Getting Started With Brush Calligraphy Beginners Course

1. Hello & Welcome: Hello, and welcome to this Beginners Brush Calligraphy course. I'm so happy to have you here. My name is Alena. I'm a full time calligrapher myself, but I'm also a calligraphy teacher and educator. I'm here to teach you everything you need to know to get started with this beautiful skill. I hope you're feeling excited, welcome for taking that first step and being here and watching this. Getting ready to learn, I think sometimes it's really hard to take that step, but you're here. We're about to practice together and it's going to be beautiful. This course is split into short lessons just to help you practice each topic individually. You also get a workbook which you can print. The first lesson, you will learn a little bit more about the tools and all the supplies. If you're not sure about what paper to use or what pen to use, just watch that lesson. And it'll be all clear. But yes, I got I introduced myself. I've been lecturing since 2015, and it's just been a wonderful journey for me personally. I started lecturing just purely as a hobby. I just loved the look of it. Yeah, I just found it really relaxing. I loved putting on some music and lecturing the lyrics of that song. I just found it really therapeutic. It has really helped my mental health a lot. That probably was one of the reasons why I persisted and continued with it. So yeah, it's really therapeutic. It's really relaxing. I'm sure you're going to find that out by yourself by practicing. Just let you know you're in for treat. If you're feeling ready, let's get started. I can't wait to de tu, so let's begin with the first lesson. 2. Materials Needed: L et's talk about the supplies you'll need for brush calligraphy. The good news is that you don't need a ton of supplies, you literally just need a pen and some paper, and you can always try different colors in different pens, but to begin with, all you need is one pen and some smooth paper. These are definitely tested and proven to be the best tools for brush calligraphy, I'll say personally. The pen I recommend for this course is this tumbo for the ski brush pen. These come in a soft and also a hard tip. It doesn't matter which one you try. I love them both. The hard tip might be a little bit easier to lend with maybe. While the soft one just glides better, so you can get either, you can try them both if you like. But either one you get will be good for this course. You can see that it's got a really fine tip. We'll definitely create like thinner look lettering, and it looks quite classic, quite elegant, which is lovely. You see how thin it is. It's definitely not one of those really chunky lettering styles. The thing is, I highly highly recommend starting to learn with this pen. There's just a fine tip pen in general. There's this pen, which I highly recommend, but there's also a very similar pen called pentel, brush sign pen by pentel. This is very similar. You can see that I've got really similar tip. So the thing about the pentel brush pen, I think it's a little bit smooth, I would say. It also comes in lots of different colors. I mean they both do, but I just particularly love. The brands colors a lot. I Tumb is fun as well. You can also get these pens in different colors and I'll add all the links, you can always find them Dumber. There we go to two pens, tumbo for the sookie and Pentel brush sign pen. Wonderful, wonderful pens for beginners, and you can go through this course by just using one of them or a combination of both. I think I'll do a bit of both. We'll see what happens, but yes, that's all you need in terms of pens. Of course, you can also try something thicker. If you prefer a thicker lettering style that looks a bit like this. It also makes the lettering a bit bigger in a way. So these pens are great and they have their place, I'd say, but I personally wouldn't recommend learning with them just because it's definitely a little bit harder to control and when you learn, you just want to get that technique right before you try these chunkier pens. This tip here is really flexible. And that's what we want in brush Cligrapy, but it's quite It's quite a big tip. Obviously, it's a little bit easier to learn with something that's a little bit thinner. There we go. But if you'd like to try these, thes are called tumbo dual brush pens, ABT pens, and it's got a beautiful thicker side, and it's also got this monoline like a fine tip, which is great for monoline lecturing and if you or if you want to do some capital letters, sometimes, this can look really good as well. I love that it's got these two tips. It's quite useful to be honest. And it's also good for drawing if you want to do some lovely drawing with these pens. That's also quite fun. But there we go. Thinner pens, thicker pens, and all of these pens come in different colors. But for this course, I highly recommend using black just because it's really contrasting, and that's what I'll be using. When it comes to paper. Another really real important topic. When it comes to paper, you want to use something smooth. Please don't ever use copy paper because that's just now going to aid good results. Your pins are going to bleed because copy paper is really rough. It's really textured in a array, so it will fray your pint really quickly. This is what happens with this pint eventually. They'll fray, which means that you won't be able to get a nice thin stroke anymore. Although they do last a while at least a couple of weeks for sure, but I'll say up to a month, it depends how much you practice. But you'll start it out it's just hard to control your pressure, and that just means that you need to replace them. But if you use copy paper, you can fray your pens in like a day, We don't want to do that. It's a smooth paper. I particularly recommend HP color choice paper. It comes in different thicknesses. The one I'm using is 160 GSM. My printer takes this weight, but maybe yours doesn't. There's also a thinner version of this paper, like 120 GSM. You can definitely try that the printer, if you want to print worksheets. So that's what I recommend, or I also love these rowdy pads. These are just like rule, you can get them rolled or dotted or plain and also in bigger sizes, this is quite small. These are great. The paper is really really smooth on here, definitely really really good for calligraphy and it's quite smooth and it's quite pleasant and satisfying to let it on. Yeah, you can definitely also get this if you prefer having all of your practice in one Node book. I know some people do. But if you're practicing with worksheet, you can just put them all together into one folder. But this is really good for free hand practice, I would say. There we go. These are the tools. That's everything we need. Occasionally, we'll need a pencil and a roller to draw some baselines and an erase as well. If you want to try doing some greeting cards with me at the end, you can also get some blank blank cards. I'll add some links for you. You can always come back and check them if you need to. But there we goes, those are the supplies. Make sure that you print the workbook before we carry on. For the fast last sin, we'll need this basic stroke worksheet is really good to practice with guidelines. Make sure to get this ready, and we'll continue in the next last sin. 3. Basic Strokes / Calligraphy Drills: This lesson, we're going to learn all about the basic strokes of calligraphy. You've got this worksheet and it might look a little bit scary or just a little bit strange. You might be wondering, why do we need to practice these individual strokes. The thing about calligraphy is that we're trying to think of lettuce shapes, and by practicing these individual strokes, we are starting to think of those shapes and we'll later put them into letters. We're going to start by practicing downs stocks and stocks fast. You can see there's a little grade out area here which you can trace from these guidelines are just really really helpful because if we get the base line, you can see where the bass line is. We have the top and bottom lines, acen and D sender lines. This is for letters like J, for example, or like D, the ones are stretch down or up. And we also have this waste line, which is where the lowercase letter normally would sit if it doesn't have this A sender or the sender shape, like let's C, A Ei, all those letters and you got it. This space here might also be referred to as x height. That's maybe something you've had before, x height. I just thought I mentioned that. But there we go so, let's begin practicing. I'm using my tumble for the aski brush pen, and let's just learn how to hold this pen. If you're left knee, everything I'm going to say is going to apply to you as well. So to hold the pen, we want to grab it with our thumb and index finger, and maybe have our middle finger resting underneath supporting it. I should feel nice and comfortable trying to squeeze your pen. We are also going to hold our fingers really low. It's not kind of in the middle of the pen, but fairly low down. What's really important is that we want to try and get into the slanted position. This is a 90 degree angle, straight up. We want to get into a 45 degree angle. The pen is definitely at the slant. This is really important, so it does want to be at the slant because that's the only way how we're going to get axis to the side of the pen and get a thicker stroke. This is the position, the side of your hand is nightly rested on your Try to rest your elbow as well, so that will just give you some extra support. Make sure your feet are on the floor. Don't cross your legs. Things like that can really affect your lettering. Try not to lean over too much as well, try to keep your back fairly straight, and most importantly, just relax, try to relax, drop your shoulders, make your hand heavy, and this is the feeling. That's the position and feeling we want to have before we start. Right, so there's one very important role in Calgophy. All of the downstrokes are thick and all the upstrokes are thin in caigophy. We're going to start by practicing that. We're going to do it this fast down strokes. I'm holding the pen at the slant, and I'm going to apply very heavy pressure to get this thick. Stroke. Gliding our hand down. I click if we want to glide our hand. This is exaggerating, obviously, I can't really do it with this size let ring. But just try not to engage your wrist too much. Imagine you're doing these gliding motions by your hand and your arm are moving together, if that makes sense. Let's just do a couple of more. Let's ignore these ab strokes for now, Let's just do These down strokes, may be leaving a bit of room for upstrokes in between. We're pressing down really hard. Try to focus yourself before you do each shape. Try to go fairly slowly. And just press down really hard. Don't be afraid to press down, you can't ruin your pena promise, they're designed to bend. This is our downstroke, well done. So try a few. Now we're going to do an upstroke and this might feel very different. I just want you to know, don't be afraid if they're really shaky. That's not about what it looks like here. It's about just practicing the technique, building the muscle memory. There's one very very common mistake that a lot of beginners make, which is very natural, very normal. So What I often see in my beginners classes is that people tend to change the way they hold their pen when they go upwards. We went down in this position, and I often see that when they do an upstroke, they go upwards like that. We don't want to do it. We want to keep our pen where it is. We want to be at the slant, just where it was, when we were doing a down stroke, and we're going to go faster. Let's go a little bit quicker upwards to create these thinner strokes. As I said, there might be a little bit. Bobbly or shaky. I just want you to know that that's very normal. Try to go super lightly, very light pressure. We're not pressing down at all. Very quick and light movements. They can be fairly slanted or straight. It doesn't matter right now. You can follow the slant lines if you like, but you can also keep them upright. There we go. Very quick, very fast movements. Now we're going to do some of these shapes where we connect thin, thick and thin. We're going to start from this point of halfway through this up stroke. We're starting here, we going thin, dropping down and doing this really heavy thick stroke and connecting thin again. Let's try again. Thin, thick. Thin. Try to notice how slowly I'm going at the end here. It's very common again to flick, flick your strokes. If you're doing this, and if you're seeing the di strokes square thick, try to slow down a little bit more towards the end and don't take your pen off the paper right away. I'm going up, thick down. As I finish, just keep your pen for a second before you pick it up. These transition points are tricky. This is where you want to change that pressure right in the middle. T h, I'm already thinking about the thin stroke again, when I'm halfway through this down stroke. Think about the next strike in advance, and this is going to help a lot. Try to go a little bit slower wherever you are. Try to go slightly slower, checking that you're holding your pen correctly if he has wandered off to a different position, which is fine, correct yourself, recognize it and reposition your hand. But there we go. Try to press a little bit harder when you go down just to get that extra thick stroke and try to go super lightly when you go up. Well done, let's try some of these U shapes. Here, we're going to change the pressure halfway through the shape and also here at the top. These are called underturn and overturned. Undert let's start the thick stroke. Slow down at the bottom and finish this finish this up stroke really slowly. Then we starting this thin one by going upwards and then dropping and making this downstroke really heavy. Let's do a few more. Down. Oh. Thin up, thick down. Now, something that might be happening and just again recognize if it is happening. I often see this where students do this, open the stroke too much. That's not what we want. We definitely want to keep our strokes parallel. L we'll train tracks, try to do it that way. Again, thick down nice and slow, thin up. L's another one, thin, thick down. I'm feeling that control in my fingers. Try your best. It's definitely be tricky. If you're seeing a lot of wobbly and shaky strokes, I just want you to know that it's not about what it looks like on this sheet. It's all about just trying and learning and just getting into it. If it's the first time you're doing it, it's absolutely normal. If it's a little bit wobbly, that's normal. Let's do some of these compound curve shapes. Quite similar to underturn and overturns, but we're just going to connect pre strucks together. We're going to go down thick, thinner. Thick down, that's one of them, or we can also do it in reverse. We go up, we go down and we go up again. What's important about this? Again, you don't want to keep them. You want to keep them parallel instead of opening them up like this. A good way to do this is just to follow the slantl. Maybe you can start the next shape on this slant and try to follow this slant. As you do all of these shapes. Again, I'm starting the next one, maybe on this slant line, just to help me get into the position and I can just follow it and make sure that all of the strokes are parallel to one another. Again, quite a few transition points here. Remember not to flick your pen at the end. Try to go a little bit slower at the end, Don't pick up your pen right away, and Also slow down before the transition points happen. Try and think of your shape as if it's going Like to the right here a little bit. There's a bit of a horizontal stroke happening. That might help. When you're at the top, just go a little bit to the side and when you're at the bottom, just go a little bit to the side again before you go up. This might just give you a bit of time to change that pressure. You can think of it that way. But just thinking in advance. It does take a lot of focus. When I'm halfway through this stroke, I'm already thinking about this thinner stroke. And when I'm doing this thinner stroke, I'm already focusing on this down stroke. I always always thinking in advance and preparing your hand for a certain pressure change. It's like the information is traveling from your brain to your hand, which it is. It just takes a bit of time. So do think about it in advance. Okay. Beautiful, well done everybody. That's not an easy exercise. Now we're going to try some of these decen and A sender shapes. As I said, this could be the letter g, for example. If you think about it, it's got this little loop shape like this or the letter B, you do the letter B, it stretches upwards like that. An example, just to give you a little example, so you know what we're doing here. There we go. We're going to start with this one, we're going to go down thick. Slow down at the bottom and then do this upward stroke, this thin. Remember that everything that goes to the side or up in calligraphy is always thin. Everything that goes down is always thick. That's tally like the number one rule to remember. Let's practice this together. Again, starting this one, it's important that you start this loop with this right side, with the up stroke. We're starting here going up and then all the way down. Let's just carry on free hand. Remember to try and finish your loop at the baseline. When you do this downward one, and when you do this top loop shape, try to start the loop at the waistline. There we go. See if you can make your loops a bit more narrow or a bit more open. This will depend on your style, but it's quite nice to start experimenting a little bit. You can make them really wide or you can keep them very narrow there. There we go. I just want to say well done. Now that I'm making it look easy. It's not my intention. I have been doing this for so long, remember that have been practicing pretty much every day since 2015. Just now, it doesn't mean that it will take you a long time to learn, but by doing these exercises, you're strengthening your muscle memore and the more you do them, the better. I highly recommend just going through this exercise, five times as many times as you can to really really let it all sink in before we carry on. This is one of the best exercises you can do as a beginner to help you progress. Well then, everyone, and I'll see you the next lesson. 4. Building Up Letters Out Of Shapes: This lesson, we're going to go through this locase alphabet. I know that this sheet looks scary. Again, just make sure that you print this sheet. I know it looks scary. It looks like an algebra exam or something, but all it is is just deconstructed Locase alphabet. I just want you to start and understand how all of the shapes we practice, there will be some other shapes like this one, which we have really practiced. It's like a reversed C shape, you can take without B. I just want you to start and understand how shapes build letters. Calligraphy is really different from handwriting because when we write in cars we join everything up, whilst in calligraphy, we try and pick up our pen in between the shapes. Just to demonstrate, let's say I'm just doing the wide mode. Now this is how I'm picking up my pen from the page. After I do certain lettes or shapes, I don't join everything up in one go. This just makes it easier for you to literally breathe and take a pause. But also that's just how click if it is. We will never ever ever join one word and try to do it all in one go. Always try to think of your words as if you're lettering shapes and you're putting shapes together into lettes. These are the shapes. All these pink shapes are the shapes that form lettes. How about if we just go through them together? To do the case A, we're going to start with this C shape. We can trace together, in thick thin. All it is is just we are adding this little conf half U shape. We're going to do this first and then go back to the letter. When we put this together, so we do a C shape, and we pick up our pen for a second, and we do the second part of the letter. We just divide it into two shapes. That's the Locase A, C shape, picking up the pen for a second, and then finishing with the u shape. There we go. That's the letter A. Of course, you can stylize it in a different way. We're going to go there. It is a beginners course, but all you need to know is that letter A consists of these two shapes. Now, let's do the letter B, and again, we're going to do the red first. You're going to start with this shape. Do you remember? It's an a sender shape we've practiced this to. This a sender loop shape is the first part of the letter B. Now we just need to add on this little like a reverse s shape, but it also has a little loops. I got to slide this up down to the side. Thin up, thick down, thin to the side. If we combine both of the go so that's the loop shape, we stop in between, and then we add on this shape. You get the letter B. Again, this is one way of doing it. I mean, you practice tracing the alphabet in the next couple of worksheets. You'll see that. It's possible to stylize these letters and they don't always look the same, but they do consist of these two shapes mainly. You could do your letter B with a beautiful entry stroke like this and maybe done like a smaller loop shapes. It's really up to you, but this is a really really good way of practicing it. Now, some letters like letters C, they just flow in one go. We're not picking up our pen here. We're just doing this letter as it is, so thin, thick, thin, and there we go. That's the letter C. So Let's do the letter D, we're going to start with these red shapes again. We're starting with the C shape. That's a first shape with the letter D. You can also do it as an shape. You can connect it all the way. But I just do mine like this. We're going to we're going to do the sloop shapes, that's the second part of the letter D. It also has this a shape at the end. Quite a few shapes we can find in here. When you do your letter D, you want to do the C shape first. There we go. We're starting here, and then we stop. And then we start with the slope. And we just attach this down stroke onto this loop shape. So we're going straight into this u shape as well. So just to do it again. We're doing a C shape to begin with or shape. Then picking up the pen, we're starting, kind of trying to eyeball it in and make sure that this down stroke is attached to this C shape. So we're starting here, leaving a little gap, and then we're just going through that gap with a down stroke to hide it. Okay. So let the letter E is one of those letters, again, the flows in one go. So we're going up in thick down to they got just how it is. Let's do this letter F. It's one of those letters that stretches up to the A sender line and also down to the decender line. It's a very tall letter. We starting with this thinner shape and going all the way down. You can do it in one go, or if you want to have polls, you can divide this letter into two shapes, so you can pick up your pen and then you can do this shape afterwards. Again, might look a bit strange. This is all thin. I might look a little bit strange, but when you put it together, it got to make sense. So that's the first shape. You can stop here, pick up the pen, go back in, or you can choose to do it in one go. But maybe in your learning, it's quite nice to just practice it separately. There we go. Next up is the lettic G. Again, it starts with this shapes, very similar to Letts A and D, so that's pretty much the same shape plus a descender shape. The one that goes all the way down. Remember we did this already, but now we're just adding on like an extra little up stroke here. There we go. If the abstrak is really long, you can always divide it into two parts. You don't have to do it all in one go. Just to show you that. You could do this, the first shape. You can pick up the pen and then we do the loop shape, you can finish it here, and then pick up your pen and stretch the rest of the exit stroke. The last stroke of the letter, is called the exit stroke and the first part of the letter is called the entry stroke, and it's quite nice to make them quite long, so you can see the entry stroke here of the letter B. It's quite long and the exit stroke of the letter B. It's quite long as well. Begin to chat about at before. Let's do the letter H. Starting with a beautiful entry stroke and then doing a loop shape so thin and thick. Letter is my favorite letter. I just I just love the shapes in it. I love the shape, and then we're also doing this compound curve, that's the shape. When we join this up, when we do this first part, we pick up the pen, and then we do the second part up down up. We get the letter H. This alphabet is done in more of a bounty lettering style. Bounty just means that it's like a bit more modern, it has a bit more character. It has a bit more movement to it. Some of the letters stretch up or down below the baseline, some of the letters are bigger, some of the letters are smaller, and I love it because it just makes the lettering look so interesting, so stylized. See just notice how we drop this stroke below the baseline a little bit. Letter. The letter I normally is just one stroke like this. But you can of course also add the little entry stroke to it, so that would make two. So you do this entry stroke, you pick up your pen, and then we do this little U shape and our little dot, of course, as well. You can also do your letter a bit more round at the bottom. Again, different lettering stars will look different, obviously. For example, this star is a bit more classic, while this star is a bit more bouncy looking. All right. Let's do the letter J. Again, one of those letters that is normally done in one, G. Although you can stop here. If it's too much for you to stretch this up stroke all the way to the side, it's a bit of a handful. You can stop here, divide the stroke into two, and do it this way. It will look like this. You go down and finish this descender loop, pick up the pen, and then you can finish this little thinner stroke and stretch to the side and dot of course. There we go. Right. Letter K. Not an easy letter. A lot of people really struggle with it and it's actually also the letter that I used to struggle with a lot. Let's take it slow. It starts in a fairly straightforward way. We just do a sender shape, and then we pick up the pen. But then here we get this like a reverse C shape, very similar to the letter B shape this. There we go. Then we make a little loop here, and then we stretch down and up. It can be particularly hard to do this down stroke, holding the pen in the correct way. If you notice that your pen is doing some strange things and wants to come up a bit more, make sure you're still holding it at the slant and try to practice this. Down stroke, that goes at the slant all the way down. I'm going to combine these two shapes, so we go up and down. We pick up the pen. I love to go back to the middle here of the stroke and start these shapes from here. That's the first one, making a little loop, all the way down with a tricky stroke and finishing slowly the thinner one. You'll practice this more, so don't worry for now, but it's just quite nice understand the shape. Let's have let L. Again, one of those lets just slide the letter E. It's normally just done in one go. Let's just practice that thin up thick down and finishing this little exit stroke. Don't forget about it. We don't want to chop the letter off, we definitely wants to have a nice ending there. Beautiful, well done. Take your time. If you feel like you need to go slower. That's fine. Just take it slower, take it easier. Let's do the letter M. So the letter M has three shapes in it. That's quite a few. It's definitely one of those letters where you find yourself just lifting your pen up for a second. Let's do the first shape, which is just a simple down stroke. Then we get this upside down U shape. Plus a compound curve shape. And again, I'm bouncing it down a little bit. There we go. Quite a few shapes. Let's try combining them, so let's do a down stroke. We can pick up our pen. The first shape. Now I'm starting it from the bottom of this down stroke. I'm going up. And down to the middle of the left top. Now I need to go back to this point where I finished and just do, go up and down and finish with a beautiful exit stroke that would normally connect on the let to. So try to think of it that way. There we go. The let n is very similar. It's just short, so we skip in this middle stroke, but it's pretty much the same, just what we've done. Now, try it down stroke. Picking up the pen, going up down and. Just like we slowed down towards the end when we were doing the shapes, try to slow down as you do the end of each letter again. Shape. We did like an shape, but it was a bit different. I normally do my like this. I start with down stroke and change the pressure at the bottom, and all of this is done in thinner. Thinner stroke, very light, down stroke and then just very slowly with a focused movement, we are continuing with this loop. Nearly there guys well done. You're do a great job. It's not an easy exercise. Let's try the letter P. Letter P consists of an acen loop shape plus this little vas C shape again. Up down, little loop at the bottom. Just like the letter B, is the same shape. We've done it one already. Let's combine this together. That's the fast shape, beautiful loop, all the way down. Then we're going back to here, maybe where the baseline is. We can also do higher up. It's really up to you. Again, it will depend on your style, and we're just attaching this little shape and very slowly doing this up stroke at the end Mt. Let a cube, so we get a C shape. And something that looks a bit like letter F. You're going to go do thick, thin up, wrap it around with a little loop and stretch it to the side. Thick down stroke, and then we do it is like a really narrow U shape, and then adding a little loop. How that makes sense? So we try putting this into an actual letter. C shape, being up the pen, going up, you can make the loop cross, your down stroke if you like. There we go. And stretch to the side. Letter r. Letter r can be really tricky. It can be one of those letters that will take a bit of time to just truly sink in. But let's just give it a go. To do the letter r, we're going to break it up into two parts. This is the fast part. We do this little thin loop fast. What's important here is to finish with a horizontal stroke. We're not finishing with a diagonal or vertical stroke. We're finishing with a horizontal stroke, and we're just attaching this little U shape. So let's try to get there. This is the loop finishing. Horizontally, being up the pen here. Let me adding on this a U shape, but min is a bit edgy, a bit angled. That's again, just because it's done in a bound style. A few more lines. Letter S. Letter S flows in one go, so we go up, take a loop at the top, and then also a loop at the bottom. Let's try it again, so thin, a beautiful wiggly loop that goes, true. Like a gly loop. Again, not too easy to do because it does require a bit of slanting. What I find helps is really singing into your pen, starting from here, and just going in a very thick waves you go down. I find that just makes it flow a bit better. You press down harder. Right. Let's do the letter T. We just do a straight down stroke and then we need something to finish the letter. We're doing this like up stroke. Forsc, it's a U shape. There's also a cross line. Don't forget about a cross line when you do your ts. It's quite nice to do a thick line down and a little up stroke, and then pick up the pen and then do the cross line. Let we go. Then let we can start the letter U with an entry stroke and then do this first U shape. Then pick up the pen, so that will be here, but we pick up the pen on this point, and then we're adding on another U shape. Looks a little bit strange. But let's just see what it looks like when we do the actual letter. We start with the, do the U shape. Then the fir part of the letter u, and now we just need to overlap this little up stroke a little bit. As we go down, we overlap it, and just do another U shape. That makes sense. Yeah, there's definitely a bit of overlapping going on. Now, let's do the letter V, so we start with up stroke and then go down. Again, in this little tricky tricky shape, that slants this way. It's definitely a slanted movement, and then we just do the second part, trying to form like a little triangle shape here in between. When we do the actual letter, obviously becomes a bit more natural, so we do the first part, go back to this base. Pick up the pen and then start we finished and just add on The second part of the letter. All right. Let's do the letter W. We're starting with this entry stroke, going down thick and then finishing thin. It can be as edgy or as round as you want it to be here at the bottom. Mine's definitely edgy here, but a bit more round here. We're going to do the second part, do, thick and then thin up and very slowly, we're finishing with this horizontal stroke again. Well done. Let's connect them together. Go up down to the middle, we'll pause, then start in the next shape up to the side. Well done. The letter x is a bit tricky. So it's quite interesting because they're normally starting with this shape, this shape. And then all that's left to do. After we do this is this little upstroke. If you look at this, it's kind of like a compound curve shape, but it's definitely a bit more like up and down up so the upstrokes are not as long. But if you add longer upstrokes, that's all it is if you remember the shape. So that's what we do first. Let's do together up down up. And then just pick up your pen and all you've got to do is add this little upstroke and it can be either straight or av like this, a bit curved. It's really up to you again, it will depend on your style, but that's how this letter is formed. Right guys, do more letters. You've got this. We can do it. Letter y, I love starting it here with a little up stroke just to show that normally there's a connection stroke before it, and that's the first part, and then this second part is just a straightforward the sender shape. Again, 100 if you've practiced already in the fast lesson, if you remember, that's the one. If you combine them together, we get the letter y. You can also start your letter y with a little loop like this. If you'd like to try that, that could be quite interesting. There we go. Let Z. We're going to talk about the loops, entry strokes a bit more soon, but I thought I just mentioned it, and the letter. Let Z split right in the middle. That's the first part, and this will be the second part. I a little bit like number three. That's one way of doing this. I know some people do the letters like this, which is something you can try. But this is a bit tricky because it's quite hard to connect to join it to other letters. I might make it a bit difficult. But that the doable, I think it's quite nice for these for it to be like this. We're going to do the actual perce Laset going to practice them. But this is just a really good exercise to begin with, and let's carry on with the alphabet. Well then, everyone. 5. Lowercase Alphabet: I know that lecturing free hand can be very difficult. In this lesson, we're going to follow some worksheets, and I actually really, really recommend tracing because it's the best way to train your muscle memory. The more you trace, the less you have to think about the actual letter, because you're simply following the guidelines, and it just trains your hand to do these movements automatically after a while. So I highly highly recommend using these worksheets and tracing them as many times as you can, at least doing each of them once, is going to make a huge difference for you. I highly recommend focusing on the alphabet this week and using these worksheets to squeeze in as much practice as you can. So we're going to start with the lower case alphabet, this lesson and just like we practice before, combining all of the shapes together. In this lesson, I want you to try and focus on picking up your pen from the page when constructing each letter. So we're not going to do each letter in one go. So just like before, we're going to have those moments where we do pick up our pen, have a little pause before we start the next shape. Although some letters do flow in one go. Just like we've practiced before, for example, the letter C, just flows nicely in one go, as well as the letter E, as well as the letter J or L. But most of the letters do require for you to pick up the pen in between the shapes. It might feel a little bit strange at first, but calligraphy is all about separating strokes which build letters. So you will often find that when you're doing a word, you actually are picking up your pen from the page very very often, and that's just the nature of Caligrapy. And eventually, that will also help you with your lettering flow, and you will develop a good rhythm. It will just feel natural. You won't even realize that you are stopping. So we're going to start with this first letter. I'm just going to trace it and try to think of the shapes as we go. So Starting with the C shape, as we already know this from the previous exercise, Try to do this as slowly as you can, pick up your pen here and continue with the next shape. Essentially, this is a very similar exercise to the previous one, but this time we're tracing, so we can fully focus on the pressure changes, transitions, from light pressure into heavy pressure, going up very lightly, going down very heavy. You don't really have to think about the shape of the letter because you're following the guidelines. You can use the arrows to guide you as well. But do notice how slowly I'm going here and try to copy my pace here. Very slowly. Doing each letter with so much focus. Slowing down before the transitions, and actually trying to finish each lector, a little bit slower. So being extra careful on each last stroke of the lector. Starting with a lot of focus, maybe then going a little bit quicker, when you reach the middle of the, picking up a bit of speed, making a little momentum there, and then finishing off with a very focused and slow movement. Maybe the second time you do this, you'll start to notice that you are starting to develop some kind of lecturing flow, that it looks a bit more rhythmical, that you are making those pauses, and they're all similar in a way. It's like you're following a beat. That's what it feels like when you get into that flow. It's all rhythmical and flowing. To take your time here. You can refer to this video if you're still unsure about some of the letters. You can follow. Should be nice and clear here. Every single movement for each letter, but I hope that the arrows are helping you. It's fairly straightforward. Keep reminding yourself to slow down. I can't stress this enough. You do want to go very slowly. Slower is better than fast for sure when it comes to calligraphy. Especially when you're learning, you want to really really get used to shape each letter. If you're still getting used to the pen, being slow will help you to let it sink in a little bit better I promise. I get slowing down towards each exit stroke. The exit stroke is the last stroke of each letter, and we're really slowing down there. When you get to the middle, when you're half way through the alphabet, maybe try and imagine that there's another letter attached to each of these. When you're doing the last stroke of each letter, just imagine that there would be another letter. You don't necessarily need to do it or letter it, but it all starts with thinking about it. Thinking in advance. That's how you train your mind, train your hand. They're not doing letter connections just yet, but starting to be a bit mindful about it. They'll maybe help you to pay a bit more attention. You do it maybe a bit more carefully because it will be connecting to another letter eventually anyway. There we go. Nearly done with the sheet. I'm sure that you're doing a great job, well done, everyone. Feel free to print this as many times as you need. Literally, this could be such a good exercise to do every day or every other day or at least every week to help you and continue with your practice. It's just an excellent exercise. If you ever have any break from practicing and you need to get into the swing of things again, this is going to help you so much, just focusing on basic strokes and the alphabet. Is the best thing you can do. And it'll help you to ease right back in, I promise. So here we go. This is the lower case Alphabet, well done, everybody. There's a bit of room here. If you want to practice some letters that maybe a bit more difficult for you. For example, the letters K or R or letter E or D are usually the ones that require a bit more practice. That's very natural. Use the space to just maybe pick those letters out and practice them a bit more free hand. We'll focus on the uppercase alphabet in the next lesson. Well done, everyone see soon. 6. Uppercase Alphabet: In this lesson, I'm going to use this worksheet that says uppercase alphabet. They're going to trace all of these uppercase letters. They are slightly big up because uppercase letters are bigger than the lower case. Lettering in bigger size might actually help you to get into a flow. Now this is what it feels like if you find it easier or harder, and you can follow the arrows here. Remember to pick up your pen often, remind yourself to fit nice and straight, rest your elbow. Make sure you're holding your pen correctly, just troubleshoot from time to time. If something doesn't work out, just maybe now is that maybe the position of the pen has gone a bit off, or maybe you're not dressing your elbow and your hand is up in the air, or maybe you're using your wrist too much, or maybe your back isn't very straight, so it makes your hand a bit more tense. Things like that. Relax your grip, take a deep breath, and let's try this together. We're going to start with the upper case A, a nice little entry stroke here. Nice and thin, and I'm going to have a little pause here before I carry on with the next part of the letter. When you do the cross line, you can actually separate it into two parts. You can do this. You can then pick up your pen and then you can start again. If it's a bit too long, sometimes it's easier to separate it into two, or you can just do a quick thin movement all at once. It's up to you. Let's start the letter be nice entry strokes. We're really focusing on longer entry strokes here. Trying to really extend them. This will make our letters look a bit more complete, a bit more professional, right from the start, and same goes for the exit strokes. We want them to be nice and long like this. I find that lecturing in big scale is a bit easier, when you have more room, it's like you can glide your pen a bit more, and it just helps a lot, doesn't it you can move freely instead of focusing on very small lets. If something doesn't go right, maybe your upstroke looks a bit shaky, or maybe you just need to color in your downstroke a little bit more, so it looks a bit more consistent. Remember, you can always go back and find two in your letter. You can always go over your downstroke again. Maybe color in some parts of very thick. Remember, you can definitely do this and it's quite normal to make a little mistake or sometimes your strokes won't be perfectly thick or thin because this is hand lecturing, we need to allow for human error. You're not a computer, you can't make these perfect. If that happens, just use the tip of your brush to gently correct some of the letters. T F. In the letter G with a nice entry stroke again, nice and thin. Take your time here wherever you are. Slow down. Remember, if you do want to go very slowly. If you're half way to the alphabet already or if you're much further along, it probably means you're going a little bit too fast, so just try to pace yourself, try to find a calmer softer and slower rhythm for your lettering. You'll just notice that it helps it and everything just starts to look a little bit better. Also, remember that this is purely my style. There are other ways to do these letters. So if some of them look a little bit strange to you or very unnatural, remember that you don't have to use this style. I will attach some more worksheets, so you can try some different styles as well, but you might also notice But there are different alphabet stars out there, and maybe you'll see a person doing it in a different way. So I think your style is always evolving. I also have some letters that I do completely differently from When I started lecturing back in 2015, and there are some letters that I still do in exactly the same way. So I think with time, you just kind of pick up some more styles, and then maybe you change the way you do your letter M or the letter T, you know, and then you kind of go back to it. So I can also tell how my style is always changing. But currently, this is what I used for my uppercase letters, and I hope you enjoy practicing this as well. Very similar to the lower case, but just bigger. Here we go. Same with the letter P, pretty much the same as the lower case. Just making it a bit bigger. Relax your hand, try to focus as much as you can. You're doing a great job. The let nice little tail here, so nice little entry stroke. Try to make your down stroke smooth and thick. Should feel quite nice and smooth paper. It will feel very unnatural if you're using a textured paper. Do make sure you're using good quality smooth paper. I love this HP color choice card because it's so smooth and brush pens just glide on it. I really love it. The letter, little reminder, so we do this fast and then we go over this up stroke with a down stroke to hide it. Few more letters to go. There we are. The letter. Remember, we're starting with this stroke first. Finishing with this quick nice and thin. I love the now if you have some favorite let here as well. Picking up the pen here, halfway through. Please please do not try and attempt to do these complicated lettuce in one go. That's just going to be very, very difficult. I was talking too much, and this is a bit shaky, so I'm just going to use the tip of my brush to very carefully go over this a stroke again, just to smooth it out a bit more. There we go. And the letters. This up stroke is very long. Just like I did here with my letter A where I separated this long stroke into two parts. I'm going to do the same thing with the letter. Picking up my pen here and I'm continuing this stroke from here after having a little rest. Like this. There we go. I hope you enjoyed it. There are some other styles to try. Just check the next lesson for some more worksheets, and I'll see in our Facebook group on Sunday and I'm going to go through a different alphabet style that you all using a ficker pen, that's going to be fun. Please please join. I would love to see you there. Good luck with this week. I'm here if you need me, have fun and happy lecturing. 7. Connecting Letters: So I thought that we could do this letter joining exercise together. So you've got this worksheet, which is designed for five pen, and it's just wonderful to help you trace and practice. So you can always practice this. You can trace this part, but today together, we're going to go through this exercise where we join four letters at the time before we try to do the whole chain. So we're going to begin with this letter A, and we are still remembering to divide each letter into shapes. So I'm doing the fast part of the letter. Picking up my pen. Then let's do the U shape, finishing the letter A. Now that time I'm stretching my exit stroke into this down stroke of the letter B. You can then always hide it. Even if you dig into it a little bit, that's fine. Because when you do your letter B, you can go over it and just hide it a little bit. We're going to carry on of the letter B nice and slow, doing a down stroke and hiding that connection stroke down. Picking up the pen, carrying on with the second part of the letter B. These are quite small, so it definitely gives you a really detailed practice here. I think sometimes it's good to practice small as well because it can be quite hard to do in clicker P, especially if the brush bend. Let's do the letter C. Again, I'm hiding the connection stroke. See how it got hidden behind this down stroke. Letter D starts with the C shape. We're picking up the pen. Then we're doing this acendo shape. Let's cry on with a letter E, starting with an entry stroke. How we will pause after you finish the letter, then we're starting the letter F here, and then we're connecting the down stroke. To the letter E. Doing the letter G, nice around, picking up the pen, going down, touching the sender line. Again, digging in that stroke into the next letter. You can see how it's digging in the letter H. Now I'm starting this next loop shape, hiding that little stroke. My pens fairly new, so I keep like correcting my strokes. Because it's a bit stiff still. Let's finish off with this bouncy letter H. Love live. We're going to start with a letter I, the next little set of letters. I'm going to go straight into the letter J because it is that one of those letters of flows in one go. Again, I'm digging in my stroke. Digging it a bit longer than I need because I know that we can hide it. Now I'm starting with this little loop, going up and down, picking up the pen again, doing the letter K, I'm stopping after every single letter. After I do this exit joke, which is also the Corrections joke, I stop. Let's try doing that together. All right, let's do the letter A and finishing off again with a beautiful exit stroke. Harding dots. Let's carry on, let's do the M, down stroke, picking up the pen, doing this upside down U shape, and the compound curves are breaking it down into shapes. Again, doing this longer connection stroke, even if it goes a little bit longer than we think we need. We can always use the next down stroke to hide a little part of it. Carrying on with a compound curve for the letter n. Picking up the pen, doing the letter and stopping. This is quite interesting when we connect. A the letters to the letter. The stroke can be quite horizontal. It's just interesting to observe. Do the letter p to finish this line. We're finishing with this long stroke. Imagine there is another letter quite similar to the letter. Oh, this letter P connection stroke is quite horizontal, I would say. All right. Let's do a letter Q. C shape or shape, stretching down the second part of the letter, and we're going to go straight into the letter r because we know this is where we divide the let into two parts. The first part is this, and we've gone straight into it and now we're resting. So pause. Let's do let r to finish letter r, and finishing with the letter. I doing three lets, we're approaching the end of the alphabet. We're going to do the letter t. Again finishing this letter tape with a beautiful like a U shaped stroke. Now when we start the actual U shape, we're going to hide part of this connection stroke again, and again a fast shape. Second shape and finishing with the letter V. You might be wondering, why do I pick up my pens so often? I think is obviously it might seem like it's a lot and it feels a bit strange. This is what differentiates calligraphy from handwriting because when we write in cars if we connect, we join everything up in one go. In Calligraphy, you'll probably never join more than three I Maximum four strokes at a time. Let's do a W. This is interesting. Letter x goes like this, going to finish the W, and then we're going to go straight into the letter x this way. If you think of it being this compound curve like this, imagine this is the letter x. Then you'll see del stroke as a connection stroke. In this case, it's really short. But let's say we have letter. Before the letter x. For example, then it's much more obvious, it definitely goes up, down up, and this is where we can add the second part of the letter x doing this. We get a beautiful connection stroke here. I hope this makes sense. Let's say we have the beforehand. Again, beautiful compound, This is the first part of the letter x, and then we just odd in a little lop stroke there. There it comes to a little loop stroke. He just W and X is a bit strange because this connection here is really short, but it's a very uncommon letter combination, so don't worry. You're not going to see that often. I've gone straight into the letter Z, but I'm only doing one part of the letter Z before I pick up my pen and before we finish, now we just finished with a beautiful legit stroke, just to make the letters ad look complete. There we go. That's what it looks like. I thought I would just show you how I would do the alphabet in flow. I'm going to talk here and maybe this is something we can try together as well. You will see how often I pick up my pen, but I'm doing it in such a, such a rhythm that it doesn't actually feel like it's a long pause. It's definitely a really quick movement. I'll finish a lesson by doing this, and maybe you can do it together. I think it's nice for you to see that rhythm. There we go. So I thought I'd just show you and I know that make it look easy. Please don't look at this and think, Oh, my goodness, I can't do it. You know, my lines don't look smooth and all those things. It's very normal if you're learning to please remember that. I've been or what is it now, nine years. That's crazy. So of course it'll feel natural to me. That's very normal. Yes, print this worksheet off, practice as many times as you can this week, just going through these exercises. That'll be real really powerful, really helpful for you to build your muscle memory here. Yes, the last thing you can do is try to join everything up in one go. Pas please please remember to divide each letter into shapes and think about those shapes. The only letters that flow in one go are letters like C E L J S. I think that's it really. The definitely you don't have to pick up your penn in between, you do those ones, but the rest do have parts to it. There's one part. There's a second part. So please try to spot those parts just like we've practiced in the previous lessons. There we go, Well, then, everybody, I can't wait to see your practice. Let me know how you get on. 8. Short Word Lettering: Once you've practice connecting the Lettie, joining the ette and you're started to understand the concept of finishing word letter, extending its exit stroke and then starting the next letter with an entry stroke, and that's where the connection happened. That's the joining up part. The next step is to put those lettes into words. We are going to try some lovely short words here, you can pick to do a few or you can do it them all in one day, it's really up to you, but I just want you to remember to go slowly. We are tracing here, so we're just going to go over this grade out area, and just remember to go slowly. Remember to pick up your pen after every shape or after every letter. This will depend on the letter shape. But I thought I'd just god you through a couple of the words. You can see my pace and you can see how often I'm lifting up my pen. I'm starting with the letter D. We're going to do it to b dream. And I'm starting with the letter D. I'm starting with the C shape. Picking up my pen, and I'm going to start this shape with a little tail. This is actually called a detached flourish. Be the next shape, and I'm going straight into the letter r, and I'm going to stop here, divide this let into two parts. Finish the letter r, pick up my pen again. To the letter E. Pick up the pen, do the letter A. Pick up the pen. I just notice how I keep lifting up my pen to divide each letter into shapes. Lovely. As we finish the wd, we're going to extend this last stroke of the letter to the side with a lovely tail as well. Getting ready to do the wide believe, so I'm going to start this letter with a beautiful entry stroke. It starts quite horizontal, so definitely goes to the side. Then I'm going to pick up my pen and finish the letter B, so the second part of the letter B. Lift up my pen for a second, do the letter E. Stop there, start the letter L with the loop. Finish the let L. Pick up the pen. Finish the letter and pick up the pen again, and notice how I am making those stops. That's really really important. Halfy by now, it starts to become quite natural, but it can also take time. Please don't worry if you still feel like rushing a little bit or if you still feel like you want to join up more than two letters at a time or even more than 1.5 letter at a time. It's good to recognize, if that's happening, just remember to go back to that worksheet where we divided each letter into shapes. There we go. And finishing with the beautiful exit stroke. Definitely a lot of folk that, trying not to rush that part. It definitely takes a bit of time. You're going to do the word relax and doing the letter r, starting with the first part, picking up the pen, doing the second part of the letter r, stopping again, doing the letter E. Quick we'll stop before we start the letter L. Then doing the letter A, stopping again, and we're going to flow into the letter x with this compound curve. Connecting quite a few shapes here. Before I pick up my pen again and then we go through this letter x. We'll upstroke just to complete it. There we go. The more words to go, doing the letter S for the wad shine. Picking up the pen. Starting the letter e. That's the first part of the letter H, stopping there, doing a compound curve shape, and it's quite nice to recognize all of the shapes as you go. Letter I is pretty much U shape. I'm doing that. Stopping again. Letter n, started a downstroke. Stopping there, then adding on this compound curve, which we're bouncing down a little bit. We're definitely adding a bit of bound to the latte. My style is naturally really bounces. There's something that's called bounty cagrapy, and it just means that you are changing the height and size of your lette to make it a bit more playful. You can see how for example, the letter n stretches below the baseline here. It's normally a lette like M, N, or even A, they can stretch down and then bounce back up to catch the next letter. You can also do that to letters like H. I just show you a few examples. Again, bouncing it down. These are quite common to bring below the baseline. Let's finish here with a letter E extending it to the side. Let's try this really really short phrase to get though, so we're going to do B kind. Starting with the acenda shape, picking up the pen. Stopping there. Doing the letter E, what B is done. Starting to what kind. Starting with a beautiful sender loop shape. Stopping there, doing the letter K. Before we stop again, let I. Quick stop, let n, down stroke, picking up the pen. Up down up, a beautiful compound curve shape. Let D started the C shape. Picking up the pen, and finishing the letter with this beautiful a sender shape, the tant into U shape here at the bottom. Well done. This is not easy. If you never joined up letters before or maybe if you have, but you aren't quite sure what you were doing. This can take a bit of time to really sink in. But as I said, the most important part here is to divide letters into shapes. Remember to have the stopping points, remember to go slowly, and also remember to extend the exit strokes of the word. Adding like a little longer tail at the end of each word. You can try doing this little phrase, get inspired, free hand, see what happened. But there we go. I hope you enjoy this little worksheet and it's given a little insight into how my rhythm, my pace. You might feel like I'm going really quickly here, but just remember that I've been doing this for so long and it will take a bit of time to build up muscle memory and, you know, kind of try and make your straws look neat and make sure your letters look balanced, then it all comes with time. So I hope you enjoy the process, but just remember you will get better with every time you practice. So that's just something to remember. Well, then for doing this. 9. Freehand Lettering: Plenty of resources, plenty of worksheets in the course that you can trace. These here are for practicing, doing your own greeting cards. Very useful, some really common phrases like happy pathic, congratulations. You can trace these before you tar in free hand. Again, tracing will really really help with muscle memory, and that's something I really really recommend doing quite a lot when you're learning. I thought for today's lesson, we can do a bit of free hand lettering and I can teach you a little bit more about planning your phrases and arranging them nicely on a page. The first thing you want to do when you have your phrase ready, and it's easier for shorter phrases, of course, but when you have something longer like this, the first thing you want to do is decide how many lines you're going to have when you letter it. I recommend having more lines and making your designs look more I vertical rather than spreading them wide because very often, if it's a long phrase, we'll just take the whole page and it's not going to look good if it's like in two lines, look like a rectangle on your page. By doing it this way, you can make your lettering bigger and it'll just look more effective on a card on a posted design. Se that's something I highly highly recommend. The next thing you want to decide is what words are the most important words. You can try and keep your non important smaller. And more important words pick up. In this example, all of the words are quite similar. But if you wanted to emphasize certain words, that's something you can try and do, you can use a different color for it, you can make the word picker, just to get the message across a bit better, and it's just easier to read and it can look thetically pleasing. But for this example, we are just practicing this really basic layout. I just want to guide you tru it and maybe we can do it together. The fast thing to do when you have a blank page or a blank card, you want to mark the area where you'll be lecturing. Normally do these four lines and I know that I cong over these lines, it's like a little frame. It just helps me to structure my lecturing right away. Also, try to remember that it's quite hard to let it in small scale. We some people find it easy, but for most students, from what I've witnessed, it's quite tricky to keep your lecturing small. Maybe le try and be conscious and just remind ourselves to go smaller than we think. And also try to imagine that you have your center line in your little frame that will help you to know where the center is. We're going to start with a word belief. Because it's the first word of the phrase, we don't really have to think too much about the actual layout. Obviously, try to keep it right in the middle of where you want to do it. A little bit strange here because we're not actually using a page. We're just using this little side of the page. We don't really have a proper background or factor, so making one up. I think I'm just going to make my frame a bit quicker. I didn't do it correctly. There we go a bit bicker and maybe a bit smaller here, so it doesn't overlap. Then. On the second line, we have what you can, and it's a bit of a longer line. I'm going to try and position here. Once you have your first line, you can then refer to it and try to balance the rest of the lines. Planning it is a really good thing to do. Now I'm thinking, I'm trying to imagine that I'm going to position my line here so that it looks balanced. I'm going to do you. Just like you're space in your lattes, you also want to space your word obviously, that don't look too cramped. Definitely doing a lot of bound lecturing here. It's quite bound. Now the next line is a bit longer, so I need to account for that. Again, I'm planning, Haping to fit it in here. What we want to get ideally is like the s gap on each side. Try to again imagine that as you lets. I'm going to start a bit more to the left to get that. And be really mindful of all of the loops. Now the time keeping the lights quite close together. That can also mean that some of your descender shapes like letter y in this example, might interfere with your ascender shapes like letter D or letter H. All the letters stretch up. Try to work around those slopes and try to position your ascender loops. When they are like tucked in a little bit. They're definitely not below the loop, so we want to avoid doing this way. We do the letter y and then we will do the letter D this way. That'll just create a really big gap in between your lines. We always want to try and tuck it in a little bit. And you A. And there we go, we have three lines. We have two more to go. On these two last lines, we only have individual words. To make them blend in a little bit better, I love using the entry and exit strokes to just help and make it look as if the line is a bit longer. Blend in a better. We don't want to have empty spaces on either of these sides. Imagine if I finished, this letter y, just with a very short stroke. If I started the letter H, with like a really short stroke. You'll just get this big gap on the left and on the right. That's not something we want. It's quite nice to start with a longer entry stroke. And finish with a longer exit stroke as well. You're doing great. This is not easy. If this is the first time you're lecturing free hand, you can feel scary doing it, but you're doing a great job for trying and every time you do it, you'll get better and better. Just remember that. Again, stretching the last stroke to the side. I'm definitely not following my frame too much here, but it'll make more sense and we do a card. But for now, it's just for guidance really. We need to do one more word. We need to be careful again, so we have letter T and H that are quite tall, and we also have this big drop here from the previous line of the letter F. You can also do this for you plan it a little bit. I definitely want to position t and H here to avoid this big descend lop. There we go. This way, we can keep the lines being quite close to one another and that's what we want. It just makes it look much better when they are quite close and we don't leave big gaps in between. But there we go. That's the first phrase and you can do the same with this one. You can practice this bit easier. I thought we could do this one together. But these are all the techniques you want to follow to create beautifully balanced compositions. I hope you enjoyed this and in the next lesson, we're going to make this beautiful card together, so let's get ready. 10. Designing Greeting Cards: I've got this blanket reading card here. These can be bought in hobby crafts, of link. Just be careful. Some of the card paper is not great for calligraphy. It can bleed with your brush pens. It star to do a little test in advance, but most of the time, it's all good. I haven't had many examples where it bleeds and I can't use certain cards. You definitely don't want to go for any coated paper. It wants to be just matt, smooth card. Sometimes it says the package. Yeah, that's definitely a safe option. Let's do a birthday card. Be going to use this technique again, where we just draw a little frame. I'm just using my pencil just to do this. Just to give me a little frame there so I know that I don't want to go over these lines. You can use a pencil. Let's think about the center line, so the center line is somewhere here. Again, I eyeball and you can of course measure measure it out properly, but I think just doing this is also really helpful. You can You can plan it with a pencil fat. I'm just scribbling it slightly here. Doing the white happy. My card is quite big. My lettering is also a bit big up. I'm going to do the white bath underneath. I'm just doing lower case really. The bath day is quite long. Again be mindful of your letter y and D, so they don't overlap. You can achieve that by being control of your spacing, maybe a big cross line on the letter T. Having this little draft can be really really helpful. I am planning to draw maybe something at the bottom, so I'm not worried that it's not perfectly in the middle. But if you want it to be right in the center, you can just erase and try again until it is. I'm just going to start going over now with my brush pen. It's so much easier when you have some guidelines, especially if you're doing card, if you're practicing, it's nice to practice free hand. But if you're doing something important, if you want to let a birthday card, you do want to do a bit of planning, and that's very normal. Everyone does it. Even I've been doing it for so long, but I do find that sometimes it's just nice to sit down and prepare and plan your design properly before you actually do it. To take your time. You can do this at your own pace. Just go through tracing and going over your design. You can always erase your pencil light afterwards, but make sure that your pen has dried completely. We don't want to smudge it. There you go I might do a long cross line here, just like I planned. You can always go over some of the up strokes. I if they look a bit too shaky, if you want to correct any, that's definitely doable and You can erase the pencil lines as well. I really love using brush pens to draw something. Maybe you could try it together. If you have a green pen of any sort to be honest, we can try doing these little stems. Imagining that these c flower stems. These are definitely very thin. I'm doing them in a really thin way, but I'm curving them. I'm definitely making them like curved. I'm just doing this like curved line and then extending a few stems out of them. I've got these thicker pants and I really love drawing with them and we can try this really simple flower, but we just do this little up and down motion, and we just do it out on every end of the stem, and you can use different colors. I might do some in yellow. It's like a little wild flower design I'd say. This is just like a really quick and simplistic example. Of course, you can draw something more and take more time. But I think even doing this can look really good. I just thought I'll show this little example. My heart's fairly big, so it might take a bit of time to fill it up properly to fill it with Drawings. I'll see how many I'll do. Instead of leaves, you can add these little lines. I'm using a green brush pen, but you can use any fine tip pen or any pen you can find. But these definitely want to be quite thin though. I adding these lines here and there. Now I think my lettering is dry. I might just erase all of the lines so I can see you can do the same just so I can see the whole design properly and we know about to add some more drawings, if anything needs changing. You can take a bit of inspiration from me. I'm just adding this lavender stems. I'm just doing the same motions, but like in one line, and then I'm adding a little thin step like this. This can look quite good. Like this. Oh. You can take it as far as you like with the drawing and I really love that these tumble pens have a fine tip to draw with. I think it's really helpful, so you can do different types of leaves and you can outline the shapes that you're drawing and then you can color in with the thicker tip. Super useful. I highly recommend getting some of these if you feel like you would like to do a bit of drawing as well. But of co you can use cool pens. They don't have to be any professional pens. You can take this as far as you like. Maybe you want to keep your cards playing and just do a bit of calligraphy. I think that's beautiful enough, but if you'd like to embellish them, this is just something fun you can try. I hope you enjoyed this with me. To remember to erase all of the pencil marks, to complete the look of your card, and there we go. That's your fast little project, well done. And I hope you enjoyed it, and I would love to see yours. Feel free to share with an Instagram, or tag me, or just drop me an e mail. I would love to see some of your work. We than everybody. 11. Tips for Continued Practice: I just want to say, well done for completing this course. You've done a lot of work, going through all these sections, practicing consistently. You've done an amazing job, and I would love to see some of your work, so you can tag me on Instagram and maybe shared. I'll be amazing. We also have a really wonderful community space. It's a private Facebook group called Calligraphy Beginners on Facebook. If you haven't joined yet, it's a beautiful space to be part of. Everybody is so friendly. And it just makes it so easy to share your work and maybe get feedback or just get inspired by other calligraps. Definitely a very beginners friendly group, which is nice, I think. Now it's all about keeping the practice going. Keeping that spark going and remember, take one step at a time, every practice session will accumulate and will make your progress a promise. Just do short practice sessions, maybe 20 minutes a day. Don't overwhelm yourself and try to be very focused when you practice, don't just practice over and over, but practice the things that you notice need improvement. Instead of doing the whole alphabet, for example, take out the letters that need a bit more work, that will just result in more productivity. Thanks again, everyone and I'll season.