a compound curve and too little strokes. And this is where you think in the downstroke. You start with the compound curve, thick in the downstroke here. And then just add those two little guys here like this. K one more time compound curve. They can the downstroke here and add 12. Okay, let's try this one more time. Compound curve, thick downstroke. If you want to leave the inside blank, then you have to make sure that you don't cross through here. Compound curve, downstroke. And then two little strokes. For the y we compound curve, descending loop. And then you add the downstrokes here. So it's compound curve. Descending loop. Leave a little gap to fill on the downstroke later. And finish the letter like this. This is where the downstroke. Gets thicker. And then we have another one over here. So as with our other letters that had a descending loop, you can make variations with that loop. Compound curve down and make the loop a little bigger. Gap. Finish a letter like this. Thick downstroke and then they can add over here. So my gap was a bit too big. Just going to close it like this. All right, one more time. Compound curve. And we'll make the loop a little skinnier like this. And again, it might be easier for you to thicken the downstroke first like this. And then you can just add the exit stroke here. One last time. Compound curve. And then over. They can then downstrokes. And this is S. So these are the basic strokes for our last letter and the lowercase alphabet. And this is where you fit in the downstrokes. So you make this kind of a half-open, although down like this, leave a gap here for the downstroke and exit like that. Downstroke one and downstroke 21 more time. Start your shape like this. Town and over leave a little gap here. And those were the downstrokes are. Okay, let's do a variation on the loop. Will make it really big, big, big, big leave a gap. And they can the downstroke in here. I'm going to fill in the downstroke first before I continue like this, and then finish a letter like this. Let's do one more with a really skinny loop like this. Maybe that's a bit too skinny. 11. Alphabet: Uppercase A-G: Aloha and welcome back. In this lesson, I'm going to walk you through the uppercase alphabet. For the uppercase alphabet, there isn't really a strict set of fundamental, basic strokes, such as in the lower-case alphabet. But you will still recognize a lot of the strokes that you've already practiced. Starting with the a. I'm between the a and three strokes. One slightly curve towards the right, like this. And then the downstroke goes here, the thick and downstroke and finished the letter. Like this. One more time. Up and slightly curve it over, down. Thick in the downstroke and finish the letter like this. Alternatively, you can also draw the uppercase, a pretty much like the lowercase one, just bigger, oval, sick in the downstroke and underturn. Just a matter of preference. Which one you prefer? I personally prefer this a, but it's totally up to you. Next up is the letter b. Again, we have three strokes here, starting with a simple downstroke. And then a shape that looks like three number three over. Leave a gap here for the downstrokes and finish like this. One more time. Down again. And shape the B like this. Over and thicken the downstrokes. Alternatively, you can draw the downstrokes with a bit more of a curve like this. And n thick in the downstroke. Add a little droplet here that's more for decorative purposes. And then start over here. That's a very similar shape to this, be kind of like the number three. Leave a gap. Town. In the downstroke. Start here. Over, leave a gap and finish like this. Next is literacy, which you can draw and just one stroke. But for the downstroke will leave a gap. So it's one. And then leave a gap, start over a bit to the right side and draw half loop. This is where the downstroke goes. Oh, I'm forgetting to mark the downstroke with pink. Okay. Sorry, I forgot that. I'm gonna I'm gonna do that right now. Okay. 12. This is where the downstroke goes for the d. So you can, you can write the d a bit like you would be up here, or as we did in this variation. So I'll start with this 1 first. Just very rounded down and over. And you don't have to leave a gap here, which is really nice. You can just fill into downstroke. After you've finished the shape. One more time. Down little loop at over. Like this. And the downstroke. As an alternative, you can also shape the d like this. So you would just draw a straight line down, downstroke and then kinda just like a bow around like this and then thicken the downstroke here. Okay, one more time. Down thick in and around. So you might be wondering why I didn't, again, the stroke here and it's really because I went up like this. And in traditional or more traditional calligraphy, this is how you would shape the D and you wouldn't think in the downstroke here, excuse me. You wouldn't think in the stroke here because it's actually an upstroke. If you write the d more as a block letter as I did here, you can do, you can think of the down stroke here without any problems. I would personally maybe make this a bit thinner than this downstroke. So this a bit thicker. Jaw the land like this and then maybe just do something like that. All right, Onto the next letter, just the letter e. Again, you could draw this letter in just one go. But will leave a gap right here. For they can downstroke, which comes in here. 12. Alright. Leave a gap and thicken the downstroke like this. For a simplified version of the E down like this. And then you can just add the three strokes, maybe a bit in a wavy shape, or you can do them just straight also. So really more like a, like a block letter. Next step is the letter F. So wavy down, wavy line down. And then put the roof on top. So bit curvy. Add the downstroke and finished a letter like this. One more time. Stroke. Like this. Or for a simplified version. Stroke. Line 1 and line 2. Stroke. Second. Line 1 and line 2, 4 of the letters G. There are a few more strokes involved, and you will have recognized this one here from the lowercase letter j. So restart like this, leave a gap down and up. And then, and the slope dbGaP, finish a letter like this. Downstroke. And here, one more time. Near Gap 2 and around town. Leave a gap and out and thicken the downstrokes. Alright. This is practice sheet number one to number two. 12. Alphabet: Uppercase H-N: For the letter h, I have more difficult and an easier version for you. So let's start with this one here. Stroke one, down and over. Then you add this tiny little stroke here. This is where you add the downstroke, thick and downstroke. And then add a tiny little stroke and finish the letter with an L shape. Like this. Leave a gap here, too thick in the downstroke. One more time. Stroke number one, down and over. Tiny stroke here. Leave a gap for the second downstroke. Another tiny stroke, and then add an L shape while also leaving a gap here. Okay, I'll do this one more time before I show you a more simplified version. 1 over tiny stroke, gap, another tiny stroke. And we'll shade over the can the downstroke. For a simpler version, you can just do kind of a block letter H, and then stroke. And the second downstroke here. And finish like this. Yes, very simple. For the letter I. It's basically just one stroke. So over and then down, over and then come back end for the downstroke. Right? One more time. And down and over. You can really follow the slant lines here exactly for this shape. So you start here and then you follow this line down, make a slight curve. And as an alternative, you can draw the letter like this. Also more block letter style. The letter J. It's kind of similar to the letter I, powered starts, but then you add this little bit here at the bottom. Start here you follow the slant line down over, leave a little gap here for the downstroke. And that's taken the downstroke here. One more time. 12 going down loop. Leave the gap and finish like this. If you like, you can add a little decorative drop here. All right, one more time. Down and loop. You can also make the loop bigger like this for a little variation. K For the letter, for the letter K. Start over here. And over. You leave a little gap here for the downstroke. And then do kind of this bracket. Fill in the downstroke here. And then that's bit slimmer. On the down-strokes here. And down again, you can follow the slant line here for the stroke. Fit on the downstroke and add the rest of the K like this. And thick in the downstrokes here. Just like with the J, you can also had some noble metal droplets here. As decoration. One down, follow a slant line. Fill in the downstroke. And the bracket like this can also make little swirl. The letter L. So you start over here. And then when I go down and leave a gap here in between, force the downstroke, like that's. And then finished a letter with a little wave at the bottom. One. Move over a bit to the right, leaving a gap down or little loop at the downstroke, the second downstroke and finished a letter like this. One. Leave a little gap around. Filling the downstroke. Does the L. If you want a more simplified version, you can, you can leave out the loop at the top and just kinda of a wavy line down like this. And a simple line here at the bottom. Just one too. And thicken the downstroke like this for the letter. And you can either choose to make this version, which is basically just a bigger, bigger version of the lowercase m. So I do one. And then overturn compound curve, just like with a lowercase letter. The neutrophil in the downstrokes. Here. If you don't want to start like this, you can also make everything really ground underturn. And as an alternative, you can construct your m like this. And then the downstrokes would go in here and repeat this version one more time. Kinda like a zigzag. Like this. Pretty much the same for the letter N. You can just do a version, a bigger version of the lowercase letter n, started here. Make a compound curve that the downstrokes here and here. Or if you don't want this tip here, you can just soften everything. Make it round. Or you can do a similar version to the letter M. And down. Simple zigzag and then finished a letter like this, and then you would click on the down stroke here. In this version, you can add some little drops here also for the m up here. Alright, let me show you this version one more time. One leg like this. So you can thicken the downstrokes on both sides here. Especially if you made this a bit more narrow. So it looks more consistent and more even. 13. Alphabet: Uppercase O-U: For the letter, I'll show you two versions. Version number one's make a loop and oval and then stop here. Leave a gap for the thick and downstroke and then just add this curved line. And they can the downstroke here. And also a little bit here on this side. Make it big, oval. Over here. Leave a gap. Punish the letter like this. And they can the downstrokes like this. Or alternatively, you can just make a simple oval. Oval at the downstroke here. And then just as with the lowercase o, can add a small underturn up here. Or you can make a loop. And very similar to this version, but you'll just start the underturn inside the, OH, like this. For the letter P down and over. Make this oval here, go up until this point, leave a little gap. Or the thick and downstroke. 12. Just stop here and thicken the downstroke. Then you can add a little droplet here. Alternatively, you can go down straight at the downstroke and loop around. I forgot the downstroke in this inside this oval here. So just add a little downstroke here, a narrow one here and here. Oval stroke. The letter Q is very similar to the letter O, but you just add the stroke here at the bottom. So it's the same as with the OH, to leave a gap for the downstroke. At the downstroke. And then just add a line at the bottom, like this. Loop over, leave a gap. Thick downstroke, and add a line here at the bottom. You can also make the stroke a bit longer, depending on the rest of the word that you'd like to write. Oval around, gap, downstroke. And then when you add the nine here at the bottom, you can just fade it out a bit longer. So if you continued the word and you would, for example, write something like Queen, then this could look really nice with a line like this. And could even do something like that. Next letter. You start with a straight downward stroke. And to thicken that. And then, and the rest of the arm like this. Forgot the pink again. Here, here and here. The round back into the center and finish the letter like this. You can also make the first stroke a bit more curved. So very similar to the, to this P up here. And you can also shape the r like that. And you start over here and add the thick and downstrokes. Curved line, thicken the downstroke, start over on the left side, go over to the right, and thicken the downstroke lines here. For the S, just one line that you draw, one snake line like this. And you can do variations on the size of these ovals here. So you can make them like really round, almost like the number eight. You can think of writing a number H shape when you do Ts like this, that might be simpler. So just think number 8. You can also make it really narrow depending on how are you write the rest of the word. Yeah, so just try different variations on the size of those loops here with the letter S. For the letter T, I'll show you two versions. This one is with a curved line, curved line on top. Again, the downstroke here, curved line. And then put the roof up here. Or you can just do a straight line down. And then you can exaggerate the wavy line a bit more to something like this and add a little twirl here. The letter U is pretty much the same as a lowercase. So you start like this and then add the underturn. Stroke, downstroke. Alright? Compound curve. And then an underturn. And thicken the downstrokes here and here. Compound under turn. And the top strokes can add a little drop here. She like 12 tone stroke and downstroke. 14. Alphabet: Uppercase V-Z: Next is the letter V. Start over here. And then make a V-shape like this. And a small underturn. The downstroke here. And then within the little underturn as well. The letter W is very similar to the lowercase w. Startup here, underturn, underturn, and then a small underturn up here, thicken the downstrokes. And instead of giving the W a tip here, you can also make it rounder. So like this. So this would definitely be, this would actually be a compound curve and then underturn and underturn. So this would be the exact shape as we did with a lowercase w. And as a variation, you can start with a letter like this. And the x is the exact same as the lowercase x. So you do a compound curve like this. Thick and down stroke comes in here. And then cross through like this. Curve. Cross through, leave a little gap, thicken the down stroke here. Same with the letter y. The exact same as the uppercase. Just a little bit bigger. Compound curve, go down below and Overleaf a gap here. And the ethic and down strokes here and here. And just as with the lower-case alphabet, you can make variations with a loop down here. So we can just make it really big or really narrow. The letter Z is a bit different. I mean, you can, you can draw it just like the lowercase z. But you can also do it like this. Wavy line down. Thicken the downstroke here. And finished the letter like this with a stroke through the center. Wave down. Thinking that downstroke wave down here. And center stroke. Or as I mentioned before, you can just do a bigger version off the lowercase z, like this. And here we go. We finished the uppercase alphabet. In the next lesson, I'm going to walk you through how to build words out of your letters. 15. Word practice: Welcome to the next lesson. Now that you have practiced all your single letters, it's time to look at some words. The most important thing to remember when you connect new single letters into words is to try and keep the space in between the letters consistent. So I've mentioned that before as one of the two golden rules. And this is really very important to make your words look consistent. It might be easier for you to connect some litters than it is to connect others. That's also very common. And let's look at the word low. So you see that I've letter at the word first without adding the downstrokes right away. And this might be very helpful for you if you have trouble writing each letter and then filling in the downstroke and then continuing the word. You might just want to try and letter the whole word first in, then go back in and thicken the downstrokes. So if you do it with this method, of course, you could also try and leave the gap while you letter the word. So just SB practiced with the single letters needs the gap. The gap for the second L. That really requires some practice though. It, it might be easier for you to just read out the whole word and not leaving the gaps, just writing it out like this. And then thickening the downstrokes. If you do it with this method here, then of course, you don't have these white blanks that you do when you just like when you leave the gaps. But you can just think in the downstrokes like this and fill them out. I think it really depends on the project that you're working on. If you want to add some little decorations and the blank page and the blanks here. Then you can work with leaving the gaps in each letter. And if you plan to thicken the downstrokes and fill them in any ways that you can just write out the whole word in one go. And without leaving the gaps. Once you get more practice and you'll see that it's going to be easier overall. So you can basically make a choice. But in the beginning it's probably easiest to write out the whole word first. Whenever there are two letters following each other that are the same. So the two L's here or the two Ps, you can of course try to make them look exactly the same. But if you want to go for some variation, try to make them a bit different. So in the case of the hello, you can make the first l bit bigger. For example, in the second L a little bit smaller, which adds a little bit optical interest. You don't have to make the difference very stark. You can just vary them a little bit. Just like here. The second one is a bit smaller than the first one. It still looks consistent, especially when you make sure that the gaps in I'm sorry, the distance between the letters is consistent. But it will make the overall word look a bit more interesting. I think. I'd like to point out one other thing. If you have a word such as birthday, for example, you have the letter T and H following each other. So instead of writing the h separately, you can combine these two letters. Like this. This is called a ligature. It's basically when you turn to separate letters into one glyph. So you create a direct connection between these two letters. So these are basically almost just like one letter now. And that can also add some, some optical interest. You don't have to do that, of course. You can, of course just write each letter, right? So like this and the T stroke. And this is also just a matter of personal preference. If you prefer one way or the other. But whenever you have certain letters following each other, you can pause and think about there might be a different way to connect them. So another example for a ligature would be double t. So normally would just do the t is like this and then add the keystrokes. But you could also combine the T strokes. So we do the T's and then just doing them for both. But some similar would be i t, i, i, t, I dot. And then like this. And instead you could do a ligature combining the eye dots and the T stroke. That 20 F's, such as coffee for example. F. And then just the next one like this. And then you could do something like combine them with this one stroke. It depends a bit how you continue the word because from here going into the E would be a bit awkward. So instead of doing the stroke so high, maybe a little lower, like this, let me write out the whole word. Let's see if that works. Stop here. And then E and E. Then in the end, combine your like that. So in this case, for example, I would recommend writing out the whole word first. Can even add an connecting stroke like this here, and then decide where to connect those two letters. Again, this is a bit of practice. You might end up adding the stroke first and then realizing, just as I did here, that it connects and kinda weird way with the next letter. This is just more to encourage you to try and create different letters when you connect them. This word is actually a good starting point to lead over to the next lesson where I talk a bit more about how to embellish your words. 16. Adding deco elements: So I'm just going to move over to the next page and we matter in this word one more times to demonstrate I'm going to letter it a bit bigger so you can see better in then and this element. And then you can take it from here. So following the line of a stroke, you can emphasize it by adding a second line. And then the same year you kind of follow this wave line and just add another element here. And then maybe a few dots. And a teardrop shape can add another teardrop shape here and a few dots along this line. And then when you fill and the downstrokes, if you left the gaps, you so I didn't leave it here and here. But if you had, you could add some embellishments like little dots within the down-strokes or stripes. Crisscross little stars. So that's too tiny for stars, but just as an idea. And then following all the movements of the letters. You can just take it from there and add some more decorative elements. So this is almost turning into flourishes here. And I do have, I do have a Skillshare class where I talk in length. I think it's a two hour class almost about how to add flourishes to your lettering. I also talk about how to combine words into quotes. So please do check out my other Skillshare class if you're interested in how to embellish your lettering. So my tip on where and how to add decorative elements is to basically just look at the whole word and to see where the movement of the letters guide you to and then just too emphasize those movements. So I'm creating almost like a cloud shape frame for this whole word here. And all I did was basically just move along the shape of each letter like this. And then these little teardrop shapes and dots are always there. Always a good way to fill out some spaces like here, these corners for that. Because this is coffee. You could of course also add some little coffee payments or other coffee related little doodles, for example, tiny little coffee cups or coffee leaf, coffee branches, things like that. All right, so this is a very short chapter. I just wanted to encourage you to maybe some little decorations, decorations to your lettering and also look at what your word say or what it is about. So if it's a birthday, for example, maybe you want to add some confetti or a little gift packages or ribbons. Or if it's for a wedding, then maybe you can add something that you know that the couple was getting married is loving. And just look at the occasion that your lettering for or the topic of the thing that your lettering with. And then try to add some decorative elements by following the movement of the letters. 17. BONUS: envelope lettering: Welcome to a little bonus session. Designing an envelope is a really nice way to practice your faux calligraphy. And also you instantly have something that you can mail to somebody that you love it. So you just grab regular envelope and a straight edge. I have one that also gives me this vertical line here. So I can line it up to the edge of the envelope. And then very faintly, depending on the address and how long it is. And some lines. So usually when you mail within a country, you only need three lines, but let's say you mail internationally, then you would add another line for the country. In this case, I'm just going to keep it nice and short. So these lines are kinda short. So of course, you can make them a bit longer and try to keep them as faint as possible, depending on which pin you use to write the address, you might have some trouble embracing those lines. So if you use a waterproof marker, for example, it's not going to be an issue at all. But if you use watercolors or Jelly Roll pens, as I mentioned in the lecture earlier. Than you might have a hard time erasing those lines. And if you like, you can letter the name and the address first in pencil and then just trace. What I usually do with envelopes is that I do the name in faux calligraphy and then the address Pretty much straight and block letters. When you look at the space, you want to think about the name, you're going to write how long it is and how much space a wall take. So let's say the name is Laila rainbow. Then you know that the word Laila is very short. And then the last name rainbow is a bit longer. And then you kinda want to be sure that you can fit everything in there. You can even start from the end and very lightly. Just pencil very lightly the letters. If you want to be absolutely sure that you can fit the whole word in there. So this says rainbow, written backwards like rainbow. And then my last like this. And then over this you can start with your lettering and pressing down a little bit harder than I would usually. So you can see it better. Now because I'm doing this with pencil, of course you can do everything. You can also thicken the downstrokes and then when you go in with your pen, just really trace everything or you can just leave it like a skeleton like this and then fill in the downstrokes later. And then the street address. Just in regular block letters. I have a few examples of beautiful envelopes on my Pinterest board. Pinterest.com slash the Aloha studios. If you want to see what kinda block letters people use or what kind of other options you have with these envelopes. But I also do a lot when I'm done with the address. Like this, is to write the ZIP code at the bottom. This is especially practice in the United States. I've seen a lot of envelopes being addressed like this. In a country like Germany, for example, this would be very unusual. You would actually write the postal code here and then pretty much be done with it. I'm not sure if that's because they are postal machines are a bit more sensitive and can pick up variations like that. But if you were in the United States, you can pretty much go crazy with the whole envelope. I do recommend however, that you keep the address as legible as possible so the machine habit easier and your letter gets delivered more quickly. If it doesn't matter what time it arrives, if it takes weeks and it's fine, then you can of course, just go totally nuts with this whole design. And now that we have our layout in pencil. And you can go back in and trace the letters. And while you do that, you can take in the downstrokes. And you can either leave gaps and not filling the downstrokes, leave some blank space and do some decorations and Dodds. Or in this case, because this actually says rainbow of course you could go in and color in the blank down stroke spaces with some rainbow colors. So you could do each downstroke of each letter in the word rainbow in a different color, for example. This looks especially nice if you use a plain white envelope as I do here. If you use colored envelopes, then not every color might work. And then you can just continue tracing your design. And for the address you can of course leave the US just monoline. And like I'm doing here or in good old fashion. With faux calligraphy, you can see again the downstrokes, even if you're just using block letters. Okay, I have here and of course I can do this with numbers too. So wherever you have a downstroke with a number, you can add those, that can change as well. All right, and this was just a little bonus session for you guys to see what you can do with faux calligraphy. And I would be thrilled to see some of your envelopes. You can, of course, if you photograph it, just photograph it so that the address doesn't show. Just lay something on top of the address. And maybe just show how your letter the name. Or you can come up with a fantasy name and town, such as I did here. 18. Thank you!: Thank you so much for watching this class. I hope you enjoyed taking your first few steps in your lettering journey. I'd be thrilled to see your projects here in the project section. Or if you post on Instagram, please tag me at the Aloha studios.