Transcripts
1. Welcome!: Hello, and welcome to this brush calligraphy
mini course where I've curated 20 short
practice sessions that you can go through, practice, and improve
your technique. These will really
help you to dig deep, focus, and improve your pen
control, muscle memory. These are very focused,
specific topic sessions. So I highly believe in short, productive
practice sessions, and these can
really help improve your technique because we're focusing on something
really specific. We're working on it
through repetition. Refining. And this can really help you move the needle
in your own practice. And this will take
your calligraphy skills to the next level. I hope you enjoy going
through these sessions. I have been doing calligraphy for over ten years
at this point, and I absolutely
love teaching it. Now I have noticed that to teach my own students that
these short sessions are the ones that really, really help the improvement, the confidence, the pun control. There's just something about
putting your focus and hyper focusing on a really specific
technique or letter or phrase. I would love to know how you're getting
on leave a comment, post a photo, and good luck. I hope you enjoy this course. You can also find
me on Instagram at Creative Field Designs. I would love to
connect with you. Good luck with the
course and C soon.
2. Compound Curve Practice: Hello, members. In this
week's tutorial Tuesday, we'll be focusing
on compound curves. So those are those
funny little shapes that form a lot of lettuce.
So let me just show you. So compound curve is this
little shape that goes down up and down or that
starts with the thin, so it goes up down and up. This is a pretty tricky
shape because in theory, we want to try and keep all of these strokes
kind of parallel. But of course, when we
do modern calligraphy, there can be a little
bit of variation. So you might kind of stretch
those strokes a little bit. You know, especially
when you do a letter M. So if you think about it, I do mine like
this, for example. So I definitely, you know, kind of change it
up a little bit. So I stretch this
stroke down and make this little bottom part of
this shape a bit more angled. So there'll definitely
be a bit of, you know, freestyling
and variation. So we're not being, like, super, super strict. With it. But it is quite nice to kind
of try and keep it balanced. So see if you can, try and keep your strokes kind
of fairly parallel. And if there is some sort of a stylistic kind of
jump, that's okay, too. But I thought I'll
just pick out like five words that have a lot, a lot, a lot of these lettuce. So you'll find the shape
in lettuce like M and X. So if you think about it, so
when you do your upstroke, then you go and do
the shape up down up, you see the shape again. Also letter Y. So not necessarily in
the actual letter Y, but when you started kind
of connecting from the previous from the
previous shape, and also letter H. So this
is quite a common one. So I'm just doing it in pencil, just to kind of lay all of
these letters out for you so you know what
to look out for. But there we are just a
little kind of intro. So let's go ahead and
draw five lines as usual. We're going to do five words. So I'm grabbing my
ruler and pencil. And as you do these lines, just remember to leave quite
a lot of room in between. So we have so we have
enough room there. If we need to stretch
the lettuce up or down, especially when you do bouncy
lettering, we all know. There's a lot going on at the bottom of the word normally, so it's nice to
have enough room. There we go. I've line. Now, we're going to I
think I'm going to use this pretty turquoise
color pen today. We're going to do quite
a lot of letters and have a compound carve in them. We're going to start
with the word homework. So here we've got the letter H and the letter M. So we're going to focus on
those especially. Now, let's start with the letter I'm starting with the
first part of the letter. I'm picking up my pen, I'm just preparing for
this compound curve. And it's really interesting
to notice that very often, your compound curve will be bouncable which means if you
love bouncy electric style, that's the shape you
probably want to bounce. And I love bouncy electriing, so I'm definitely going
to add a bit of bound. So I'm going to go up, stretch it down, and back up. So mine's definitely stylized, and it's just
interesting to notice. Now we're going to carry
on. Let's do the letter O. Now approaching the letter M and going to do
the same thing. I'm just going to do the
first part of the letter. Have a little pause. When you're ready,
we're going to bounce this letter down again. So up, down and up. Lovely. Notice how letter M
is probably one of the letters that you want to stylize if you're
doing modern calligraphy. Noice how I'm building it upwards and then
dropping it down. Right, so let's just finish
the word beautifully. Nice and slow. Gonna do the letter K. And I might drop this and stroke down. I love doing this. It
always looks really pretty, especially if it's, like,
at the end of the word. Don't do it in the middle of the word because it can create, like, issues if you have, D and the letters next to it. Obviously, you can't do
the letter G after this. But yeah, I'll mention that. Right, let's do the word
hex again. A lovely wars. We got the letter H, letter X, and the letter N to
focus on beautiful. So starting with the
letter H in the same way. I'm going to add a
bit of bound to mine. So first part is on the baseline and the second
part of the letter goes down. Right, so this is tricky now. So we're going to do
the letter E and then go straight into the letter X. So letter E. And now we are doing this compound curve and going straight
into the letter X, and now we just need to
add a little upstroke, and now we're carrying
on with the word. Tricky tricky word. Don't worry if you're finding this hard,
it's very normal. Now, just do the
rest of the lettuce until you reach the
letter end at the end, and this is where
we are going to add another compound curve
and going to bounce it. Like this, there we go. Lovely. So it's really
tricky with the letter X. So just notice how we kind of go straight into
this compound calve, and all that's left
to do is to add a little upstroke to finish it. Now let's do the word exchange. So very similar things. We got E and X again. A bit tricky, but
we've got this. So starting with a letter E now going straight into
this compound cup but we are stopping here
have the breath up. Now, you can do a little
wave on your upstroke. You can do something like this. Just kind of stylize
it a bit more. Right. Let's do
the letter C. Now letter H one is the letter that we want
to focus on again. So do the first part. And when we do the second part, we're going to bounce
it. Down and up. Carrying on with
the letter A. I'll have to keep the first
part of the letter A, a bit smaller, see if you
want to do the same thing. Now we've got the letter N.
So again, a compound carve. I've got some good
selection of words here. Bouncing it down. Beautiful. So much focused. This
is so productive. Well done for doing this. Right, finishing
with the letter E. Beautiful exit
stroke, if you can. What a funny looking word, isn't it? But there we go. Why. Let's do the word maximum. Quite a tricky one again. So we got letter X. We actually have three
letters M in here, guys. I didn't even realize, Oh my
goodness, this is excellent. So two more ways ago, there will be, you
know, quite long, but we've got this. Let's
try this to get that. So starting with the letter M, doing the fast part,
picking up the pen. Now, see if you want to
build on and maybe do this last shape of the
letter M a bit stylized. So I've gone up and
all the way down. It's still a compound curve, but it's just a bit stylized. Let's do the letter A. Remember, going straight
into the letter X. Let's add a bit of flour to this with all of
these letters M, see if we can get
into a bit of a flow. Kind of doing the same thing
over and over, really. You know, adding flour
doesn't mean to go faster. It just means kind of
feeling it a bit more, getting into that groove,
if you will, you know, and adding a bit of that momentum to your
lettering can feel really good. Beautiful. So free
letters M, that's a lot. I definitely love
adding this like a waived style upstroke
for the letter X. It can be really
tricky with spacing. You know, if you know
there's like a big gap in between your letter A and X or X and I just now
that it's so normal, you know, it's really tricky. There's probably the hardest
letter to connect to join, but it's not a very common
letter, which is good. So we can practice it, but it's not going to
show up often, probably. Right, let's do the
word phenomenal. That's a really long word. I'm really challenging you here, but this is really good
because you just feel, you know, quite accomplished. It is a hard practice
today this week. But we've got this. We're doing it, and it's not about the way
it looks, remember that. It's about how much you focus on this task for these
ten, 15 minutes. Just give it your all, right. Let's do we start
with the P. Let's do the letter H.
It's a long war. See if you can
tighten the spacing. So see if you can position the letters a bit
closer together. Now we're doing the
compound calve, the letter I'll try
not to misspell it. Because I'm focusing
on other things. It's really easy to do. Right. So we got letter
letter N. As well, to focus on the shape. Letter M again after the letter O. Bf to kind of try and
build up that flow again. Adding a lot of bounds on
the letter N, as well. And finishing with
the smaller letter A, maybe and with the letter L, stretching the exit track
all the way up if you can. Phenomenal. Is that
correct? I hope so. Yes. There we go, guys.
Wonderful practice today, as I said, and I can't wait to say yours,
please, please share. Also, if you struggle
with something, I'm pretty sure you're
not the only one. It's hard to do. So
by sharing, you know, it'll be just nice to see
that you're not the only one who's finding it hard if
you are finding it hard. Well done. I would love
to see a little snippet, take a photo, pop it in a group, and I'll see you soon.
3. Letter Joining Exercise: Hello, lovely members. It's a Toral Tuesday, and today's also my
birthday, actually. So I thought we could
celebrate together, and maybe we can
do some birthday related works together
for today's session. And, of course,
we'll be focusing on a specific technique as usual. And today's focus is going to be around connection strokes, and we'll be
specifically focusing on overlapping our exit strokes
with the next letter. So it'll make more
sense when I show you. So when you connect
your letters, there's very often a little
bit of overlapping going on, and maybe you know
exactly what I mean, or if this sounds
very confusing, I'll, of course,
demonstrate everything. But let's begin by maybe
drawing five lines as normal. So we get beautiful
baselines for our words. I'll be using brush pens today. Feel free to use
your favorite tools. There. And just here, maybe I'll do one more
line just so I can show you what I mean exactly. So I came up with this while I was teaching
my beginners workshop because I just noticed
how people join letters, and it can be a bit hard to understand that
it's all connected, you know, the previous stroke of your letter, the
connection stroke, the first stroke, the next
letter, it's all connecting, and it all plays a really big role in making
your lettering look balanced. I'm just looking for a pen
so I think I'll just use this pink pen to begin with. So here at the bottom,
I'll just demonstrate. So let's try doing the
letter A to get there. So when we do our C
shape or O shape, we kind of pick up the pen here, and notice how I'm
doing the next stroke, the U shape, and
it's overlapping. It's overlapping this area here. So my pen is fairly new,
so it's a bit stiff. So it's overlapping
this little area here, so we're kind of hiding
it a little bit. My is a green one. So imagine
me doing the letter U now. So we're doing the fast
part of the letter U. And now, again, we're going
to go over this upstroke. So again, we're
overlapping strokes. So we're going to hide that previous stroke
with this downstroke. Now, imagine we're doing letter combination of E
and L. So we're doing the letter E and doing the connection stroke
and we're picking up our pen. Okay, so now is how I did my
stroke like this so kind of upward and I live to the side because I know that
when I do the letter L, I'll hide part of that stroke. And with some pent, actually, you could always see how
those strokes overlap. I can see this a little
bit here as well. But yes, it's just interesting. It's a really nice technique, it can really help you to feel like you're in
control of the spacing. So let's say you're
doing the w. So by extending your stroke a bit longer than you
think you should, you can make the connection to the next letza look a bit more seamless because it
kind of flows into it, and we're actually overlapping part of that connection
stroke and hiding it. So it looks even more natural. So, you're probably doing
this naturally already, but how about we just pay
attention on that together and see if by getting a
better understanding of it, our lecturing can
actually improve. You can become more
of an expert at things when you
understand them fully, and this will definitely
have impact on your calligraphy. So,
let's give it a go. Shall we do the word
birthday together? So, we're starting
with the letter B. Let's do the lowercase B. So we're just doing
the first letter. Now, I'm going to
finish the letter B. And going to stretch this stroke to the
side and pick up up. Now, when you do the letter I, notice how you're overlapping this previous stroke
a little bit. So as I'm going to
do the letter I, I'm not doing it just where, you know, this
connection stroke ends. I am going to position it here. Which is hiding a little
part of this stroke. I hope that makes sense. Now let's try doing
the letter R now. Doing the letter R. And again, I'm stretching the stroke
to the side, quite long. And again, it kind of
finishes with this little like a jagged movement, right? It's not very smooth. And to make it a
bit more smooth, I'm going to now do the letter T and naturally
overlap it slightly. So I'm hiding a little
part of that stroke. Okay, you can see that. Now, let's do a H, and it's going to
be the same thing. So we're stretching this
ascenda upwards and overlapping part of this stroke. So it's like we're
going backwards. Again, see, I'm focusing
on this now and I'm kind of coming up with new things. I'm kind of starting
to be aware of how these strokes are
actually connected. So it definitely feels
like you're kind of going backwards a little bit, especially when you do
letter E and Right? Let's carry on with the letter
Let's add a bit of bounce. And again, stretching it to the side before we join
it to the letter D, which also overlaps that
previous stroke slightly. Let's let a D. And again, you might overlap a little
bit of that C shape. Let A. I didn't do any overlapping
here, actually, by mistake, so you can see, it's
still attached to it, but there's actually, you can see this little stroke there. So that's a good
example. I'm glad this happened because you can see how I should have probably stretched my stroke
a bit more to left. W let's letter A, finish the stroke,
pick up the pen. And this is a good
example. So A and Y. So we're definitely going
over that upstroke. Going over a little part of
that upstroke to hide it. Let's do a letter Y and
finish beautifully. Oh, there's a beautiful
long crossline. And the letter I. Okay, so as I said, you are probably doing this
naturally already. But by being aware and just focusing on that
for a little bit, might open up some new thoughts, some new insights for you, and you'll just start to understand your calligraphy
a little bit better. Beautiful. Let's do a
simple chase. Why not? It's a good word for
practicing, I think. We get double E in there, which can be a bit tricky.
So let's give it a go. Are we starting let's see
extending my stro to the side, I'm not afraid to go up and
to the side a little bit. Now I'm going to do the
letter H and go backwards, remember, to fill in that gap, I am also of overlapping
there a little bit. I'll let H going down, back up. G to do the letter E, and again, kind of go
backwards a little bit. Extending this
last stroke again, doing the letter E again, going straight into the letter, picking up the pen, Letter
and straight into the letter. I'm not overlapping
there. But yeah, let's extend this last straw
to the side. Beautiful. Oh, it's a lovely
word, actually, I love I love it in this color. It looks quite good.
What else could we do? Sha we do a party? Not not
gonna do much parting today. We're actually going
camping, just for one night. But yes, party is a
good way to practice. Let's do letter P. Starting with the letter P.
Beautiful loop shape. Adding on this inverted
look inverted C shape. And again, I'm
finishing the letter P, not really kind of minding that this draw goes a little
bit to the right here. Let letter A and kind of go backwards overlap a little bit. So there's definitely a
little overlap happening. Letter A and straight
into the letter, picking up the pen, dropping the letter down to add a
bit of bounds if you like. And again, up and
slightly to the side, so when we overlap, it kind of connects seamlessly. Letter T, stretching
the last upstroke to the side a little bit again, finishing with the letter Y. Beautiful exit
stroke. There we go. And a beautiful
cross line as well. Lovely. There we go. I'll love this white, actually. Very nice. Shall we do
cake? Let's do cake. So we're going to
star with the letter C. I'm going to add a bit of bound right
from the beginning, so I'm stretching below the
baseline, picking up the pen. And I know that I'm going to go backwards and kind
of overlap this, like, small part of this stroke. So just really focusing
on every time it happens. Now extending the letter A upwards and
slightly to the side. Let's do the letter
K. Stretching up. That's the first
part of the letter. And you might do your K
differently. I do mine like this. There's actually a bit of
overlapping happening there. So I started my upstro from kind of this downstro I went over my downstroke
a little bit. So again, quite
interesting to notice just observing observing
this beautiful art, you know, art form, called calligraphy, seeing how each letter is built
and how they flow. The word cake looks lovely, so short word. Quite good. Gonna do one more word. And I'm just thinking,
so if you just do friends or something,
it's quite nice. It's quite a nice word. So letter F, you're going to start with
a beautiful letter F, so going up, touching the Acandaline Imagining
there's an Acandaline, dropping it down, and going
straight into the letter. Right, doing the letter, going all the way up and
finishing and stopping there. Now overlapping the
letter I a little bit, and again, finishing
the letter O, stretching to the
side and stopping. Letter E. Again,
connection stroke, and stop and go
back and the letter N by overlapping part of
this little stroke there. Hiding a bit of bound to
the letter N. Then again, upwards and slightly
to the side. Letter D hides that last
bit of the stroke again. Letter D and straight
into the letter. Beautiful exit
stroke to the side. Let's del dot. And there we go. So five words. Thank you guys for
celebrating with me and doing these
words to get there. I think it just makes it
extra special for me. Thank you so much.
And I would love to see your version
of this and let me know your thoughts
about this process of thinking about those
overlapping stropes. And is there something that
you have been doing or is there something
maybe that you've never noticed that you're doing? So, it would be quite
interesting to know. So thank you for watching this, and I'll see you next week.
4. Calligraphy Flow: Hello, members, and welcome
to Another tutorial Tuesday. I love, love, love. I'm doing these little videos. And I've been having such a
lovely feedback from you all. Thank you so much,
guys. Let's dig in. So today, we're going to be practicing something
quite interesting. So we're going to be working
on our calligraphy flow. So if you've been
checking, you know, my latest tutorials
in the membership, you'll see that they
are all about kind of perfecting your flow or even just getting
into that flow. Can be really hard,
but that's what makes your lettering improve and that's what makes it literally
flow and look better. And there's always
this transition between being a beginner ligero and practicing with
quite a stiff hand and then transitioning into, like, more of, you
know, advanced, more of a professional
lie fa where you are able to develop that flow and
add it into your lettering. It can be so visible
in your work. So your strokes will
look a bit smoother and your lines your upstrokes will be probably
thinner because, you know, you're kind of
building up that momentum. So today, we're going to
do five words as normal. So let's do lines.
And for each word, we're going to focus
on a specific thing. And the thing with flow, you know, there's
no right or wrong. You can do certain
strokes quicker, you can do certain
strokes faster. But it's not always the same. I find that, like, you
know, that there isn't, like a theory or, like, a rule that
you would apply. There are, however, different rhythmic things you can try and then
try and apply them. When you do that
ting, and it doesn't mean that it'll
always be the same. But by knowing these things, you'll be able to get into that state of flow if
you're struggling with it, or if you can't find it, and you're finding it quite
hard maybe some days too. Relax into it to
pick up that flow. So yeah, I'm done. I've done five lines. I'm now. Yes. So today, I'm just going
to be using a black pen. I just feel like
using black today. I don't know why. I
just want a simplistic, fairly classic look to my work. So yeah, pick the pen you want, and we're going to get started. So I'm back to brush pen. I'm using fine to
brush pen today. And we're going to start with the word healthy just
because it's got, like, nice acentsn there. So we're going to do this ward and what we're
going to focus on, I'm just going to demonstrate
here on the right, and then I'm going to do
the ward on the left. So let's focus on
these loop shapes. So as we go up and then down, we want to try and
build up a bit of a rhythm there. So have a. We kind of start fairly quickly. But then slow down
here at the top, have a moment before we
drop this drug down. Again, going upward, hanging in there before
we drop it down. Let's do this word healthy, t of thinking about
this specifically. And we're going to see this
loop in the letters H and L and H again to our two letters
So let's focus on those. So starting with the fast letter hanging in there before
dropping it down. Pick up your pen in
between, of course. Then we kind of do
the work as normal. And again, doing the
letter L, same thing, hanging in there for a
second, going a bit slower. Letter T. And again, letter H, same thing, hanging in there before we go
down fairly fast. And I'm just finishing the word. Adding a crossline. There we go. I just
notice how that felt. It's quite good to
practice this way, kind of picking one
thing to focus on. Now, for the second ward, we're going to do
something different. This is going to be
a fairly long ward. We're going to do it about
star gazing quite long. We're going to focus on
every last stroke of the letter and try to
do it extra slowly. So whatever stroke you
finish your letter with, which very often is going
to be this U shape, we're going to go extra slowly. Maybe it's going to be
a stroke like this. So we're just going
to slow down. So let's start to start
a bit more to the left. So let's start the letter S. So I'm doing the letter S.
And as I finish this letter, I'm just going super slowly
before I pick up my pen. Doing the next letter T, and again, finishing
super slowly. Letter A, doing the last
stroke of the letter A, and kind of going straight
into the letter O, so I'm going to stop
here for this one. And again, this connection
strokes super slow. So the first part
of the letter kind of built it up a little
bit of momentum, and then we're
dropping it down and finishing super slowly.
So down stroke. Let the G to the
side. Let A again. Super slow connection there. And again, let the z
very slow to finish off. Let I Very slowly. Oh, this feels quite
satisfying, actually. Let me know if you
feel the same. Right. The end of the
ward, super slow again. I'm gonna extend this exit joke upwards and going
super slowly here. Now we got that
felt really good. So I definitely developed
a bit of flow there, and it felt quite
satisfying to do. So yeah, I hope you
felt that, too. Right. So let's
do the next word. We're going to do the word
brave, so fairly short. And here we're going to focus on the beginning of the word
and the end of the word. Now, we're going to try and
start the word with a big wh, like a quick quick movement, and glide into the
first part of the word. And then when we
finish the word, it's going to be of E t. So we're going to
do it so slowly. So we're going to stretch
probably the struck kind of upwards, super slowly. So starting the
wad a bit quicker and finishing the wad
really, really slow. So let's give it a gust starting with a
beautiful entry stroke. Quick hush to begin the wad. So there we go flowing into it. You can hang in there
at the top again, just like we did
for the fast wad. Right, and then just
kind of do your wad. See what happens naturally. Kind of observe. It's quite
nice to observe sometimes. And as we finish the word
gonna go really slowly. You can also stretch it in
a different way, of course. But I'm just doing this, so super thin and very, very slow. Well, then you're doing great. So if you've done these so far, you're doing amazing, well done. Okay. Now we have
two more words. So for this next word,
it's quite a long one. So we're going to do
the word waterfall. And we're going
to focus on doing our downstrokes quickly so fast. I'm doing our upstrokes slowly. So let's give it a go. So just kind of try and think of it. It's probably gonna
take a lot of focus, but try to implement it. So far downstrokes,
slow upstrokes. I'm not gonna talk here.
I'm just going to let you kind of do it and
also focus myself. So waterfall. See if you can really sink
into your downstrokes. That felt really kind of fairly natural to
me. I loved that. See, again, try to observe
if that felt good to you, if you did manage to kind of
develop with a flow there. Well done. Okay, so we're going
to do one more word. And for this last ward, we're going to focus on slow down strokes
and fast upstrokes. So slow down strokes
and fast upstrokes. So the other way
around, basically. And we're going to do,
again, quite a long ward. Let's do it sunflower just because we get quite a
few lettuce in there. So let's give that
a go to gettha. So slow down strokes. I need to remind myself.
So slow down strokes. So starting the wild with
a bit of a momentum again, so fast upstroke,
then slowing down. It's a slow down stroke again. Quick up strokes. Slow down
stroke, quick up stroke. This feels a bit strange. Again, notice what
you're feeling here. Whoa, that wasn't easy for me. I definitely prefer
the previous one, where you do your down
strolls a bit faster. But that's so
interesting to observe. And just well done, well
done for doing this. And if you ever feel like
today is not a day for me, I can't do lecturing
today and nothing flows, try implementing out
of some of this, maybe make a little
note about what felt the most
natural to you here. See, that's really interesting. So this definitely felt
very unnatural to me. But this one here, so the
fourth word I really liked. I also really liked
focusing on, like, slowing down after every single lectu
that helped me a lot. And this fast example. So this is what I do
naturally kind of normally. So yeah, definitely feel really comfortable
with these three. But yeah, make a
little note, as well. And I can't wait
to see your gin of this and well done everybody.
I'll see you next week.
5. Exploring Guideline Ratios: Hello, members. This week, we'll be talking
about guidelines, and I'll be using this rodeo pad because it's got some
dotted lines already. So maybe you have your
usual calligraphy pad that you normally use or even, like, a lined notebook
might be helpful. So we need some sort of a grid. You can also draw the
lines, of course, if you don't have any pads like this,
that's absolutely fine. But we're going to
chat about guidelines and different ratios. So I'm going to share
from my own experience. And the first ratio
we are going to explore is the one
to one to one ratio, which means that the
X height is one unit, and the space between the X height and the
ascender is one unit, and the space
between the X height and a descender is
one unit as well. Okay. So let's just
pick 44 lines. So whatever lines you
have, you can also draw just four lines that are the
same distance apart, okay? So one, one, one, so they're
all the same distance apart. And we're going to mark where
the X height normally sits, and it's between the baseline
and the waistline, right? So we have two lines in the
middle. That's the X height. We have our ascender line at the top and a descender
line at the bottom. Okay, so lettuce
like B, for example, we'll stretch, obviously
to the ascender line, and lettuce like J. You know, the ones that
drop down normally. We'll stretch all the way down to the descender
line. So there we go. I hope this is clear. These
are just colgipy basics. It's nice to just go over this, and I hope this is clear so far. Okay, we're going to
write the word baking, and we're going to try and fit this word within
these guidelines. So mine's a bit small because my guidelines are
quite tight together. So notice how I'm still
adding a bit of bound, maybe stylizing some element, but I'm not really
stretching above the ascender line and
below a descender line. So I'm keeping my calligraphy
within these four lines, keeping it very proportional. Try to do the same. Now we're going to write the word jumping. I chose these words
because they have a lot of D Sundays
and A Sundays. So we have J P and Gen here's. We're stretching it
to the bottom line, but we're keeping it
super, super balanced. Okay. Well done, and we're going to do one
more word flying. Again, we have the letter F, L, and G to think about. You can still add a bit
of bounce and stylize, but let's just try to
keep within these lines. The X height can definitely
vary a little bit. So this is the style I
started learning with, and I think it's such
a good ratio when you're starting to learn because everything is really balanced, and you're really kind of learning and locking
in those basics. You're locking in those really kind of straight proportions. Everything is super,
super balanced. But then after a few
years of practicing, I noticed that my lettuce just naturally want to
stretch higher. So all the Ascender
and D sender lettuce, they don't really like sitting
within these guidelines. I just always seemed a
bit too short for me. And I started to explore
different ratio. So let's talk about the
two to one to two ratio. So this is very often
seen in copper plate. So this is the ratio copper
plate style follows. And so let's just explore. So we need to find two units. So we're going to think of the space between the
lines as one unit. Okay. So whatever
lines you're using, let's let's just try and
follow our own guides here. So, so we're going to mark
two units at the top. Then one unit in the middle,
which is the X height, and then two units, again, below the X height.
And I'm just marking. So this is my acenda at the top, the X height in the middle, and a descender at the bottom. So again, we have one
unit in the middle, which is the X height,
two units above it, which is the acenda
I stretches to the acendaline and two
units below the X height, which stretches to
the to the Dcendline. I hope this makes sense, guys. Just try to structure your
guidelines in this way, maybe by looking at
it on this example. And again, you can see
how the letter B now stretches all the
way up a bit higher, and the letter J has
more space to drop down. Okay, and we are going to try
all of these words again. So doing the while baking, but this time it's
stretching all the way up. So our asena stroke, our acenda shape is higher up. It stretches higher,
it's taller. Same with the letter K,
notice the difference. Notice the difference
in the style. And the letter G will stretch
lower down. There we go. So here it comes
all the way down, so it covers two units at the
bottom. How does that feel? Now, it is a difference. For me, this feels
much more natural, but still not quite. So we are going to
explore one more ratio. But for now, let's just
try practicing this. So again, I am applying
bounty calligraphy to this, so my lettering is
quite stylized. So in copper plate, obviously, everything is kind of sitting
in between the X heights. So all the small letters
like U M, I, and N, that would sit nicely balanced between
the X height lines. But I'm definitely adding a
bit of modern touch here. So you can try this with me. And also, so because these ascenders and
descenders are very long now. So normally, the space at the top would often also
be used for flourishes. So you can think of
that upper space where the Ascender line is as
the space for flourishing. So because letters
B and K and F, they all have loops, so we can consider those
stop part, that top shapes. Being flourishes,
okay? So again, just try to think of this as a flourish at the
top and the bottom. We don't actually have to stretch our upstrokes
and downstrokes, like to meet the line, but the flourishes would
normally touch those lines. So again, I'm
showing an example. So I'm doing the letter
G, and I'm just feeling that upper space where the
acendline is with flourishes. And if you have a
look at the letter F, you can also consider
that top part of the letter F. It's
just a flourish. And that's why it's hitting that high high point
of the acendlin. Okay, guys, I hope
you're with me. I just really want you to know
this, to understand this. This has been a game changer
for me when I started to understand the
guidelines fully, my lettering became
much more balanced. Okay, the last ratio
we're going to explore is the three
to two to three. Now, we need to find what
is what is one unit here. So we have three
units, two units, and three units in the ratio. Now, obviously, because
we're using something that's ruled like
this or dotted. So the space between
your lines, let's say, you're using line sheets or line guidelines you'll have that will be your
two units, okay? So the middle point,
just mark the X height. That'll be that will
be your X height. So two units. In the middle, that'll
be your X height. So just mark the space between your top line and
the bottom line. That space for you is two units. Now, we need to
mark three units, which would be Again, for me, if you look at my dotted lines, it would be one space
and then a half. So 1.5. Does that make sense? So 1.5 above my X height and 1.5 below. So let's think of our X
height as two units, okay? And then to find three units, we just need to add like a half of the X height
on top of the X height. Gosh, I hope you're with me. So we're taking one
X height and a half. And I'm marking that at
the top and at our acendo. And we're taking one
unit and a half and dropping it below the x height
so we get our descender. So drawing the line to it,
you can see the different. It's very similar to
the previous one. We're just halfing. We're reducing the
ascender and descender. Um, size by half. Okay. So let's try lettering within these guidelines
in this ratio. And this, to me,
feels supernatural. This I don't know what it is, but it just flows perfectly. I love how high the
ascenders get stretched. I love how low all
the descenders get. It feels just right. And these are the guidelines. This is the ratio I'm
practicing with these days, and it just fits. I think the one to one to one, is a bit too rigid for
bounty calligraphy. Obviously, we want
to have more room to stretch and experiment, but still keep it balanced. So I highly recommend
this ratio for practicing if you also
love bounty calligraphy. So there we go. So
we're just doing all the words again let's
do the word flying. I've just realized how funny this word combination is
baking, jumping, flying. But here we are. These are just some good good
words to practice. And I hope you're enjoying this. I hope you got your
guidelines kind of right. I know it's a lot
to think about, but that's why I think it's good to have
something pre ruled. Drawing this yourself might
be a bit hard because you're going to need to
measure everything out, but you can do it. Let's say you just start
with 1 centimeter, and then you just do one,
one, one, 1 centimeter, and then you just literally, follow the numbers, and those will be your
centimeters, right? So that's something you can
definitely try as well. And you can just keep
practicing this way. You can always mark at the beginning where
your X height is. So I've done this
with a little kind of upright rectangle. You can see I colored it in. And this is how you very often see your X height
marked if you ever, you know, purchase any
guidelines or worksheets. That's often the case. So we're marking where X height is. And let me just, again,
kind of calculating. So this one's to 12 ratio. And I'm just trying
this kind of like a florist version and I'm just lettering hello Mark. You
can try this with me. And I love how the letter M
and the letter H stretch up, and I might actually add
a little flourish in the letter I think style this ratio is really
good for flourishing. I must say that. I
think personally, flourishing feels easier for me when I follow
these guidelines. Okay, I'm going to
mark the X height again and maybe we can try the one to one to one ratio. So again, I'm just doing
a couple of dots just to center myself and
know where I'm at. And this style is just
a bit more playful, a bit more like childish looking, if you
know what I mean. It's quite fun. I
definitely think it's good for brush calligraphy
in particular, maybe not so much for
dip band calligraphy, although it still looks fine, and it just depends on the
style you're going for. But just now it is how
different these two look. And all we've done,
we've kind of altered the ratio and also, you know, the spacing
I played with the spacing a little
bit, as well. So the second version
is more spaced apart. Okay, and I'm just measuring out the three to two to three ratio. And I'm going to try
doing these words again, maybe just making it a bit more fun and maybe
slanting it a little bit more, just kind of uji with
a different style. And again, this just
feels quite nice and I love the length
of my letters H and L. The capital M also kind of slots in there
really nicely and feels good. So there, I really hope
you enjoy this practice. I hope that you are with
me and you are following, it's all good, and you
didn't get confused. But if you understand this, if you take time to implement this and understand this flet, this can be a game changer
for your calligraphy can definitely improve your balance. It can teach you a lot about your own style as well.
So well done, everybody.
6. Stylised Initials: Guys, I hope you're all well. I hope you're enjoying
the festivities if you're watching this
prior to Christmas. Yeah, I hope you're doing well. I know that this
time of the year is quite hectic for
a lot of people, and it's really busy and it can be really hard to
find time to practice. So I'm going to keep
today's door really nice and short and sweet and make it really
fun for you guys. So I really hope you enjoy it. So this idea actually
came to me I was doing whilst I was fulfilling
one of my Etsy orders, and customer actually requested me to do the couples initials
in a really cool style. I thought, I'll just show
it to you and we can practice some letter
combinations together. So we'll purely focus
on capital letters. This will be really nice
for wedding project or if you ever need to do a
couple's name or initials, you can turn this into a really pretty I want to say
a monogram, but yeah, it's more like a yeah, just like two flatters
woven together. It does look really pretty. Just then a couple of baselines.
We don't need too many. I've got this blue
pen on my desk, so I might actually
just use that. It looks quite nice. I
think it's a nice color. So, we focus on the ampersand. So there are so many
ways to later it. And normally, if I was
going to do, I don't know, let's say L, Let's
actually do this way. If I did my letter L this way, we can try to get that
just for practicing. I'd normally do the
ampersand, like this. So a little number
three and then add a little wavy stroke here and a straight
stroke at the top. I don't know, let's say can't
come up with any lettuce. Let's say D. Okay. So it looks nice
together like that. In this project that
I was working on, I was doing something a bit more like this that
looked really fun. I really love the way
it was merged together. So we can do a
little infinity sign in between, so a number eight. Okay. That looks super fun. Then we can start the next
letter from here and it looks as if they are
kind of rowing together. They are joined up in
this really fun style. Okay. So actually, I should have I should have
done it this way, we connected to the bottom. So let's try it again together. Just exploring different
variations of this and it's fun. So how about we do
this where where we stop and then we
do the number eight. Then we start from the
top and do the letter D. That looks to be better
because then now we have a lovely connection at the bottom and at the top and we have this infinity
sign in between, which looks really fun. It's nice to have this
infinity sign symbol there. You can try this with different letters and see what happens. Maybe we can do the
letter K. How about we to the letter K the first part. We will always stop after
we finished the letter. This time, we've
stretched down already. All that we've got to do is
actually just do the number eight continuing and see how
balance you can make it. It can be a little bit hard. Let's say the next letter is and try to think C,
something simple, C. We do have to start with this entry stroke,
we get to continue. The flow of this. Okay. That looks fun to
me. I'm not a fan of this. I of the letter E a little bit, so maybe I should
have kept it a bit more narrow, but
it does look fun. Should we dry something else? Should we try M and H? That could be fun. So a little bit more challenging.
It's do letter M. So we would do the fast part. Stop, do it down stroke. Stop, go up, stop again. There's a lot to the letter M. Then as we do the last stroke, we extend it to the side. Imagine we're going to
do this number eight, but then we stop, we actually
divide it into parts. When you're ready,
you can just pick up where we left and turn this into a nice number eight. Right? Lovely. Now again, we've stopped
and you're going to start the next part
from the top and do the first part of the letter H. Stop and then finish with the
second part of the letter. You letters might be slightly different and you can
use this as inspiration. I'm going to try it in a
slightly different style. I love doing the
letter like this a bit more rather than
that fast version. If you feel like
you can go straight into the number eight,
you can try that. You might actually flow
a little bit nicer. Do try these different examples with me, see how it feels. This should just
feel nice and fun. Also if you are a complete
beginner and you're still finding your
ways with the lettuce, this is also a good exercise
for you to practice some capital lettuce
and don't worry about the way the
transition looks too much. Just see if you can have
fun with it really. Just try all these
different lettuce. Right, shall we try? I'm really trying to think of the names and the
membership, to be honest. M was for Milena. Now I'm thinking about Rebecca, so maybe R. I'm
thinking of all of you. I mean, I wish I
could do all of them. I'll probably take Rs. R, so let's do the letter R. So I would start it with a little tale at the
beginning, do the downstroke. This is a bit tricky, as
we finish the letter R, we stretch down and then
I'm going to come up and do the number eight right away.
That looks quite nice. The next letter here
we could attach could be maybe W, just
something different. Here at the top, we're
going to start imagining we are continuing from here, so we're restarting it gently
going in and continuing. That could look really nice. I can see it is being used for Valentine's Day designs as well. If you ever need to dress like
an envelope for a couple, that can look really,
really good, I think. Quite a lot of
fun, to be honest. Shall we do a few more? We can draw another line. Yeah, we are definitely
keeping it nice and short and sweet this week. I don't want to overwhelm you, but it's still nice to practice something
slightly different. Should try something else
we try C and maybe N. This time because they're
starting with the letter C, we don't really have to do the entry stroke
like we did before, and I'm just going straight into the number eight or
infinity sign, stopping. I might actually do the
letter N like this, like M. Like I did M. I love this style sometimes. I think it has its place. Not quite happy
with the spacing, should we try this
again and space it? See if we need to
work on your spacing. I definitely need to extend this connection
stroke a bit more. I'm just being
mindful of leaving a similar gap in between. That's a little bit better. But there's still a bit of
a gap which can happen. You might need to try this
more than once and we can try this again together. We're controlling the spacing. As I start this entry stroke, I'm just going to keep
it a bit shorter. I think I will do the trick and see if you need
to lengthen your or if you need to make
yours a bit shorter. There we go, that
looks a bit better. See, I think it's
que interesting how you get to control the spacing. Okay. Should we do one last one? I think we can end
there. So shall we do? Oh, I think oh is quite
a popular initial. This is a bit different now
because we have to go up first and then down this way. It flows nicely. But we're just starting this
in the middle this time. I think we can join it into
the middle unless I'm just thinking we can do something like that and then we start number
eight from there, which we could, but it just
looks so let's be strange. I think we can keep it this way. Let's do O and E.
We haven't done Es. Oh, I would definitely just going to do it this
way and then go straight into the infinity
sign and then we can stop and then start
the letter E from here again being really
mindful of spacing. And maybe do it this way. That's a nice combination. I feel like I want
to do it again. Should we try it together again? Maybe you can try our letter
out slightly differently. Maybe we can do this version. Maybe keep the loop a
little bit smaller. You can try this with me. This time, I've just
started it from here, from a little upstroke
down and up again. I think this looks a
bit more effective. So see how trying different lettering styles
can also be really helpful. Sometimes you might
need to adapt to a certain style just to make the whole thing
look a bit better. So I think this has
worked out right. The only thing I
would keep from here is this connection stroke. Maybe you can try
it again together. So starting letter oh from here. Then going straight into the
number eight infinity sign, stopping and then we're going to start the
letter E from there. I don't have much room here. Then I'm going to do
a sharp exit drought. I think that looks quite nice. Okay, so there we are guys, so for today, or we're done. We just practice this. Um, this style where
we go into the letter, and then we join, we join two letters
together in this way. And with some strous
that finish to the side we've done this where we join it into the middle, and then we started the
next letter from the top, like we did with the letter O. Does that make sense a to? I think it's just a fun
little thing to try and it can definitely be quite handy and
coming quite handy. So I hope you enjoyed it. I would love to hear
your thought about this. Thanks so much for watching
and I'll see you next week.
7. Practicing Letter 'W': Hello, members. This week we
are practicing the letter W. We've done quite a few
letters in this series, but I think we should continue really and just
do them all eventually. We haven't done the
letter W and actually, it is a pretty different letter, I would say, it does involve
some interesting shapes. I thought we could
just dig deep, go through it together, try a few different styles, and just see if you can pick something up for your own
style from this session. So we will just practice
doing the letter, doing the uppercase and
the lowercase version. We are going to try a couple of words with the
letter so we see how it connects to other
letters. Let's dive in. I am going to do
a few guidelines. If you're not using a rude
page or a page with lines, just make sure you
draw them as well. It can be really
helpful, especially when you're practicing
and learning. My practice has improved
so much since I started doing this because it just feels a bit
more purposeful, and I'm sure you'll
agree when you have things laid out in
a straight way, everything looks fairly neat. So I just love having
some guidelines. Let's do six maybe. Six guidelines for now. Let's see what happens. Okay, so you can use deeper pens
or brush pens for this. I'll be using my
brush pen today. I love this color.
It's bipentel. It's a brush sign pen, and
the color is darkos green. Really pretty. I just
love, love, love, love this beautiful shade. So to begin with,
how about we just practice this where we
start in a thin way. So let's say we're doing a
little entry stroke tail. And then we're just
going to go straight into the downstroke. I try to do that a few
times as a warm up. I think it's a really good
warm up and as you do it, see if you can keep
it very controlled. Notice how slowly I'm
going. We're not rushing. It can be very tempting
to do it quickly, but see if you can slow
down and just really focus on every stroke. This is great. Now, if you
think of the letter W, there's definitely
a little bit of slant a little bit of a slant
happening as you go down. How about we show a
little bit of that slant. You can start it in
a very subtle way. This is a bit more
slanted than this. You can even try doing
it a little bit more. Visible as if you're doing
the letter V. Obviously, you will try and form
a little triangle. Shape, see if you can
slant it a little bit. We'll try this one more time and actually maybe go up as well. We stop here, we
pick up our pen, and then we go up and
see if we can do this. Okay, that's lovely. Let's spice it up a little bit, and we're going to add in a
little loop at the beginning. So again, let's just
start by doing the tail, then we go straight
into this little loop, and we do a downstroke and stop. Let's just do a few just with a downstroke,
no need to slant it. See if you want to
experiment with the size of your
loop a little bit, make it a bit bigger
here and there. Just try to see what
feels good for you. For me, just like a medium size, I think, or bigger
or a bigger one. I love doing bigger loops. I think with brush
pens in general, they tend to disappear. If you do them too small, we don't really want
for this to happen where you can barely
see the white space. Now it's time for it to slant a little bit. Let's slant it. So I'm not really trying
to adjust my brush. The way I hold my brush
when I go at the slant. Try to keep your
hand where it is, and we're not really
maneuvering it at all, but we are just guiding our whole hand down.
Does that make sense? We're not doing this
where we are trying to adjust the pen and notice how if you were
going to do that, you would rotate your wrist. Now, see if you can keep
your hand where it is at the same angle and then
we are gliding, gliding. Motion to go down to
create this little slant. Let's just break down the
letter W into shapes. I'm just going to do
it once so we have it in front of us and you can
do it with me if you like. And we are going to break it down into shapes
just so we know what we're working with because there are quite a few shapes
in this letter. If we are going
to break it down, we would have this
shape which we've just practiced a little entry
stroke and then going down. Plus the next shape is just a little astrop which is also a little bit
slanted if you like. Forming the letter V, remember. It wants to be upside
down triangle. Then we have the
same shape again, we're going to go
down at a slant. And the last shape,
quite a few shapes. Then the last shape is this
one where we go up and you can do a little exit stroke as well just to make it
a bit more pretty, a bit more stylized.
But there we go. This is a little breakdown. These could be your stopping
points within the letter. Let's just try this together. See how that feels. If we do this shape
first, and then we stop. And then we go up and then we
stop, and then we go down, and then we stop, and then we
go up again into the side, and then we stop again. It does feel like a handful, stopping so many times. Now, I think in general, I would definitely stop
here doing this far part. Now I would definitely also
stop as I do this upstroke. But then the last two strokes are a little bit of a gray
area for me personally. I think I would I think sometimes join them
up, so I would do this, go down and up just to add a bit more
flow to this letter, but you can also
definitely stop here at the bottom before you
do this upstroke only. See if you want to stop
here here and here, or if you want to stop here, here, and then join these two. Up. See how that feels. All right, I like to d and obviously they are
different styles. I'm going to go into that
a bit more in a minute. But there's just one more
thing I want to try with you, and this is probably
a little bit easier done with a dipper pen. But we can try this where we do this little
shape that we start thin and then we go thick
and then we finish thin. It looks like a little Beginning with the letter L
or the letter S, I'm sure you've seen this
shape in calligraphy. Again if you're using a dip pen, it's probably a
little bit easier to do this beginning bit, but it's still doable
with a brush ban. R the reason I'm doing
it is because we can try slanting our downstroke
in this way. Let's say we would do
they'll let it this way. We'll do a little entry stroke
and then we'll do one of these shapes as
neatly as you can. Then as we go up, we would slant the astroke a
little bit as well. Then we'll do another one of these shapes to do the
second down stroke. Then we will just
finish again by doing the abs stroke and maybe doing a
little exit stroke. They just look a slightly
different style. It looks probably
definitely more traditional. I like the look. I love the blend of
modern and traditional sometimes and taking some
element of traditional, but keeping it modern. I think obviously that's
what. That's what modern calligraphy is
in general, isn't it? It's not how it started, but it is about how
it evolved and we're always taking some tips from the stars that
are available already. I think it's just a
really fun thing to try and see if you can find your own kind of
landing point with it. If there's anything
you like about it, if you love the way it looks or if you're
not really sure, you can always stick with
more of a round round start. I do think we have to be careful with this little
bit as we join them up. Mine isn't perfectly joined up, so I'm going to try again. As you do this stroke, see if you can make
the transition here a little bit more. A little bit more
smooth, but again, I think it's so much
easier if it depends. I just hope we can
still try to brush pen. You can, of course, always just go back and correct
a little bit. Okay, so that's just
interesting to try. And just in general, you know, as you do this letter, so the lava case would
be obviously smaller. I'm just going to
stick with my style for it as I do it normally. That would be the lowercase. It's a bit smaller and obviously the upper case is a
little bit bigger, we're touching the
top line here. It's modern calligraphy. You can definitely
stretch your upper case. It doesn't have to
be super balanced. You can experiment, of course, with some flourishes
at the beginning. You can always add something
else to this beginning part. It's a lovely letter too. Get creative with. One thing I think that
this latter is quite wide. It's just like it
takes a lot of room. I think I'm always
cautious about not making it too wide and keeping it
quite tight together. I can do a little oval at the beginning and then
go straight into this part. You see how I'm joining these
two strokes up as well. So sometimes that can
feel a little bit more natural and see if that's
the case for you as well. Well I like this
version. That looks fun. How about we just
try doing a word? Shall we just do wildflowers? As we do this word,
there are a few options. Let's say we're
doing a capital W, this is a capital version. What I normally do, I would finish it up in
the air like this. I would just keep this
exit stroke there, and then I would just carry
on with the next lattice. We have I and L. Be careful with L. We
don't really want to overlap with this exit stroke.
That's how I would do it. Now, you can also try
and blend into it. Again, it's modern calligraphy. We can definitely change
the height a little bit and just stylize
it a bit more. We can go from the exit
stroke into the lowercase, I this way as well. And that's something
you can definitely do. But I think most of
the time I would leave a little gap and then
start the letter just very close to the letterW. Right, we're just going to try doing the wild wild
flowers together. So I'm just going to start with a lovely little fin stroke. Then stop. We're doing a W here. Just follow all of these
steps that we practice. I'm going to do a fairly
big loop to finish. Not too long because I'm not going to extend
this strap too much because I'm cautious of the
letter L that follows. You can draw a guideline for
this, by the way as well. Because it's a fairly long word. I am keeping my
spacing quite tight. Now it is how slowly I'm going, every letter is
built out of shapes. Stopping after we finish each shape before we
start the next one. Well, there's another
letter W in there, actually, what a good example. Here comes another letter W to see if it's in the
middle of the word, I would normally
skipped the loop. I didn't do a loop
here either, actually. I don't think I love the
loop at the beginning. It can look a bit clotted. Normally these days at least. I would I would keep this quite simple and
just do a down stroke. Now, as you finish
your exit stroke, you can definitely
just continue. You can definitely just
continue from letter W into letter E in a fairly
connected way like this. I'm just going to do wildflower because I don't
have enough room. I just want to try
this W and E with you. We're doing this W. As we
finish the exit stroke, we stop here and then we
start the letter E there. Does that make sense? See if you want to practice
this a few times. I actually go into
the letter R as well. So we would do the
letterw Then stop, start the letter E. Then we go straight into the
loop of the letter R, and that's the rhythm of it. It should feel really
good this way. I'm doing one part,
second part, exit stroke, stop doing the letter E. Going straight into the
loop of the letter R, stop. Okay. Does that make sense? Shall we charging this
word again one last time. Be the capital W. Also, my partner's name is William. I've done a capital letter many times and I've hated
it, I've loved it. I think I've landed
somewhere in between where I think I've practiced
lots of different styles. I feel comfortable, but I can't say I love
the letter very much. Yet if you can do
this really slowly to finish off and I think
we've had a really, really productive
practice here. Well done. Okay. I'm going to try
and show this combination of W and E and a bit more flow. Again, doing the first
part of the letter. Second part of the
letter, exits jog, stop. Doing the letter E, straight
into the letter R. Big loop, stop, and then we just
finish with the letter. It was a bit rushed for me, so go slower if you can. Okay. There we go. Good practice. This
is really good. All right. I hope
you enjoyed this. I hope this was fun for
you and I would love to see you go with this.
Thanks so much, guys.
8. Entry Stroke Blend: Hi, members. I hope you're
all having a lovely week. And in this week's
atoral Tuesday, we are going to focus on
something really specific, something I like to call an
entry entry stroke blend. So we are kind of going to blend the entry stroke into a C shape. So this will apply to, you know, to just a few lettuce, and we're going to
practice those lettuce. So let's just begin. Let's begin by drawing some
guidelines if you need to. Maybe maybe you're using, like, a rude practice pad,
which is great. But I'm just drawing
some guidelines. Let's maybe just do six. I think we might need
like eight lines. So let's see what happens. So just do as many as you can. And I'm just going to use this lovely green
pen to begin with. It's a pentel brush sign pen. And let's just
start by practicing this really simple thin stroke. So once you do it once, try doing the next one a little bit closer
to the baseline. Okay. So now this is where
the blend is going to happen. So notice how I'm going straight from that entry
stroke into a C shape. So I'm doing the entry stroke
and then blending into, like, a C shape or O shape,
and then I'm stopping. And if you just add the
second part of the letter, let's say the letter A,
you get a complete letter. Does that make sense? Okay,
let's try this again. So a lovely curved stroke going straight
into this O shape. And then we're
stopping before we add on the second part
for the letter A, which is just like
U shape or V shape. It's up to your style. Alright. So see if you want to practice
this a couple of times. And as I said, we're
going to try and apply this technique to every single letter that
start with this shape. Okay? So the letter
G is very similar. The letter D, has a very
similar shape at the beginning. Well, pretty much
the same shape, so we can definitely
apply this technique. So just notice how I am stopping
after I do that C shape. Okay, because we do
want to have pause. We can also do this
with a letter Q. Okay, so that looks quite nice. You can practice these
more than once, of course. So if we try doing the letter E, which kind of starts
with a similar shape, it's not it is kind of like a C shape that we begin
the letter E with. It doesn't quite work, like
in the same way because the entry stroke then
appears to be quite high up. Same with the actual C shape
if you have a look how, if you do the letter E, and
if you do the letter C, starting with a similar shape, starting with a similar stroke, it just doesn't quite
work in the same way because the entry stroke just
appears a bit higher up. Whilst when we do AGD or Q, we can definitely position that entry stroke a
little bit closer to the baseline so that it blends in seamlessly and just
looks really, really good. Okay, so shall we try doing some actual words
with this technique? I'm going to grab
this lovely pink pen. And the first word
we're going to do is the word Aspire, okay? And we're starting
with the letter A. So we are just applying this
technique at the beginning, and then we're just
doing the word slowly, maybe adding a bit of bound. You can do this in
your natural style. And as we finish the word, this is where we want
to balance it out. And I hope by now, I hope you're familiar
with this technique where we are lengthening
entry and exit strokes. So that's what we're
focusing on right now. Okay. So the next what we're going to
do is the word dream, and we're focusing on the
letter D at the beginning, where we are blending in this lovely entry stroke
into the C shape, the first part of the letter D. And then we're just carrying on. So these are short
words, hopefully. They don't take too long to do, and you can just
relax and purely focus on the beginning
at the end of the word. And again, as I
finish the letter M, I want to balance it out, so I'm stretching
the exit stroke to the side so it creates a
beautiful balanced look. So we have a long little tail at the beginning and a longer tail at the end. Lovely. So now we're going to
focus on the letter G, and we're going to try
doing the word grow. So you can just practice the
letter G a couple of times. We can just kind of repeat
a few times and practice. So that's what it's
all about. It's not just enough right to do it once. So we definitely
want to do a bit of repetitive practice here and maybe try doing it
three or four times. It does take a lot of room. See how many you can actually
squeeze in on one line. And I might actually draw a few more lines just
so I can do a few more. And with the letter G, we
could do the word grow, and maybe you can do it
a couple of times again, really let it sink in. My lines are not
very straight today, but I'm just going
to roll with it. Okay. And I might
actually pick up this lovely purple colour
for the ward grow. And again, I'm focusing on transitioning from the entry stroke into this fast
part of the letter G, which is a C shape or O shape, whatever you want to call that. And the word itself
is quite short, so let's do it twice. And again, as I finish, let's stretch the letter
W. Side a little bit. And it's really interesting
here, actually. I've spotted that it
kind of forms like the infinity sign if you look at the entry
and exit strokes, and we always want to try and spot those infinity signs in our calligraphy
wherever we can, beating the actual flourishes
or your lettuce or, you know, entry or exit strokes. If you do see that you can spot the
infinity sign somewhere. Just embrace it. It does
look really beautiful, and I love how you
can definitely see the shape a little bit in
here, which is quite nice. Lovely. So the calligraphy
is all about oval. We're always trying to find
those lovely oval shapes. And as you do your
entry and exxsjos, maybe you can even
focus on those. Imagine you're doing like
a part of the oval shape. Right, let's practice
the letter Q, and we can do a wild quest. I've just lettered it out here, and we can maybe do it a
few more times as well. So maybe a couple of times
just to let it sink in. And see how this technique, see how this technique
kind of varies, and how you adapt
doing each letter. Is there a letter that
feels a bit easier? I particularly think
that the letter Q is quite trick in general, so it can feel a little bit hard to do this
particular letter. But there we go. So maybe now we can go back to the
start where we started. And maybe try doing
the words Aspire and dream again and maybe again, just repeat them a
couple of times. So even just doing A
and D a couple more times and just see if
you made any progress, even in these eight, you know, 10 minutes, notice if you manage to progress
a little bit. We have been focusing on
a very specific thing. So hopefully it'll shine through as you do
it more and more. It is all about kind of repeating it, doing
it more than once. It really, really pays off. So see if we need to draw a couple more lines
and let's just do the word aspire. Once again, I do like doing
the letter A in this style. I do feel like for me, it flows quite naturally whilst the letter G and
Q feels strange. So I wonder if that's because they are the send the lettus. There's something
about kind of going down after you
finish the letter. And we are going to do it
about dream to finish off. What a beautiful word. I love I just love writing the word dream. Let me
know if you are great. Just such a beautiful.
I love the way it looks in ColgFace such
a beautiful word. And agallas just remember to extend to extend it to
the side as we finish. Well, there we go.
So that's what I've prepared for this
week for you guys. I hope this has given you
just a little chance to practice and focus on a lovely, you know, calligraphy technique
that you can implement. This will look really beautiful, like at the beginning
of the quote or when you're starting your lines, when
you're doing quotes. So there's definitely
a lot of use for this. And I'm sure you'll
take your time and explore a bit more.
And thank you so much. I would love to see your
work, so please share.
9. Exit Stroke Stylising: Hello, members. I hope you're all doing well. We are going to have a very
focused practice this week, so grab your tools, grab your favorite brush pen, or you can use a dipper
pen for this as well. And we're going to
begin as always, by drawing some guidelines and try to fill in
your page today. So we're going to do a lot of repetition, which
is always good. So try to draw maybe a few more lines than usual
if you're drawing them. And what we'll do, we'll focus on the lettuce A and E and cover some kind of, like, various topics, really. So we're going to focus
on we're going to focus on the exit stroke,
kind of in general. And we're going to
play with that stroke. We're going to flourish it. We're going to try bouncing it. We're going to try
keeping it simple. So the lettuce we're going
to focus on are the lettuce A and E. So those
two lettuce have, like, very pretty much similar, pretty much the
same exit stroke. So I thought they're quite good, although they're
slightly different. Because the letter E
kind of flows in one go while the letter A
has two parts to it. So you'll definitely
find focusing on the letter E a little
bit more difficult here. But we're going to
try it altogether. I'm going to use this lovely
blue pen for the letter E, and I'm going to use a different
color for the letter A, and you can do the same
just for the fun of it. So let's start by just doing the letter E with a
long entry stroke, so the fast part of the letter. And then finishing it in a
very round, simplistic way. So with a very kind of
short stroke, okay? So we've tried that
a couple of times. You can do it a few
more times if you like. And now we're going
to try and change the bottom of the letter
and create a V shape. These tumble pens are so hard. I find that sometimes the transition doesn't
look really good. So sometimes I go
back and correct it when it goes
from thick to thin. So, see if you can
focus on the bottom of the letter being very sharp. So notice where your hand
needs to go in order for you to create a very lovely and
very narrow looking shape. So for me, it's definitely, you know, kind of going down, and then I'm definitely
guiding my hand to the side to achieve
a beautiful V shape. Now, you can make it as
V shaped as you like. Even if it's a little bit
V shaped, it'll look good. Okay, I'm grabbing my green pen, and I'm going to try and apply the same technique
to the letter A. So we're definitely
going to start with a simplistic way again. So I'm starting with an O shape or like a C
shape to begin the letter. And as I do the last
stroke of the letta, I'm rounding it
up at the bottom. So they are fairly
similar lettuce. You know what I mean? So the
ending is pretty similar. And we're rounding
it up. You can go a little bit slower here. I'm kind of probably rushing that last part a little bit here to see if you can
go a little bit slower. Now, we're also going to
try creating a V shape. So to me, it feels a bit more natural to do
this to the letter A. See how you feel because I
feel like as we get a pause, the stroke we're doing
here is a bit shorter. We're just going
down and up rather than starting with the
tail, then going around, creating a loop, going
down and up as we do as we do for the letter E. This feels a little bit
easier, I think. It's just a bit less to do. So I'm quite happy
with my last one. So now it see if you can
spot any good ones in yours. And don't be too
harsh in yourself. You're doing great, I'm sure. Okay, so now we're going to
take it a little bit further. So how about we try adding
some little flourishes. Now, I don't have a
lot of room here. So this is just purely
for practicing. So see if you can turn that
last stroke of the letter E, so the exit stroke
of the letter E into a beautiful infinity
sound flourish that stretches all the way back. Okay. So, this can be
as big as you like. I personally love two
styles in flourishing. I love I love the style where you keep your loops quite small, but I also love when you try
and make them a bit bigger. So kind of stretch them a bit
wider, if that makes sense. So notice how my first
one is quite narrow, the loop itself, and the
last one is quite big. So see if you want to
experiment with that as well, no rush, take your time, and when you're ready, shall we try applying the same
technique to the letter A. Which will feel, again, I think, a little bit easier
because because we only doing a downstroke and then we're
going straight up, and then we can stretch
and flourish, right? We, we love this one. This one
has turned out quite nice. So, see if you prefer doing
them bigger, as well. I think it always
looks to be better. So again, the focus here is for a shorter amount of time because we're
doing a shorter stroke. Do make sure to pick up your pen as you finish your
first part of the latter, so the C shape, right? So you want to stop there for
sure and prepare yourself. So see if you want
to do a couple. Again, repetition is really,
really good for this. And once you kind of grasp
the concept of this, we can try taking it a
little bit farther again. So we're doing it
really gradually. We're just adding in new
stylistic tweaks gradually. So this one here, so we're going to try
different flourish, which we are going to stretch
to the right this time. Now, this one, kind of, to me, it feels like it distorts
the letter a little bit. Maybe not for the
letter E. I mean, maybe at the end of the word, it will look nice,
you know, in concept. But when you're
doing it on its own, it can look a bit strange. So do try, though. It's a really nice technique. It can look really good on, you know, some other
letters, as well. You can even do it due
to the letter G or, you know, any other
letter, to be honest. So, see if it feels
a bit different. When you do the letter
A. I do think it looks a bit better when
you do the letter A. In this style, I kind
of prefer it for sure. So I'm going to just
round it up a little bit, and we're definitely
going to the left, but when we are then we're
sharply changing to the right. Try to keep your flourish
as horizontal as you can. We don't really want
to have it kind of at the slant that looks
a bit diagonal or vertical. We definitely wanted to
have it as an infinity sign that kind of just
sit horizontally. That will look
really, really good. So as you go above
your letter A, when you stretch to the left, try to keep it straight. Imagine that it's like a
straight horizontal line. Well done. You're
doing right, I'm sure. So for this next one, so for this next exercise, we are going to put
this into a word. So we're going to do the
word shine because it ends with a letter E. And
we're going to apply. So now you get to pick. So pick your favorite style
from the fast from the very, very fast line we did. See if you want to keep it round or if you want to keep it, like, V shaped. It's
really up to you. So whichever style you choose, whichever style feels a
bit more natural to you, try to do it in that style. So I'm definitely choosing the V shape because that's
just the way I do it. Okay, and when you're ready, try doing the same word again
and doing the same thing. So we are going to pick one flourish out of these
two for the letter E, as we finish the
word, see if you feel comfortable with the fast style
or with the second style. I think I'm going to go
for the first style. I definitely needed
more space there. So maybe, actually, we can try doing it freehand,
just without guidelines. It's a bit hard with guidelines
and flourishing when you're doing like words and you're trying to
express yourself, especially if you
have some lines at the top that interfere. So maybe let's give ourselves a little bit more
room and try doing this with a bit more flow without restrictions
of the guidelines. So I'm definitely bouncing
this word quite a lot, and I'm going to
make this flourish a bit bigger because I
have more space there. There we go. That's a
be bad town. Lovely. Okay, so the word shine
looks quite good, I think. Just a nice word to
letter, I think. And to apply the same practice and implement the
letter A exercises, we're going to do the word idea. So we're going to do Idea, and we're finishing
with the letter A. And again, see if
you want to keep it round or if you want
to bounce it down and apply a bit of a V
shape shape to it. Okay. And as you do the word again,
again, take your time. You might need to just
pause the video for a second to catch
up, and that's fine. And as we do the second part,
I'm just planning it out, and I'm kind of toying
with the idea of doing it in that second style
that we practiced. Yeah. That was quite nice
under letter A, I think. Lovely. So again, I'm
just going to try doing this free hand to finish the practice, just
observe everything. And you made some
good choices here. You made some, you
know, good decisions. You thought about your style, you thought about what
feels more natural to you, which is very important. And this is how this is exactly how you build your
calligraphy confidence. When you start making
those small decisions, when you start getting to know yourself a bit more
in terms of, you know, calligraphy and your style, and that's how you progress. Well, then, everybody,
I would really love to see your work for this. I would love to see
what you chose, which flourish feels a
bit more natural to you. And I call, wait, please
share in the group. And I hope you have a
lovely rest for the week, and I'll see you next
week. Bye, everybody.
10. Slant Lines: Hello, lovely members. It's been so gloomy lately. It's the last week of January if you're watching
this in real time. So how about we brighten
up this day and do some really productive, beautiful
calligraphy practice? Okay. So today, we are going
to talk about slant lines. I want this session to
be very informative. I want to equip you with
a lot of knowledge, so you start building that
calligraphy confidence, which is so so important
in your practice. So what we're going
to begin with is draw just as we normally
do a few lines, and I'm going to
do six or seven. Whilst we do that,
I'm just going to explain what it is that
we're going to do. And in calligraphy,
different angle slant lines refer to different
calligraphy styles. So, for example, copper plate, which is more of a traditional
calligraphy style, normally has 52 to
55 degrees slant. Now, in modern calligraphy, it's all a bit more free. You know, we are definitely
freestyling a bit more. We don't have to follow
a particular slant. But for today's exercise, we are going to try and draw
a rough 55 degrees slant. And to do that, let's begin by just finding not even
finding a center line, but just drawing a straight line from the top of the
page like this. Okay. And our baseline is
going to be zero degrees. And this line, which
is just straight, is going to be 90 degrees. Now, if we try and divide it into half like
this with a line, you're going to find a
45 degree point, right? This is our 45 degree angle. And because we are
aiming for 55, it's going to be just above, slightly above that
45 degree line. Now, this is very approximate. You know, I'm not using
a proper ruler for this. If you have a ruler
that has degrees on it. That's wonderful.
You can use that. But I'm just going to be doing it roughly, and
it doesn't really matter. As long as it's above
that 45 degree angle, you know, up, we
want to go past 50. So 55 to 60, that's quite good. So it'll look
something like this. You know, again, it doesn't have to be absolutely precise. This is very, you know,
it's very normal. Again, it's modern clicap. We just want to
have a slant line that's approximately, you know, within 50, 55 to 65
degrees or even even more. Even 70 is fine. You know,
you do modern calligraphy. Now, once you found
that initial line, you can just kind
of draft it and then turn your page and
just with your ruler, try to copy that line
over and over again. So it's a bit of work,
yes, definitely. You know, we're doing
a bit of drawing here, just planning our workspace, but it's going to
really pay off. This is something you
can do and experiment with with different angles. You know, as I said, you
can try 50 degrees, 55. Well, 50 is probably too low. You can try 52,
which is, you know, very often seen in Spencerian
style, for example, you can try 55 and
go above maybe 60, 65, 70 and just see
what it feels like. So I just drawing these
lines over and over again, trying to not lose the slant. They might not be 100%
perfect, but that's okay. As long as you can
see that, you know, approximate slant,
that's absolutely fine. Again, if you do
have a better ruler, perhaps, I don't know, anybody in your household
is an architect or, you know, has more of a professional roll up and such. You know,
you can use that. But there we go.
So this is good. And we're just going to
practice some words, kind of trying to
follow this slant line. And let's try to do the top
part of the page as well. You don't actually
need to do the whole page as long as it covers your baseline because that's what
we're going to use. So those six lines
that you have. You also don't need
to draw as many. You can just do a few.
Just to see that slant. You don't have to do
as many as I'm doing. But there we go. So yes, we're going to start by just
practicing a few strokes, doing a little warm up just to kind of get used
to this slant. Now, this is going to be
challenging in terms of, you know, because you're
not really used to it. For me, this is a big slant. I'll definitely let out
a bit more upright. But again, see if you can make that decision about your
style and just notice there's nothing wrong if your calligraphy is more upright. It's
actually beautiful. You know, as I said,
in modern calligraphy, the slant can be
anything you like, anything that feels good to you. So we're just going to begin by doing a couple
of downstrokes. See if we can follow
those slant lines and just draw over them, go over them and do
a thick downstroke. Let's do two or three. And
then once you've done that, see if you can maybe put
together the letter A, and try to keep
within that slant. So as you do your C shape, see if you can do a
downstroke that's kind of similarly slanted
as your line. And as you do the U
shape at the end, to finish the letter A, see if you can position it under on the slant line
to get that angle. It will be challenging and it doesn't have to be, you know, perfect for every letter you do, for every stroke you do, as long as you try and
follow it the best you can. Let's try the letter B, where we are covering the
slant line with a downstroke. That's a good one to try to just kind of
get used to this. It is quite slanted. I definitely have gone higher up with my slant line and
have it a bit more upright. This, I'll be honest, it does
feel very unnatural to me, but I think it's a
great challenge, and it makes me realize
that this is not my style, and that's okay, but it's good to practice, and it's
good to know that. So I hope you feel the same. And it might you know, it
might feel good to you. So that's interesting,
just to notice and observe. Okay, so let's do what. Let's do the word woods. Woods, starting with W. Now, this might the first
time you do it might just feel very wrong
and not good at all. And that's fine. Same for
me. I'm just feeling it. I'm aware that I'm not really following the
slant here 100%, and it's a bit of
an adjustment here. So I'm just trying to I'm trying my best
just feeling it out, and see if you want
to do the same. Just take this as a draft. It doesn't have to
look beautiful. Okay, let's try this
again when you're ready, I'm going to try and focus
a bit more and really try to go over those slant
lines with every stroke I can. That's why drawing quite a
few of these is probably good because you can just cover those lines to
your strokes as you go. So, for example,
here, I'm going up, and then I'm just
going to do the letter Ds last stroke on the actual
line, and it really helps. I'm finding it hard
to slant my letter S, so I'm going to try it again. Let's do it three times, fill in this line and
see what it feels like. I'm also kind of resorting to keeping my style very
classic looking here, which is quite funny because my style is
definitely quite bouncy. I'm trying to add a bit of style here by detaching the letter D, see if you want to do
the same in one of your versions, and
really take your time. If you need to pause the
video here, that's fine. Just finish this line, stay focused, do it as
slowly as you need to. Okay. I'm grabbing
a different color just to make it more fun. And I'm going to
practice the letter F, and let's do it together. So the next phrase, this will be like
a short phrase. We're going to write frozen
lake, so just two words. So frozen lake. And let me tell you that letter F slant might
feel a little bit unnatural. So see if you can persist. Draw the word. Take it slow. I'm trying to position the
letter L on the slant line. Trying to remind myself to
maybe slow down a little bit. I'm tending to rush, I think. So if you need to
tell yourself to take it a bit slower, go ahead. It's always a good reminder. Okay, so that would
just a draft again. I'm gonna try again. I'm starting to feel a little bit more
confident only now. So I've done five
boards, and only now, it starts to kind of click and notice if that's
the same for you. I definitely takes
time, doesn't it? To just sink in. And but once you
get into that flow, hopefully you'll start
to feel quite fun. And you might find
this quite difficult. And that's it's fine. You know, we're
just trying it out. It doesn't have
to be your style. Maybe there is
something you'll take away from this, which is great. Maybe you don't like it at
all, which is also fine. Is just a little
exercise because then we'll do something at the bottom in
your natural style, and we'll just compare and see
what is your actual slant. Right. This next
one will start with the letter P. And you're
going to letter pine cone. But how about it is quite challenging here
with the letter P just to get that slant. It's quite a long letter,
same as the letter F, but I feel like it's
even harder than the letter F in this case. So how about just try doing the letter P a couple of times. And when you're ready, try
putting this into words. So we're gonna do pine cone. Let's keep it nice and tight. So it starts to feel quite nice at this point,
for me personally. At first, it was quite I
found it very difficult. Now I'm actually
enjoying it quite a bit. So, see if that's
the case for you. Maybe you're still
feeling it, and, you know, you need time
to get there as well. So that's absolutely fine. And see if you have
room to do another one, or if not, you can just do cone. Let's shorten it. Why not? Skipping that
letter P. But yeah, do press the letter P
individually a few times. I think that'll be a
really good exercise. It's a tricky, tricky letter. Okay, well done. Finish off this line
before we move on. Before we move on
to something else. I'm grabbing this pen, and it's quite new, so it's
definitely a bit stiff. Okay, so the next combination of words we'll do is going
to be sparkly frost. So we're going to start
with the letter S, which I did say
at the beginning, I'm finding it hard to
slant the letter S. So I'm trying to get that
downstroke nicely slanted. And, with this pen being new, it's a challenge, as well. So, yes, definitely.
The first version is just a draft. Take it easy. And see if a little bit of
bound comes through for you, I'm definitely sort
of kind of resorting to keeping everything really
neat on the baseline. Not sure why. I guess it comes with it comes
with a slant. I don't know if slanted
bouncy calligraphy looks good, particularly. I don't think I've
tried that much, so I'm just keeping it
quite simplistic here. Sparkly frost. What a beautiful beautiful
combination of words. There we go, you
can do this again. So we did the letter F, and
there was a letter P again. So again, some extra practicing,
which is really good. And I'm going to now
just try at the end, doing this in my normal style, and I encourage you
to do the same. So ignore the lines. They might feel confusing,
but just ignore them. And just do this as
you normally do it. You might feel very strange. It's not actually that easy. It's not actually
that easy to hop from one starle to
another so quickly. So if you're finding that challenging,
that's very normal, and you might need a moment to remember what is your
style. So that's fine. Just do it as best
you can, right. And this is where we want
to observe a little bit. So I'm looking at mine
and I can definitely see I'm going to try and
find the slant I have here, and then just compare
to the slant we drew, and it does look very different. Mine's definitely
much more upright. So I'm just trying to determine
that 90 degree again, 90 degree line, so I can
see purely and clearly. Yeah, so mine is
somewhere there. I don't know what it
is. I would need to get one of those
mechanical rolls out, but it's definitely above 55. It's definitely above
55 degrees slant, which is, you know, interesting. And I love seeing that.
I love spotting it. It teaches me more
about my style, and I hope it does
the same for you. You're just getting to know it, and it's very, very powerful when you get to
know it inside and out. And I hope this exercise was
fun, well done, everybody.
11. Upright Connection Strokes: Members, it's another Tuesday, which means it's time
for our weekly practice, and I've done my
lines for today. So you'll need six
or seven lines. Maybe you're using a ruled
pad, which is great. Now, today we are going to
focus on connection strokes. Again. Yes, again, I know that I've done so many tutorials
on a similar topic, but today we can actually do something we haven't
done before, and I haven't
actually talked about this at all in my teaching, so it's something really fun. Now, I'm just doing
the letter D, and just notice how when
I done the first one, I've stretched my
connection stroke of all the way up now I've
done the second one, and my connection stroke
is a bit more sideways, and it kind of finishes earlier. Okay? Now, let's try
and just observe. So let's join up some
lettuce together. We're gonna do D D and L. And now this is I'm
doing the second day. I'm stretching my connection
stroke all the way up. And when I do the letter L, it slightly overlaps it, but it's positioned quite
high up. That's important. So if you think
about the waistline, which is normally the top of, let's say, the first
part of the letter D, this is where our
connection struck ends. So see how I'm stretching
it all the way up there. And now I'm starting another letter D and
overlapping it slightly. So it actually doesn't
look that we've stretched all the way up
because we are overlapping it. We are overlapping
it seamlessly. But today it's not
about that overlap, which I've done
another session on. It's about stretching it higher up and noticing
what it feels like. So this is how I do it normally. I don't really
stretch it up at all. I kind of position
it in the middle of that O shape of the letter
D. Do you see what I mean? So it's, like, much lower. While the fast version
is much higher. See if you can spot
the difference. And I just want you today, I just want you to think
about the way you do it. And if it feels very
confusing at the moment, let's just keep practicing, and I'm sure this will
click really quickly. Okay, we're going to do the
letter M. And U together. So now that is how I
finished the letter M, kind of really high up. I've stretched it all the
way to the top part of the letter M. And we're going to join the
letter M and U together. So now that I'm
stretching it high up, and then I'm starting the letter So my connection stroke is just really kind of balanced, and it goes all the way up, not as much to the side. You can also add a bit of bound to this and still
apply this technique. So this is actually a
really, really good example. See how it joins the
letter U from the top, as opposed to joining the letter U from either the middle or the bottom part, you
see the difference. So this one's very high up, and this one's towards, like, bottom part of the letter U
and, like, the middle part. So the joining looks different. Therefore, you know, your style
will also look different. So it's just a really
nice little tweak. And let's keep practicing. Let's just do some wad. So we're going to
try both versions. So the first one is going
to be where we position our connections
to our hive where we finish it off really high. And the second version will be where we stretched a bit more to the side and finish it a bit
quicker, so it's shorter. And let's do a word puddle. Let's do some
countryside ward today. I just had a long dog
walk, and, you know, I've seen a lot of puddles, lots of mud, lots
of sheep and clay. So that's in my mind. Right, so just now that
is what we're doing here, we're stretching all of those connection
strokes. Quite high up. I'm keeping them fairly narrow, and it automatically
makes my style very like baseline
or very simplistic. Like, everything is
sitting on the baseline. Okay? So that's
the first version. You can really see this in
letter U and D combination. The way it joins, we
can see that we go in to the letter D from the top. Now, let's do so this
is my natural style, but let's just do
slightly different style where we don't
really think about positioning our connection
stroke really high. We're ending it
quite to the side. It's a bit more
abrupt, for sure. So see how I'm not really
stretching it all the way up. So, this one is
just a bit lower. I don't want to say it's
a low connection stroke, but it's just a bit lower. It doesn't necessarily
stretch high. Okay, I hope now this makes
a little bit more sense. If it's still confusing, let's just try
another example or if you kind of understand what
I'm trying to convey here, let's just put this
into practice. And let's try another word. Let's try the word Mud. So we've done MNU
already, so that's great. Oh, I'm gonna be trapped
here with my Deno. Ooh. It's gonna be a little
bit of a slanted M for me. But I'm still kind
of demonstrating a really good transition
here from M to which clearly shows how we are touching that joining up
stroke quite high. So notice how letter M and U and letter U and
D merge together. Okay, let's try this again. And I just want to add a
bit more bounds to this. It doesn't necessarily need to be, like, really simplistic. That's just what happened
to me naturally. I just observe your start. Notice if it changes. Notice if you lose
a bit of bound. Maybe you add a bit more bound to it, and
that's more, you know, that's easier to apply
this technique too. So I want you to just observe
and learn about your style. Now, I'm doing this in the
second version where I've done really try to
end it really high. I'm just positioning it kind of towards the middle
of the next letter. I hope that makes sense to see how it looks a
little bit different. I'm just looking
for another pen. I want something colorful. And we can do sheep next. And I'm just looking
for this lovely blue pen that I know I have. And we can try practicing
the word sheep, which is actually quite
tricky, you know, the letter S and H. I
couldn't find blue, so I'm gonna go off with pink. I love this color. So I'm
going to do a bouncy style, but still try to
apply this technique. And even here, going from
the letter S into the letter I stretch that connection stro higher than
I normally would. Now I'm going from H into E, also keeping my connection
narrow in terms of, you know, imagine it's like a
narrow U shape rather than like a really
opened V shape. I hope that makes
sense. So see how Itach the letter E. Itach
the letter E to the letter P kind
of from the top. So joining the letter
P from the top. Let's try this again. It's a short word. Maybe you
can squeeze in another one. And try to find your
rhythm with this. So the idea is to just lengthen your connection stroke all the way upwards, Okay, as opposed to the second version where we are shortening it,
not necessarily shortening, but just making it a bit more short and a bit
more to the side, not really focusing on
stretching it high up. So see how the letter
E joins the letter P kind of in the middle
of the letter P. It's not high, it's
not at the top of the letter P. So
that's the difference. Okay. Let's do another word. Let's do the word clay, which I think will be quite satisfying to do
in this technique. So I'm starting
with the letter C, stretching the exit stroke
all the way up to catch the letter L. I've done
the same thing with the letter L. I've
stretched that exit stroke, that connection stroke
all the way up. I'm doing that the letter A. So notice how that
last stroke stretches up in a fairly narrow
U shape or V shape, whatever you want to think
about your connections. So let's try this again. It's a short word. We
can try that again. So notice if you can make this look a little
bit more seamless. It's a bit tricky to do
if you're not used to it. Maybe that's something
that you do naturally. I think we have a few
members that I've seen actually do this naturally. So notice notice, just observe and learn
about your style. And this is I'm just
doing the second version where I don't apply
this technique. Sorry, my dog is snoring. She's very loud. There we go. So now it is those
joining up points. Okay, so now to just let this all sink in
a little bit more, and our hand kind of remembers
this a bit more as well. Let's just observe a
little bit more and just practice these, like,
certain combinations. We're not going to
do the whole word, but let's just do C and L. And no notice how
we're joining them up. Let's do L and A individually. And as you're observing it more as you're studying
it a bit more, some, you know, examples
will not look as good. But see if you can find
a nice way of doing it. And I'm just trying
this thing where when I finish my exit stroke, I actually don't position it kind of straight
in a straight way, but I finish it with
a little sideways, like, a tucked in little detail. So as I go up, I'm going to
go to the side a little bit, and then start the next letter. And it's almost as
if your next letter hooks onto your previous
letter when you do it. Let's explore this
a little bit more. So as I finish it, I do
this little like a C shape. I really don't know
what the call is. It's like a little hook. I want to say, let's
call it a little hook. So as I finish it, I go to the side and down
a little bit, see? And then I do the next shape, it slots in just perfectly. So going up into the side, starting the next shape, which, let's say, is the letter A, and it just slots in so nicely. And this is something
that just kind of occurred to me
as I was doing it, and it's something that kind of came out of
this practice for me. So again, you know, when we get really
focused on something, we discover new things.
Well done, everybody for.
12. Balance and Embellishment: Hello, members. Happy Tuesday. Excuse my voice today. I've got a bit of a cold, but nothing will stop me. I really want to show up today and teach this lovely
lesson for you. It's going to be a fun one. So we are going to do a
little bit of warming up, a little bit of practice. But then we're going to
create something beautiful. So let's just draw three lines. We'll be focusing on
only three words today. And our focus, as we
let to these words, is going to be balance. I'll show you I'll tell you one really common mistake
that I've noticed lately, actually, that a lot of
people struggle with. So you know how I teach
bounty calligraphy. So I'm just starting
to do the wide breeze. You can do it with me. And we're going to try and do
it in a bouncy style. So as you bounce your
lettuce up and down, sometimes it's really easy
to lose the balance and have all of your kind
of descenders and X height lettuce and all
of the ascender lettuce. So longer lettuce and shorter lettuce kind
of mix up together. So your word can lose
balance really easily. So as you do the lettuce
here in the breeze, just make sure that it
does stretch lower down. It does want to look lower than the letter B than the letter. Even if you bounce
in the letter O, you still to want to
really really show that the letter Z is
a Dcend the letter, which stretches quite low, you know, below the baseline. So you see how it can get kind of really similar to the
height of the letter, for example, because we are bouncing the letter R
below the baseline. So let's just
really, really show, maybe extend that letter Z
today a little bit longer so it does look as if it
is AD send a letter. Okay? So that's going to
help us keep the balance. And maybe let's do
this word twice. You can pause the video
if you need more time. And when you're ready, we are
going to do another word, so we're going to letter
tulip and maybe with a capital So this time, we are really kind of
focusing on the letter L and letter T being
fairly similar heights. It's just a bit taller, obviously, taller than
the letter U and I. And then the letter P again. So let's just stretch
it all the way down. I could have stretched
my even longer. So we want this letter
to be quite different. You can see how T and P are are quite different
at this point, you know, but they
still could be more contrasting in
terms of their height. So we really want
the letter P to drop below the line quite low. So I'm trying to extend
this one a bit more. So this example is a little
bit better, in my case. So the letter T kind of
sits on the baseline, and the letter P has bounced all the way down as it should. And this Y just looks a
little bit more balanced, even though there is a bit
of bound going on anyway. So I hope this makes sense. So again, do this Y
twice if you like, pause the video, and then
we're going to do one last. Ward. And it's going to be
the war roses. Really pretty. So we're going to start
it with a capital, and we're going to
add this little embellishment at the bottom, where we kind of let loose
and stretch the downstroke, all the way down,
so it kind of goes down and it looks
quite detached, in a way, in the letter. And we're going to
focus on the rest of the letters kind of being
a little bit smaller. Although I am bouncing, I am kind of making
my letter S bigger, keeping my letter E smaller. But overall, they
definitely want to be not as high as
the letter R. Okay. I hope that makes
sense. So practice those words a bit more, just to kind of implement
those things if you like. And when you're
ready, maybe grab another piece of pay Pop because this is going
to be a little project. We're going to make
these words beautiful. So we're going to letter them
again, so take your time. So this is the third
time you're doing this, so maybe Things have
clicked a little bit more, so definitely for me as well, my hand has warmed
up a little bit. I'm really focusing on that letter Z and
stretching it down. And as you do this
word, can you try, see if you can try and make the entry and exit
stroke quite long, because we are going
to draw something. We are going to
embellish these words. So just to give us a bit
more room to draw on, let's just make those entry and exit strokes a
little bit longer. Okay? So I'm doing
the word tulip. And with longer strokes in mind, maybe we can also
detach the letter L, so it looks a little bit longer. And maybe a long exit stroke
you finished the letter P, and I'm still focusing
on a long down stroke on the letter P. We're
aiming for balance, even though it's bounced, we still want to show
a bit of balance. Lovely. Well, done. Keep going. Remember to take it slowly, pause in between the
shapes of the lettuce. Pick up a bit of momentum maybe when you do those
connection strokes. Do try to kind of space
them out quite well. I think that's going
to work really, really well with this style. And as you finish
these three words, let's pick up like a
really fine tip pen. I love using a fine
liner for this. You can also just
use the same pen just apply light pressure. Okay. And we're just going to start drawing some
little leaves. So now what I've done
with the letter B, I've just drawn some
outlines of the leaves. And on the other
side, I'm just doing these little clusters
of three leaves. Now we're going to focus
on thin strokes only. And we're going to try and add
some little embellishment, maybe a little flowers, maybe a little leaves. This looks amazing, especially
when you colour it in, so we can use maybe pencils, colored pencils or, you know, even brush pens to
colour this in. So I'm just doing a couple
of flowers and just kind of extending some lovely leaves
out of them, as well. So on the letter O, on the upstroke of the
letter Z, Smembe. This will look really
good on upstrokes. So I feel like the
downstrokes are just a little bit too heavy
for this for drawing. But on the upstrobes, this is going to look really
delicate and beautiful. You might want to add some dots. You don't have to
know how to draw. These are really simplistic
elements that anybody can do, take it slow, refer
to this example. You don't have to do as many, but even a couple of
leaves can really, really embellish your word. Okay, so can't resist. I'm going to pick
off some lovely red, this lovely pencil and just coloring those little flowers, maybe to red and orange. And then for the leaves, we could do maybe
green and blue. So I'm thinking I'm just
thinking about a wide breeze. So I kind of I imagine blue
color when I think of it. So I think green and blue
will look really lovely. So as you colour them in, you don't have to
be super precise. I actually love that kind of, like, fluffy, washed out look. You can go over your
outlines, of course. So I'm just definitely just doing it fairly
kind of quickly, moving my pen up and down, and not being too worried
about being very precise here. Hey, I'm gonna do
these leaves blue. This could actually be
like little lavender. I imagine, there's definitely definitely nice
it's a nice blend, green and blue together, oh, because some leaves
can be blue, as well. Kind of green blue. There we
go. So just take your time. Again, you might want
to pause the video, just go to finish this
in your own time. And when you're ready, we are
going to draw some tulips. So to draw a tulip head, I'm just going to do
this little trick where I just do like a U shape, and then I just
divide that shape into two parts like this. So remember the tulips, they have really
long kind of leaves stemming from the bottom. And we can show that, of course. You can detach them, so I might do some here
on the top of the letter T. This just looks really beautiful and
so lovely for spring. And again, I'm just
doing the julipd. You can do as many as
you like. Get creative. You can see how these are quite different to the first
one and this one. Just have slightly
different elements, and they do look quite
different. And I love that. So just play around. I'm trying to think
of this exit str, I can maybe turn
into a leaf and then maybe extend some
more little stalks so I can draw some more tulipd, more leaves, long big leaves. This will look really,
really lovely. Keep going. Keep decorating.
There's no right or wrong. Get creative. I can't wait
to see your version of this. I'm sure it's going
to be beautiful. So embellishing words and
lettuce is just so much fun. This can also be
done individually, like, let's say, on
capital lettuce. It's a really lovely technique, and it looks harder
than it is, I think. At least, you know,
once you do it once, it definitely becomes
a little bit easier. I, I think it's just a really lovely way of
decorating your calligraphy. And you can make it as
full looking as you like. You can just do a
couple of leaves, or you can keep
going, keep adding. We have quite a few
upstrokes here, so there's definitely room for adding as many as you like. I say, it isn't every video, but my dog is
snoring next to me. I feel like I need to nisionate. But she's such a good companion. I love having her by my
side whilst I do lettering, but she's a very loud snorer. Lovely. So I'm going to
color in this yellow. I'm gonna color in these tulips yellow because I think it's just going to kind of make
them pop a little bit more, and it's very kind of
spring themed composition. So I think it'll
look really lovely. I love yellow tulips.
And the leaves. I'm just going for
this darker green, and it's a beautiful contrast
between green and yellow. Definitely definitely works. I hope you're happy
with yours as well. Lovely. So take your time. I missed one tulips. I'm
just going to do this one. Lovely. So we have
one more word. We're going to do
the word roses, and we're going to try
and draw some roses in this really kind of fun way where we just do little spirals. So you can do a little stalk and then maybe a couple of leaves and see how I'm doing
the flower head. The actual flower head is
a little like a swirl, a little cinnamon swirl. That's what I think
about when I look at it. So yeah, definitely
just start in the center and just
really kind of quick. Like a swirl, and it
looks really good. And when you color this
in, it's just going to look like a
proper little rose. So I love adding
some little spikes. You can see I've added,
like, little short lines, and they can look quite good and effective a little spikes
just to add more texture. You can think of this
as a wild rouse. You know how spiky they are. Lovely. Again, I'm just
focusing on all the upstrokes. You don't have to do
them all, of course, but I'm just kind of looking. That's why I said it's
nice to space your word, and it's quite a short word. So probably spacing is
quite a good idea anyway. And I'm just trying
to see where I can blend in some more leaves, some more flower heads. And just keep going,
filling it all up. I'm doing the top
of the letter O, because I had this
little flourish there. It kind of looks quite good
now, as I embellish it. I'm just going to focus
on two colors again. I think it's such a good trick. I feel like it keeps it quite simplistic and quite tasteful. But of course, you can make
it as colorful as you like, but I do think that
two or three colors always work really
well and can very often look nicer than if you use like seven
different colours. That's something I
remember actually from my graphic design studies that, you know, it's quite
nice to use trim colours in composition,
which is so true. I do believe. Otherwise, it can become a bit overwhelming. This is great. Lovely. So I really love this one, actually. It's quite elegant
looking, in a way. I can see this being
actually done on place cards for names. Imagine. That will look amazing, I think, for, like, a summer wedding or such. Yeah, such a good idea, I think. So there we go. I hope you found
this inspirational and I can't wait
to see your work. Please, please, please
share in the group.
13. Letter 'H' Focus: Hi, lovely members. I can't believe them recording
the 51st tutorial Tuesday. It's incredible. Well
done, everybody. I'm just thinking about all of your progress if you
are watching this, having done, you know,
50 already. Well done. Maybe you're still
going through them. That's also fine. Well done. So it's just a crazy
amount of practice, and you should feel
really, really proud if you've completed them. So today we are
going to focus on the letter So we haven't
done this letter in depth, and I think it's quite a nice letter to kind of continue our theme
about balance, something that we
talked about last week. And we're going to go
quite deep with this. We're just going to
kind of go back to the basics and remember
those building blocks. Remember, we really
want to get to know each letter
really, really well. So we start to feel really comfortable with
them with them all. So let's begin constructing
the letter H from shapes. So the first shape
we can spot is this acendRs an
acendR loop shape. Followed by the
compound curve shape, which has three strokes. You can see we're
going up, down up. Okay, so let's try this again. We're going to connect them all. I notice how I'm stopping
for a second in between. I'm definitely pausing. And that's what we
want to get used to. So as we do this and the shape, we stop, and then we
attach a compound curve. And we keep going. Let's
try this a couple of times. Notice how I'm not even thinking about the entry stroke for
the letter H at this point. I'm just kind of going with this and focusing on the shapes, pausing in between the shapes. Keeping my lettering
on the baseline, everything is really balanced. So try to do it
slowly before you introduce maybe a little
tail at the beginning. And then keep going again. Just do this letter
over and over again, slowly pausing in the middle, in between the shapes. Now, as we keep
going, see if you want to extend
that entry stroke, make it a bit longer, turn it into a little
detached flourish. And the reason we
are doing this in a simplistic style
to begin with is because we want to get used
to the lettuce balance. So let's just think about
the guidelines for a second. So obviously, the loop shape stretches all the
way to the top line, which would be the acenda line. Now, the little
compound curve shape wants to kind of
reach the waistline, which is the middle line
normally in the guidelines. And once we start
bouncing this letter, you probably know
that it can just be so stretched
that it's so easy to lose its shape because
there's quite a lot to it. So I'm just kind of
trying to practice that compound curve
in a bouncy style, and this is something
we can do together. And let's just try
the whole letter, trying to really keep
that ascender shape and the compound curve
shape nicely balanced. Kind of really
thinking about even though we are stretching
those shapes, they still want to
be balanced in terms of their proportions, okay? So the loop shape definitely
wants to be much higher. Than the second
part of the letter. Okay. So that can be quite
easy to kind of lose focus on. I see this so much. I often see that people
who start learning, they bounce their lettuce, but it just becomes a bit of a mosh in terms of proportions, although it is
modern calligraphy, and you are allowed to
do whatever you like. You know, I still think that
it's nice to kind of keep in mind at least proportions because it just makes
it easier to read. Okay, so well done. Well done for practicing
the bounty version of this. And we're going to do the ward hedgehog in a simplistic
baseline style to begin with. So again, as we do this, the reason we do it on a
baseline right now is to again, just get used to
those proportions. Just notice how the
letter H sits when it's quite simplistic when we don't really bounce anything. So the contrast between both
styles can teach you a lot, you know, even though
maybe baseline, the baseline style is
not your natural style. But when you do
bounty calligraphy, you can actually
improve your bounty calligraphy when you practice the baseline style because you learn about the
proportions a bit more, and your bouncy style will just become a little
bit more balanced. And we're going to
try the same word in a bouncy style, okay? So see how if you don't
have a lot of room, you might want to
use a new page. So my letter age, I was a bit trapped there, so my loop is not as high
as I wanted it to be, but it's still quite high, and I'm really kind
of focusing on that just really
showing the difference. Between the height
of the first part of the letter and the second
part of the letter. Okay, right. So let's grab a new page just so we have
a bit more freedom here. Now, let's just talk about
the letter H and flourishing. So the letter H is a very
flourishable letter. It's wonderful. We can
flourish its entry stroke. We can flourish its down stroke, like a second down stroke. As we finish the letter, there's so much we can do to it. So let's just experiment
a little bit. So you can see how
in the first badge, I just kind of
added a little oval at the beginning,
which can be nice. In the second example, I did, like, a little
quick, like loop flourish. Now I've just done the
underline flourish. And now I'm doing
this really fun one where this could be in the middle of the word,
if you have enough room. Sometimes you won't
be able to do it if you have any other A sanders. Nearby, you can imagine that
could look a bit tangled. But if you have room, you can definitely try doing this little fun flourish where
we start from the right. We start with the
infinity sign in mind, and then we stretch into
the loop and go down and just naturally stop before
we start the second part. So I'm still keeping it bouncy, and I'm just adding this little entry stroke flourish
at the beginning, and it looks really good. This can look quite
nice and stylized. Let's maybe try doing
a few capital lattes. So I love doing
mine in this style where I start with a first
shape and then go down, and then I go into
the cross line and then into the second
ba of the letter. So it's all kind
of tied together. You can, of course, stop, especially if you're
using a dipper pen. You might want to choose and stop when you approach a
downstroke and then start again. You can definitely
have a little pause. But I think with brush bends, it's a bit easier to
glide just in one go. So this sounds really,
really fun. Try it with me. Maybe we can letter a
name. Let's do Henry. It's a pretty name. And
let's just see how it flows into a lice latte, which is let E. So we do get a really nice connection stroke
there as we finish let H, so it should feel really nice to join up with other lettuce. So that looks quite fun.
You can also add, like, a little inside flourish. I'm just thinking.
So we can definitely embellish this even more. We could start the way we did, but then maybe just blend in
a little extra loop in here, and that will look really nice. There's something about
it. I do love this look. So just play around
a little bit. It's a really versatile letto. There's a lot you
can do with it. You can flourish. You can add lots of things
at the beginning. You can flourish in the
middle of the word. You can do a lot of, like, bottom flourishes
for the bottom part. So yeah, really, really fun. Okay. And we will finish the practice by lettering
the word highlight twice. So we're going to do, like, a bouncy version of it. So quite a few
letters H in here. So let's just
remember stretching that loop up so
it's nice and long. And balancing, you know, if we have any other
As and the lettuce, like L in this example, we are also stretching it up, so it all looks balanced. Another letter g,
letter T. So you can see how they all kind of
sit at the similar height, even though we've bounced
the letter g, quite a lot. It definitely looks as if
there's a lot of movement. And we're going to do this
in a simplistic style, and automatically, I'm just
slanting it a little bit. And I'm extending my connection
strokes kind of upwards. So everything looks maybe
a bit tighter together. I love. I don't necessarily find the baseline
style natural to me, but I do believe that it really, really helps my bound
to calligraphy when I practice that style,
if that makes sense. So if there's one
thing you want to take away from today is that one style can definitely help
you develop another style, and it can be really, really
fun to practice both. Well, then, everybody, I really hope you enjoy this
practice with me.
14. Letter 'X' Height Focus: Hello, members. I hope
you are feeling ready for a lovely spring themed
mid week practice today. We are going to be
lecturing daffodil types, so daffodil different daffodil type names. And
it's a lot of fun. I learned a lot doing this, and I hope you feel inspired, as well, by all the
beautiful varieties and all the beautiful names. So we are going to draw just
the X height lines today. So, you know, the lines
that normally letters like SA or E or O would sit on. So only two lines. Okay? So normally we
just draw the baseline. But this time, we're
going to draw, let's say, five sets of two lines that
are fairly close together. We don't want them to
be very far apart. Okay, so if you need to do it, it just pause the video and get this done
before we continue. And the first half you're going
to letter is ice follies. So very beautiful two words. And these are those like cream, white, beautiful flowers.
They're really lovely. And we're going to
focus on balance. Again, I just know how hard it is at the
beginning stages, especially to keep your
calligraphy, like, balanced looking and legible, especially when you're
still learning. I just want to make
sure, you know, that we are making
choliphy look balanced, that it's beautiful to read, and we are still
kind of following the main rules that are, you know, kind of the actual the basics, the
calligraphy basics. Although modern calligraphy
is very stretched. I'm not saying it's not, but
it's really nice to just follow some sort of grid, if you know what I mean, if we have some
sort of a balance. So these senders are
still the senders, and A senders are still A
senders and calligraphy, no matter if it's bouncy,
if it's copper plade. So we do got to
want to show that. So as we do these
two words today, let's just focus on
our letters I and F, which are capital letters here, and the lettuce L. Being obviously taller and
fairly similar size. Again, with bounds,
this can vary, but kind of fairly
similar height so that they do stand apart from
the X height lattice, okay? I hope that makes sense.
So this will apply more to the sands, although it is
quite important to also observe your asena lettuce, which are those lettuce
that stretch up. Okay, how would that make sense? Than for doing this. So let's do twice if you can and
just kind of really, really observe And
when you're ready, we are going to do
the next one, which is called cheerfulness. So pretty. So this one
apparently smells really good. I looked them all up
because I was curious, and it's got like
double flowers. Okay, so cheerfulness. So let's start the
word with a bounty C. So let's start it
as a capital lettter and then just add
a bit of bound by stretching it below the
baseline and coming back up. And then we can do the letter H, and we can start it
on the baseline, but let's maybe try and
bound the second part of it. We've got a few X height lettuce here, like the lettuce E. The letter. And then
we got the letter F, where we really want to
show that distinct drop. So make your
downstro quite long. I could have made
mine even longer. Sometimes I find it with
bounty calligraphy. Sometimes it feels like
you're stretching a lot, but when you have a look
at your word at the end, you actually haven't stretched, like, really low at all. And I find that quite a lot. Sometimes my expectations
don't match, what I'm actually
doing on paper. I definitely feel
like I'm bouncing my letters and changing
their height so much, but when I look at
the end result, it's actually quite subtle.
So it's really interesting. So just spot what it
is for you that maybe, again, maybe doesn't match
the outcome you imagine. Maybe you've got some blind
spots like that, as well. I think it's quite
interesting to notice that. So just observing, again, it's a really good exercise, focusing on showing
those descender drops really well and then actually looking
at your word and observing maybe even
exaggerating at once, so you can see the difference. So there we go, the
letter C, H, F, and L. They all they're quite similar in terms
of their height. You can see how they all kind of linger at a similar
line at the top, imagining there's a line. And if your hand doesn't sometimes listen to what it
is that you're trying to do, just try to pick that bit
out and practice it again. You just need to build
that muscle memory again. It's a change, and your
hand just needs to adapt. So let's just practice. Let's be observant and see if we can make it
a bit more balanced. Okay, so the next one
is called Baby Moon. That is very beautiful. So, apparently, it's got, like, really heart shaped petals, like little small petals, and it's also like multi headed. So it's got, like,
lots of heads. I think I've seen this around. It's really kind of dainty
looking. It's really pretty. Okay, so we've got the letter B, which is a capital letter, and then we've got
another letter B, which is races, but it's
still the end the letter. So now it is how
they stretch up. But also, it's quite common
to flourish the letter B. They're quite
flourishable letters. And I always make, like, a big loop at the
bottom of the letter, which is considered
to be a flourish. Now, with flourishes, it's
a whole different thing. So these little
spaces that we've got here in between all
of these hit lines, they are perfect
for flourishing. So so that can definitely be the space
that you fill off with flourishes even above or
below your descend etti. So it's quite typical for
flourishes to be really big and stretch above and
around your words today. So the loops are quite big.
So just remember that. You can always kind
of imagine that your flourishing lines are two times bigger
than your X height. So you've got your X
heights, so two lines. And if you had another
line at the bottom, that could be like the
space of two X heights, and you can flourish
all the way down there. So I'm not blending and flourishing here,
maybe another time. I want to keep this
quite focused, but I thought I just
mentioned that. Okay, so we've got lettuce M, B, and obviously the letter
Y wants to be quite low. So we really show that it is a descender
letter, so it stretches down, although the lettuce B
loop is quite flourished, so it also appears quite low, but that's okay because
it's a flourish. So imagine if you
wanted to add, like, a big flourish on the letter
A that stretches all the way down and takes that big
space at the bottom, where normally all the
descenders would sit, that's fine, 'cause it's a flourish and it's
an embellishment. It's not an actual letter. So we're not as strict. But yeah, I hope you
can see the difference. And I hope that
makes sense for you, and I hope you can maybe uncover something about your own
style and maybe see. This is very common
with lettuce P, and Y I see this a lot, where the lettuce P are just not low enough and they kind of
blend together in the word. So just observe yours. I think it's a really
interesting exercise. It's always nice to observe. Okay, so the next
daffodille type of letter is Junk killer. I hope I'm pronouncing
that right. It's a wonderful word letter.
I'm sure you'll agree. So we have the letter
Q and the letters L and the letter J at the
beginning to focus on. So let's just practice. The letter Q can just feel tricky because it's
not very common. So it's probably just
not very practice. You know, we don't
normally we don't often see this letter. So sometimes you might
feel a bit like, Oh, I forgot how to do it. So, take your time and just remember again to stretch
your descend down. Even if you're bouncing
your letter N, Make sure you show
that beautiful stretch on the letter Q that
stretches all the way down. And so the X height lattice
here like the letter N, they stretch below the baseline because it's a bouncy style. But the letterQ is
still lower, obviously. And that's what we're kind
of trying to keep an eye on. Okay. And the lettuce J and
L again, are similar height. They don't have to
be the same height, especially in
modern calligraphy. Obviously, they
can be stretched. But again, we're just keeping an eye on them,
looking balanced. We definitely want
them to be higher. Okay, let's try this again. Try this really slowly. Focus on that long flowy
downstroke of the letter. See if you want to bounce
the letter U or letter B. See if you want to create, like, a sharp bottom of the letter on the letter L, or
even bounce them. Letter A can be
bounced, as well. So it's a very bouncy word, to be honest. And
it's beautiful. It does look really
beautiful written out. Okay, so let's do another one. We're going to let
the butterfly kiss. And it's really pretty.
Sounds really good. And apparently,
it's a hybrid bulb, and it produces white
and pink flowers. So let's get ready and
letter this last one. And we're going to start
with the letter B, which is a capital letter. And so I'm just observing. So we got the letter B, letter
double the letter F and L, which are all A and the lettas, but we also have the
letter F stretched down, which is a Den the letter, together with the letter Y
that also stretches down. So there's a lot to think
about in the wild butterfly, and you'll probably need
a bit more room for it. You just make sure you
have enough space. And let's begin. So the letter B is quite big and know,
it's a capital letta. I've created like a little loop at the bottom of the letter B, just like a little flourish, like a loop flourish. And it does stretch
below the baseline. Now, the letter T are kind of similarly sized in terms of their height and
the letter F and L, they're all kind of the
same line at the top. They can be a bit
jumpy, can't they? But they are kind of balanced. We can see they're all kind
of touched the top line, imagining there's another line. And then the letter F has like a sharp stretch down,
and the letter L, again, kind of balances out with order Asen the letters at the
top and the letter Y again. Kind of looks aligned with
the letter F a bit more. Okay, so I've done kiss. I wasn't really happy
with my letter K, so I've done it again. I don't know what my
toddler's done with my pen. It's very, like, angled. It's very strange. So I feel like she's been
doing coloring with it. But anyway, so I hope you
enjoyed this exercise. You can keep going, of course, but I hope this has given you something
to kind of focus on. I hope you enjoyed lettering
different daffodil types. Well, done for practicing.
15. Adding Flow: Hi, members. Thank
you so much for joining me for another
tutorial Tuesday. I hope you're feeling ready for some productive
midweek practice. So today we'll be focusing on a really nice stylistic tweak that can really spice
up your calligraphy. I think it adds a lot
of flow to your style, and I hope you enjoy it. So to begin with, I've got
a little exercise for you. So let's just letter out the
letter combinations A and U, A and M. And A and N, just in your normal
natural style. Don't overthink it. Just do
it normally as a warm up. Okay. And once you do it, have a look at where your exit
stroke of the letter A touches the downstroke
of the next letter. Is it low? Is it in the middle?
Is it quite high up? Just maybe just spot that
little connection point. And just observe,
just maybe mark where it is, have a proper look. And then have a look at
what I'm doing here. So I'm intentionally stretching that connection stroke all the way up and then going into the next letter
after the letter A, in a compound curve shape? Do you remember those
compound curves that are just one of the basic
strokes of calligraphy, that goes up, down, up or down, up down. He's one of those
calligraphy drills. So imagine that you're
starting your letter U with that shape or the
letter M, or the letter N. So this technique applies to certain lettis and we can
practice some of them. So you can try this with me. You can try just doing AU, AM and AN in this style. And then we can just take it
slow and practice together. So we can do that at
the letter A, as well. We can go from the letter
A into the letter A. By the way, it could be
any letter beforehand. I'm just focusing
on the letter A, so we don't have to think
about that letter too much. So we want to think about the next letter after the letter A. So I thought I would just
do letter A many times so we get used to it and we don't have to think
about the technique there. But just notice how that
exit stroke comes into the next letter like let the
I or let the P from above. It's a really lovely, flowy kind of style. You know, it's a nice technique. I do think it adds
a lot of flow. You can even just try
doing this stroke a couple of times on its own to get used to
that rhythm and flow. It definitely
lengthens the stroke, and it carves it slightly. And then it just
kind of slots into that next letter really
nicely from above, like, higher up than normally. Like, for me, at least, you can always observe
your style, of course. Maybe maybe for you, this feels really
normal and natural. For me, it's a little
bit challenging, but this is just
something I've been spotting lately in
my calligraphy. I was kind of like
semi doing it, and I thought, Okay, well, I'll lean into it. And this is just something
I wanted to share with you guys with my members. And I think this might be a really nice addition to your style if you wanted
to include it in certain, you know, situations
when you like to quotes or words
or play cards, this could look really, really
nice. We can keep going. We can try letter U, letter W, letter V. Letter
V is a bit tricky with this because it kind of it's a small letter, isn't it? So we really want to show that entry stroke
and then go down, go down in a smooth way. So try your best. And when you're ready, maybe you can try doing some words. So let's maybe do the word lamp. So as you do it normally, I'm just doing this in
my natural bouncy style. You can also just refer to this. You don't have to letter it
out for this fast version. And I'm just spotting
those connection strokes. So between A and M and M and P, this is where we can
implement this technique. So notice now that I'm
doing A M and P with this kind of like a toller stroke that flows
into the next letter. So this technique applies to the letters that start
with downstroke. So think of letters like I, M, N, V, WI. And in this situation, so
we've got the letter A, the letter M, and the letter P. So the letter B as well, because it starts
with a downstroke. So it's a really good word. It's got quite a few situations here where we can implement this technique, which is nice. Well done. That's the word lamp. You can break it down,
practice it a little bit more. And we're going to
do a similar word that's got actually
very similar, well, the same letter
combination at the end. We're going to do the word
stamp. And it's very similar. The only thing that changes is S&T at the beginning,
instead of L. So just a bit longer. Let's try and keep that
balance. So it's the same. We're going to transition
from the letter A into the letter M in this smooth compound
curve style. And then from the letter M into the letter P in a
very similar style. So now this h going
from the letter M into the letter P from the bottom and then stretching
up and then stopping. So we're still having
pauses as normal. That doesn't change. I do notice that
with this style, you might be pausing
slightly less sometimes because sometimes if you got
the letter E and M together, for example, the
letter that already is quite kind of full on on its own where we don't
normally stop, and then you flow
into the next letter. In this style, it can be a bit full on in a way that
there's no stopping point. But just try to find those
pauses wherever you can. Okay, we can also
practice the word lemon. Lemon is a really
good word for this. So again, I'm just doing this in my normal style lettering out. And then I'm going to start spotting the lettuce,
the letter M, the letter N are great for this. So maybe we can pick them out and just practice
a little bit. So going from O into the
letter N and going from the letter E into the
letter M, by the way, this might feel really difficult if you already have, you know, certain muscle memory where you have a habit of doing
it in a different way, which is so normal. And actually, I find it
quite hard as well to just focus on this
particular technique. It's really hard, but it
just tells me that if it's hard and if it's something
that requires so much focus, it's something that will move the needle in your practice. It's really, really good to
learn to adapt and to be able to deliver whatever it is that you imagine in your head and then deliver it on paper. You know, using your tools, being in control of your pen, we're learning pen control, and we're trying to adapt
to certain situations with confidence. There we go. So let's just keep
doing this word, practicing it over and over, slowly implementing
these little tweaks on these satin lattice
like EM and O and N, just focusing on
those gaps between the lattice and filling them in with this beautiful
connection stroke. Well done. You're doing great. We are going to do one more
word when you're ready, feel free to pause the video by way and just play
a little bit more. And we're going to try
to do the word envelope, so it's a long word, but it's a really good one
for this particular example. So again, I've done it in
just like bouncy style, and I'm starting to look
so we have the letter N, the letter V, the letter P. And I think that's it, yes. We're going to apply this
technique three times here. And we're going to practice
individually again. Let's try and go from the
letter E into the letter N, and then we can try
going from the letter E into the letter N and
going straight into the letter V because
all of these are joined with the same
style connection stroke. E N and V. And now this I'm going into
that next letter from above, doing the stroke upwards, rounding it at the top,
and then going down. And I just practice O and P as well because that's where we're applying this
technique, too. And from the letter O, it's a different connection stroke. It goes to the side,
but we are still attaching it to the
very top of the letter. That makes sense. And that
actually feels natural to me. That's I think how
I do it already. So just spot and
observe your own style. There we go. I'm going
to do it a bit bigger. I think it's a bit easier to
do it bigger in this style. So we're still bouncing it. We are still doing
everything we normally do, depending on your style, but just focusing on those particular lettuce and trying to stylize
them in this way. B just a slightly intentional, slightly different and very
intentional entry stroke. Let's try this a few more times. See how that feels. Take it slow. You're just
repeating the same word. And every time you do it, see if you can learn something
from the previous virgin, that's usually the
case. And there we go. So just a few words today that you can continue
playing with. I've just demonstrated
everything about this technique
I want to share, and I hope you enjoy practice.
16. Crocus Types: Welcome to this week's
Tutorial Tuesday. And today, we're going to do something really
fun and relaxing. So lately I've been teaching
a lot of flourishing, and I always do a
lot of planning. You know, it takes a
lot of planning to kind of come up with nice
flourishes that look balanced. It takes time to practice them. And especially if doing, like, phrases, you always kind
of want to plan ahead. So today, we are going to
just do something fun. We are going to experiment,
we're going to play. We're going to not think about the outcome, but
just have fun with it. We'll start with a warm up, but we will focus on some flower names and
crocuses in particular, some flower types,
different crocus types. So let's just start
this little warm up. So I'm just doing
the letter D here, and I'm just exploring little
ways of flourishing it. Then I'm trying the letter G. So just try to kind of refer
to this video on try these fun letter variations
with me and I get, I'm just demonstrating
a few types. Sometimes I'm kind of still planning them as well
as I go and thinking, what else we could add to that. So see how I'm
doing the letter G, but I'm also kind of
adding some loops and trying to stretch
some strokes to the sides, just
really experimenting. I'm using a brush ben here. You can also try this
with a dipper ben. It's really up to you. Because some people
prefer, I think, lettering and flourishing with a dipper pen. So give this a go. So try these
flourishes and do try to approach this from
a very playful place. So, again, we're not perfecting. We're not trying
to make them look, you know, perfect and amazing. They will look beautiful
if you just relax and just try to make those
thin strokes really thin, stretch them, try to make
them quite big and airy. I know it can be
hard, but I think kind of relaxing a
little bit more into it can really help and not
expecting anything particular. So just fill your page with
these beautiful lettuce. Let's try the
letter W. So again, I'm trying a few
different variations where I extend the entry stroke, and then I try to
do something at the beginning of the latop,
maybe a little loop. So I'm not quite sure about
this one because it kind of drops the second part of the
letup too much, I think. But we can just try and
that's the thing, you know, sometimes you'll try something and it's not gonna look good, and then you'll learn from it. So I'm not cutting
anything out today, I just want you to see that some flourishes do not look
good, and that's okay. It's good to recognize that. So maybe we can try
this loopy one with, like, a big entry
stroke with a loop. Try to keep it nice and oval. Well, done. Let's keep going with the
letter W. I feel like this letter has got so much
flourishing potential, but it's also a big letter. It's quite wide. So sometimes it can be quite overpowering. So I'm just really trying to experiment with that
exit stroke and thinking how it could
connect to another letter. And something like
this might work. It is looking very
flourished kind of at the top on one side, but it does look good. We can try something a
bit more simplistic, just maybe doing like a
straight entry stroke or like adding a
little loop there. I do think actually I prefer
this simplistic version, so it's just nice to try
different variations. Let me try this one more time. And maybe positioning that
last abstract would be high up could make
this flourish work. So just try to
experiment with me. You don't need to do as many, but you can just try picking up some of these
and just playing with them. I love actually like a big loop at the end. That
looks quite nice. Let's go ahead and letter
the word crackers. So we are going to do
this in a bouncy style. So let's just do a
nice, simplistic, fairly round looking bouncy style and then see
what we can do. So we can do the lettuce C and then draw like a nice entry
stroke at the beginning, or we can start the lettuce
C with a long entry stroke. So I'm not a fan of flourishing lettuce C. I just always think that
they look like lettuce E. But I think if we make
the loop a little bit maybe high up if you position the loop high up,
it can look good. Maybe you can do a capital C
and just again, experiment. So just do a few and see if
that speaks to you if that looks like a letter C to
you because sometimes it can really look like a letter E. So I think
I love this version. So keeping the loop quite small, and maybe positioning
it at the top part. And then let's say this
is a capital letter. You can just try doing
the wild crocus again. So this tutorial here is
really kind of playful. So I hope you kind of also catch that feeling
where this feels fun. You're using, like, a
nice, bright color pen, and it just feels
like a nice session where you are not
being too strict with yourself in terms
of your technique, and we're just experimenting. Okay, so maybe we can put
some of these together. So the far type you're
going to lac up is a Dutch flourish. Oh, sorry, Dutch
crocus Dutch crocus. So we are going to do the Dutch, so with a capital
D and maybe join letter T and H in this way,
where it crosses over. We can flourish the letter D at the beginning and see if you want to keep
that letter C flourish. I'm not the more I see, the
more unsure I am about it. So I might keep my letter C
simplistic if I do it again, and we can try this again. So again, repetition
is important. It does help you improve. See if you want to stretch the exit stroke of the
letter D to the side. So it kind of curves to
the bottom of the word, and that looks quite
good, I think. We can also just detach TNH, and we can finish the lat H
with a long exit stroke to the side and just keep the cross line of the
letter T quite long. And here comes the
latter C again. You can keep it simple or
you can add a flourish, and I'm going to
start again just to make it look a bit more like a C. And I'm going to do
racust like really bouncy. So see if you want to
bounce, the latter down. If you want to do, like, a
big loop on the latter S, it looks very
stylistic and maybe stretch your exit stroke to the side to make it
even more playful. Lovely. So that's
the first type. Now we're going to try and
experiment with a letter G. So I really love this style
where you started with, like, a long stroke
at the beginning, and then you do, a
little inside loop. So you do a big loop,
and then as you go down, as you start forming
the downstroke, you do a little loop at the top. It looks really beautiful. And this one's called golden. That's really pretty.
I love this word. It looks really beautiful
in calligraphy. So golden cracks. Again, really bouncy, letter L and letter N. Even the letter D can
stretch below the baseline, adding a lot of bounds to
your calligraphy here. Here, I'm getting rid of that letter C flourish.
I'm not a fan of it. So I'm just losing that
entry stroke there. I'm just going to keep it simple so it looks a bit more legible. Lovely. And let's try again. Let's just play even more and see if we can add a bit
more bounds and stretch it and maybe make it
even bigger it kind of feels a bit airy
as you do it and focus on your entry and
exit strokes being long and just try to
enjoy the process, really, and focus on
those really thin, light upstrokes and thin light exit strokes
and thin flourishes. So I do find the thinner,
your flourishes look, they kind of more kind of
wispy and everyday appear. And it always looks quite nice, especially if you're crossing your flourishes over,
if some of them cross. I do find that having
those wispy kind of thin Lines looks
really, really good. Lovely. So we're going
to do one more type, and I'm starting here
with the letter W, and this one's called
White White Crackers. So quite nice. Gives us a good opportunity here to play with some A sends. We have letter T
capital W. So see if you want to play with the cross line of the letter T and maybe let it cross over. You letter That can
look quite nice. And I'm just keeping it
super bouncy, super playful. I'm just really
having fun with this, and I hope you can also just pick up a little bit
of this energy and add a bit more playfulness and a bit more fun
into your practice where you're just
really enjoying the process and doing something
fun, lettering beautiful
17. Practicing Baseline Style: Hello, members, who is ready for some April
fools calligraphy? So it's 1 April, and I thought I'll just do an appropriate
tutorial Tuesday today with some
jokey, funny, phrasy. But the trick is
that we are going to make our calligraphy
look very serious. So we are going to
begin with a warm up and we'll kind of
ease into it all. So let's maybe begin by practicing a compound
curve shape. So the shape you'll find
in so many lettuce, like let M or N, and it's just a really, really good shape to practice. So so let's begin by maybe
marking our website. Make sure you have some
guidelines for practicing today, and we are just going
to do these shapes. Let's start with a
thick downstroke, go up and then finish
with a downstroke again. And then let's try
some that start with a thin stroke and then go
down and finish with thin. So keep alternating between both and try to position
them on the baseline. So we're not bouncing the shape. Let's try and keep it
very serious looking, very kind of classic
and simplistic looking. Now let's just do one full line of these slow, mindful shapes. I always find that it
gets to be harder as you move your hand towards
the edge of the page. So it's just weird
positioning, isn't it? When you kind of
position your hand, half of your desk and
half of your pad. So I always try to avoid
that area, actually, but I'm just going
to finish it here, and I can definitely notice that it looks
a bit more rubbly. It's like a little extra
challenge. Excellent. Well done. I hope you
managed to do a few, and we are just
going to practice some individual letters
where we can find the shape. So as I said, the letter M
is quite a good choice here. So let's just try constructing the letter M and
noticing how at the end, we have the shape where
we go up down and up, and it's exactly the same shape as we just practiced above. And let's keep going.
We can also try the letter N and the letter A. So maybe let's do
these three letters and then just repeat them. Let's do a bit of repetition. Just to warm up our hand, see if you can relax your hand on your upstrokes
a little bit more. So try to make your
upstrokes even more airy. And that really helps
when it comes to this classic looking
style because very often, our loops we don't
have any loops here, but normally the loops
will be quite narrow. And if your abstrus
are too thick, it might close up
the loop completely. So let's just kind
of pay attention on our abstrus and try to
make them a bit more airy, even now when we're
just practicing these lettuce here. There we go. Let's finish the line. And we're going to start
doing some phrases. So we're going to do
some funny phrases. So the first we'll write is the talking pen,
which doesn't exist. But, you know, April fools. So let's just do something
out of ordiy for today. So the trick here, again, so we're trying to keep
it on the baseline. We're trying to make
it look serious and classic and quite simplistic. There's no playfulness here. Everything's very balanced, and we're just positioning all
the letters on the baseline. So let's do this once. Your hand might not be
fully warmed up right now, still, which is fine.
Just keep going. We are going to do it again. So the first version
is more like a draft, just so we can see
what it looks like. So the talking pen three words. And notice how I'm trying to keep everything
at a similar slant. All the descends and
ascenders are balanced, everything is stretching
as high as it needs or as low as
it needs to go. So just keep the balance there. So it's nice to mark
your ascend and descender lines as well depending on what ratio
you want to follow. And I don't think I will squeeze another phrase on the right. So I'm just going
to do this below. You can do this where
you have more space, of course, as well. And
let's try this again. And here, again, let's focus
on those every upstrokes. So as you do this
second version, see if you can make your
upstrokes even thinner. I find that it really
helps the start. It makes it look
even more kind of flowy, airy, balanced classic. So when you have those
spidery, like, really, really thin strokes, it
does look really good, especially on your
AC and ds like the letter HLK where you're
forming a loop at the top. See how small the loop is. So well, in my style, at least, see if you can make your
upstrokes even thinner, just to allow for the loop to be a bit more kind of formed, just like better formed,
if that makes sense. And let's finish with a longer stroke at
the end, as well. Let's add a crossline as well. Dot your s, and we are going to try another
phrase in a minute. So the next phrase
we're going to do is Invisible Ink. That's funny. Again, doesn't exist, Bob. Let's just make it
look really serious, like kind of showing
the opposite. Although it's a
joke, calligraphy is going to prove different. So this is quite nice. It's quite a nice word. We have three lettuce I. We have two A sands, but there are a lot
of X height lattice. I can mark your X
height as you do this. And again, IN K, again, actually quite a
few repetitions here, which is really
lovely to practice, and see if you want to
do this again slowly. And the second time you do it, see if you can focus on those
lighter upstrokes again. So try to release your pen. Imagine that you're
kind of, like, lifting your tip of the pen a little bit,
like, off the page. Obviously, it's still
touching the page. But that lifting feeling or like imagining
you're lifting it, that imagination in
itself can really, really help to
make them thinner. So really lightly, relax
your hand a little bit more, just to get at every
beautiful effect where it does look
really classic. To keep in the
loops very narrow. Everything's quite balanced. Dot your eyes, and there we go. Well, the, and
maybe notice again, remember, we always
try to refine. So now that you've
done it twice, notice if you found any particular letter
combinations difficult. So for me, it was really
strange doing IS and I. There's something
about the letter S that I'm finding hard to kind of slant and see if
that's the case for you. Maybe you feel similar. So I'm going to try
just doing IS and I, and maybe you can try this
with me and see if you want to play with the style of your
letter S. I'm trying it with, like, a bigger loop
at the bottom, or I'm also going to try this normal version where
I'm keeping the loop. Quite small. So there's
something about the positioning of my pen or hand
that I don't like, so it's nice to recognize that and just try out a
couple of times just picking out some
combinations that don't feel super natural for you. Okay, let's do another one. Let's do backward calligraphy. Imagine lettering this
phrase backwards. That'll be a good challenge.
So backward calligraphy. Let's make it really
serious looking. So quite a long word. So we have keeping that focus. There's a lot of
focus going on there, so we definitely want
to just persist and immerse ourselves
and just really, really focus and give it our. And calligraphy Ciphy
is also a long word. It's like it has to be.
It has to be difficult, doesn't it? But there we go. So let's just try and again, keep our focus there. Think about the spacing. Notice if your gaps between the letters
are fairly similar. You can control the gaps with the exit stroke
of each letter. Let's extend the last stroke
of the letter Y to the side. And there are quite a few
tricky combinations there, the letters L, so double L
can feel a bit difficult. So let's just
remember to try and slant it at a similar
kind of slant. So all the downstrokes are similarly slanted
at the same angle, that'll make it look
really balanced. And let's try this again. So just slowly once more. We're just doing the
same thing, really, doing each wad slowly picking up a in
between the shapes. So we're only doing
three phrases today, but let's do them properly. So really pay
attention and do them super slowly twice or even
three times, if you like, focusing on this really
simplistic look where we really try to emphasize
balance and simplicity, thin upstrokes,
classic looking style. It's really lovely to practice this baseline style
from time to time, just to remind us about all the proportions
and, you know, the actual balance because as soon as you start
bouncing or flourishing, I feel like the letters
always get a bit stretched, but it's also nice to come
back to this balance. Great. So maybe we can finish the session with a
little wind down today. Now, let's just do a few
of these acenda shapes. And again, focusing on that
really, really thin upstroke. So see how that feels. See if you can make it em
thinner, even lighter. Notice how lightly
you can go for your pen before your pen
stops making any marks. So obviously wants
to touch the paper, but see how lightly you can go. Test it out a little bit. And then we can try
doing the letter B, the letter T, L, all of these Asenda letters
that we practice here, the letter K. The letter H, the letter D, as well. We've done a lot of As
and the letters here. So many. So there we go. And we can finish
our practice here today. Well, then everybody.
18. Practicing Letter 'K': Hello, members. This week we'll
be focusing on the letter K. It's one of the letters
that's got so many variations, and sometimes it can
be a bit hard to kind of find the style that you like. So let's begin by
marking the X height and marking the acenda
and descender line. And then we're
just going to draw like a really simplistic, write it out really
simplistic LoacsK and the per case K. So we're just trying to get
the proportions right here. So it's in front of us and
we can see it clearly. So you can see how
they both touch the acendaline and
the lower case, so the second part of the
lower case sits between the hide and the upper case. The second part stretches from the middle of the downstroke. Okay, so now we're just
going to go ahead and try doing the loa case
as a little warm up. So let's begin. We can do a short stroke that will show that it's an entry
stroke like this. And then we can start
forming the loop, so upstroke and downstroke, and then we stop, and then we add on the second
part of the letter. And there's so many variations
for that second part. So we're going to try a few. So try a couple that look like this where we're
keeping it simplistic. So we're just doing
an upstroke and then a compound curve
shape at the bottom. And then we can also try
merging that second part, kind of like into one stroke. Imagine that you're
doing like a little bow. It does look like a little
bow or like a little ribbon. So there's definitely a
bit of looping going on. So just try these different
variations with me. Try to refer to these examples
and try them with me. Remember, you can always
stylize your lettuce care. You can drop the down stroke. You can also make it
a bit more bouncy. Just try going
below the baseline as well just to see
what that feels like. We did do, like, really balanced versions
at the beginning, but now we can also try
stylizing them a little bit. And this can look really lovely, especially if it's at the
beginning of the word. You can always drop
that down stroke. And then maybe just
do one more version that kind of feels the
most natural to you. So we're just exploring
this loacaseatd. We're trying to find what
shapes it consists of. And let's continue
doing another line, and we're going to
do some bouncy ones. Let's exaggerate that bound. So we're going to
start in the same way. But then as we do that last
downstroke of the letter, we're bouncing it
down and back up. So this will be
really beautiful. If you apply this in boundedly, when you do your
words and quotes, it's going to look
amazing, being bounced. Letter cake can be
quite bouncable. And let's just try
creating that sharp, kind of like a V shape
as we bounce that downstroke below the
baseline and come back up. M and let's keep going. Just try to do it slowly. Try to lift your pen, stop, have those pauses often. It does help. And let's
loose up a little bit. Let maybe make our entries
drag a bit longer. Stretch it to the side before we form the
loop at the top. Try to create a
consistent bound, try to just keep
these fairly similar, and then refine and see
if you can improve on every next one that
you do. Well done. And we're going to
maybe try some word. So this is going
to be really good. We're going to put
this into practice. And we are going to do
the baseline version, but everything is sitting
on the baseline super, super neat to see how I'm
not bouncing anything here. I'm definitely just keeping
it really simplistic. And we're going to
do the word knock, knock it's got two
lettuce can there. Knock. It's okay at the beginning and the
letter A at the end. Lovely. Everything's balanced. Let's try that again. A bit of repetition will be really good. So keeping everything
on the baseline, trying to actually, all the lattice here sit
within the X height, except the first part
of the letter K. So that's a really
nice indicator, really nice thing to follow here just to keep it balanced. So we only have two A Sundays, and the rest is sitting nicely between the
X height lattice. So try to keep those
lettuce within those lines. And I'm going to grab
another color and maybe try doing bouncy version here. Now, let's exaggerate it here. So we're going to bound the
last downstroke of the letter K. And we'll also apply
bounds to other lettuce. So we have quite a few bountable
lettuce here, letter N, letter C. We can keep the
letter O a little bit smaller, and the letter A, the end again. They're all really bouncy. And it does look a lot of
fun, like, a lot of fun. It does add a lot of movement. I think it looks
quite interesting. And then we're going
to try it again. It's just nice to do
it more than once. Repetition is important. Lovely. So super bouncy. You can clearly see
the difference. But now that we've tried
it in a balanced style, I think it's so much easier to bounce because we
know the proportions. We know where the letter
should sit originally. And I think that
really, really helps. Okay, let's do another word. I've tried to find words
with lots of ks in them. So I went with karaoke. It's quite long
as well, so it'll be some good practice
here. Okay, karaoke. So let's a K at the beginning, starting with a long
stroke from the baseline, keeping it all balanced. So super balanced. Slow down as you do your loop, so maybe slow down at the top to make sure
you're forming a lovely, open looking loop, deciding
the style you're going for. So I'm just going to keep
it quite simple here. Maybe we can do it together
where we keep the letter A, very simplistic with
like an upstroke. You see the second part
just has an upstroke and then a thick downstroke connecting to the letter
A. So try that with me. So karaoke, super
simple, very balanced. And then let's try to bounce it. So we got the letter that we
can bounce, the letter A. They also keep some of the
letters on the baseline. So I actually kept
my A quite simple. Letter, we can bounce, the letter K again, and even the letter
E at the end and maybe stretch the
exits throw high up. So it looks a bit
more interesting. There we go. So it's
quite a long war, so I'm just going to do it once. I run out of room on my
line, but that's okay. So we're going to
do one more word, and the word is
going to be khaki, so the color the
lovely, lovely color. And we got we've got two Ks
and we got the letter A, which will stretch to the
same height as the letter K. So again, practicing balance, making sure that our A centers are similarly sized and
at a similar height, especially when we're doing
this balanced version because once we nail that down, once we know what it looks
like when it's balanced, we can then start breaking
those rules and stretching the lattice while still
keeping them fairly balanced. Okay, so everything is
really nice and neat. So again, I'm going
for this loopy version of the letter K here. See which one feels
better for you. I think this is my
natural way of doing it. It's quite a lovely word,
actually. It looks good. It looks really balanced because all those Asends are spread out. Lovely. And we're going to try bouncing it so we can bounce. Again, you don't have
to bounce every letter. So I'm keeping the
first K simple. I'm doing the letter H bound. I'm going to bounce
the second letter K. So this is a bit more subtle, and it looks good
this way, I think. It doesn't need a lot of bounds. You can take it as far as you
like. Let's try it again. Sometimes I love
going for, like, a really crazy bound and
sometimes I love kind of mixing that subtle look with
just a tiny bit of bound. So keeping those
transitions a bit softer rather than super, super sharp, that can look
really good, as well. Alright, so that's
the lava case, K. I hope this just gives you
a bit more confidence, and you just learn
a bit more about the letter and you
understand it a bit more. It's just nice breaking
it down like that, trying a few styles, and we are going to practice
some upper case as well. So Again, we want to try and just do this in a
balanced way to begin with. So here's my acenda. I've dotted it, and
there's my baseline. So see how it takes the space in between the
baseline and the ascender line. And you can try these interesting
versions where we are starting with like a horizontal entry strout that can
look really good. And we're just done
adding on similarly to the lowercase k. Just adding
on this loopy version. And here you can start playing, so it doesn't have to
sit on the baseline. It's nice to just try that once so you can see
what it looks like. But then you can
definitely stretch it, especially that last down stroke you can
detach it slightly. And we can play with the
entry stroke as well. We can start it with almost like a little compound curve
shape at the beginning. So going up down, up and then doing the rest
of the latter, maybe adding bit of bound
again and that downstroke. That last down stroke. We can make our maybe entry
stroke a bit flowy like this. That can look quite nice. Just try these
different versions. It's really nice to
just play with style. Maybe a little flourish like
this can look really good. We can always flourish
the first part and then stop and then attach
the second part. So I definitely wandered
off from my baseline here. I'm just going to try
and come back a little bit to where it is. And again, maybe like a
horizontal entry stroke. So it looks like the
letter J. So the fast bar kind of looks like the letter J. And then we add down, maybe adding a bit of
bounce on that down stroke. So keeping it sharp and
stretching it back up, try this with me.
It does look fun. Just take a bit of
time playing around. We can try some
flourished versions. Again, remember, try to
detach it into two parts. So the fast parts, and you can add a
little flourish again. Maybe flourishing it
like this can be fun. Just seeing where we can
blend in those little loops. We can make the down struggle
a little bit longer. Let's try bouncing it again. And maybe we can
do a name. Maybe. Let's do Chris. So if we have
Chris in our membership. So that's the first name that pops into my head.
So let's do Chris. It's nice and short as well, so we can fully
focus on the letter K. We're just going to do
a few variations here. So let's keep the fast
one fairly simplistic, but dropping that down
stroke below the line, and you can see how
the letter K and R, they're not joined up. So starting the letter R like
an individual entry stroke. So that can be done. It
can look quite nice. Now let's try this. More of
a fun version where we are. Definitely adding a
bit of flourishing, maybe keeping it
bouncy if you like. So this is quite big,
so it's all bouncing, quite stretched and big. We can also make it
a bit more neat. It's actually a beautiful name. The lettuce cake can
look really beautiful. There's a lot of opportunity
for flourishing, for bouncing, for stylizing. There are lovely lettuce, but I also know they can
feel quite intimidating. And maybe I'm going to
try a simplistic version. So you can see how here, the letter K and
R are connected. So they're definitely joined
they're definitely joined. So finishing K and flowing
into the letter R, and it all depends
on that last downs the letter K and
what you decide to do with it because
that's going to determine whether you're
going to join it up or not. You can also try this
really loopy version, but I think it looks like
the letter R a little bit, so I'm not a huge fan of it,
but I think it looks good. I think it looks good with
thickRPent especially. I'm just going to land on
this last flourished version, and you can just do one
more. And there we go. Do your favorite one at the end. To finish practice, and
I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you picked up some tips, and I would really, really love to see how this went for you. So please please
share in the group, and I'll see you next week. Bye.
19. Tutorial Tuesday Rhythm and Style: Hello, lovely members. I've been really looking
forward to filming this today. So I hope you're feeling ready
to practice with me today, and we are going to do
something fun today. I feel like this is
going to be a fun one. So we are going to start
by drawing some lines. And to spice things up, we are going to be working
in landscape today, so not in portrait in landscape. And we're going to
draw five lines. So let's get started. We are not going to do, like,
a proper warm up this time, but we are going to
do each word twice, focusing on, like, two
different techniques. So consider your first word being a little warm up, I'd say. So that's a good way
of thinking about it. So we are focusing
on rhythm and style, two very important components when it comes to calligraphy, when you want to
make it look nice. So that's going to be our
main focus today. Right. I'm trying to squeeze in these five lines this
should do. Okay. You can use brush
pen to dip pen. I'll be using brush pen and in particular,
this beautiful color. So I will be using this today. The first word is w embrace. As we do this word, for the first time, we are
going to focus on rhythm. And we're going to
focus on this one particular little thing that you might be implementing and doing already, and
I want you to notice. So just a quick scribble
to show you what I mean. So as you letter, let's
I'm into letter A. And as you finish your first shape or you
finish your fast letter, I want you to know that if
you do this where you turn, you slide your hand for a second to the right
as you continue your word. Let's we're doing
something quite long, so I'm doing amazing. I notice how I'm
finishing each shape, and I'm kind of sliding, like, gliding my hand to the right, a little bit with every
single shape I do. Okay. If you're a lefty, I think it still applies
to you, right as you do. Yeah. So yeah, you'll just be doing it with the
left hand, obviously. So I want you to notice it. It's such a important
actually component when it comes to
rhythm and flow. And I want you to notice
if you're doing it. If you're not doing
it, I want you to try and just try it out, try and do it, see
what it feels like. So essentially, it
doesn't have to be like, you know, we're not doing
something like this, where we do a letter
and when we glide our hand all the way
to the right and it's all the way here now. So it wants to be very
subtle, very quick. Movement, a very rhythmical
movement as well. Okay, so try doing this with me as we
do the wide embrace. Let's focus on this
particular technique. So do it in your style. You can also kind of follow me here a little
bit if you like. But we are starting with
the letter E to get there. So doing the letter E, which is a one shaped letter, being up our pen and sliding our hand
slightly to the right. Doing the letter M,
picking up the pen. So, you know, if the shape is really small or if the
letter is really small, obviously, you're not going to glide your hand to the right. But let's say we've
done the downstroke, we can keep our
hand where it is, and then we can do
this upside down U shape for the
letter M. And now maybe we can allow for a little glide to the
right, see what happens. Okay, I'm going to add a bit
of bound to my letter M, finishing the letter
M, picking up the pen, and doing a quick little
glide to the right again. Let the B, again, quick movement to
the right, just so you can see
what you're doing, and essentially, you're just, like, uncovering your
lettue as you go, right? If you kept your
hand where it is, you would just not see
where you're going. You won't see you won't be able to control
your spacing as well. You know, so
definitely your hand moves with your
word, doesn't it? Right. I'm doing the
letter A, but smaller. So just a quick little draft, quick little warm up, as I said. If you're doing
it really slowly, it kind of counts as a warm up. You know, you're focusing on each shape. So yeah, try it out. And my spacing is
fairly tight here, which is really
interesting to notice. So perhaps if I did glide my hand a bit
more to the right, the spacing would
have been even. Vida. So yeah, you
can definitely, control your spacing
with this movement, as well, which I think is
really interesting to spot. Okay, so the second
time we do it, we're going to try
and stylize it. So we have our fast
original version, and now we're going
to forget about our rhythm and see if
it happened naturally, but we're not going to, like, pay attention to it too much. We're just going to roll on with it and try and stylize it. So we can try this
together there. How about the art
bit of flourishing? So we're going to start
with the letter E. I mean, now that the letter M is
wonderful to flourish, so perhaps you could do a little underline flourish to the left. So nice and thin.
Doing the letter B. Maybe starting the letter
B with a little tail here a little entry
flourish there. Maybe we could do a quick little half flourish and the letter, that
might look good. Let's do the letter A, a bit smaller and bounce
it down and back up. Just spotted that movement. I did it subconsciously. I didn't really think about
it. It just happened. Let's finish the letter
E with a little exit. Exit stroke flourish like this. I kind of comes above
and to the left. So I notice you might figure, Oh, that's really obvious. Obviously, I move my hand, but there are different
ways of moving your hand. So maybe you're doing
something like this where you do the letter A,
and then you kind of, like, maybe reposition your
pen a little bit, or maybe you just like, pick up your hand completely. You just take off
your hand of paper. But I just want you to focus on this really rhythmical movement where you do this really quick. Glide to the right as you go, and it's the same every time. It's very short and very fast. So yeah, this will
help you to stay in flow and even create more flow. Okay, I hope that makes sense. We're just going to carry on
with the rest of the words, focusing on these two
things rhythm and style. The next word we're going
to do is the word share. So share. So I'm going to start
with the letter S. Finish the letter S. Do a
little glide to the right. Do a letter H, pick up my pen. I think I'll keep my hand where it is after this vast shape. There isn't much to glide. You know, I haven't moved
forward with a wide match. So I'm going to do
the second part, maybe bounce it down. And here, I'm going to do a quick movement
again to the right. Going straight into the letter, picking up my pen from paper on a quick movement
to the right, and again, finishing the letter. I want you to try and feel it. So just Notice how
your hand is moving. Okay, lovely. So that's our first
vergin let's stylize it. So we could do a
really big letter S, so let's forget about the rhythm for a second and see if it keeps happening naturally as we don't really think about it. Maybe we can add a little detached flourish
in the letter H, and also maybe we can do a little cheeky ale flourish
that's not too big. Okay. Le O. Let's focus on a really big loop at the top
and maybe a quick flourish, like tucked in
flourish like this. The exit char can be similar
to the previous word, maybe. We could do, like, a little
exit chog like this. So we're doing, like, really simplistic
flourishing in a way. We're not overpowering it. But just kind of getting
into it a bit more. Lovely. Let's do it about Enjoy. So, take your time, of course, if you feel like
pausing the video, going through each word a
bit slower, please do it. But even if you just keep moving with me,
just trying it out. Again, it's not about
what it looks like. Please remember in
these sessions. I'm asking you to focus a lot, which I know is a lot, so it might not look excellent. But as long as you think about the technique, that's
the main thing. Right. So starting the next word, we're
going to do Enjoy. So done the letter E with
a little entry stroke. Moving my hand
slightly to the right. Right, so I'm going to go
straight into the letter J. You can break down your letter
N to make it a bit easier. Now, picking up my pen and definitely doing a quick
little movement to the right before we
do the letter O. Same thing. Picking up the pen, quick movement
to the right. Finishing with a letter Y and a beautiful exit
stroke to the side. Right. Now we can adopt J, and the word is all done. Beautiful. Okay, so get ready
to do a stylized version. So let's just notice
what we've got here. So we got the letter N and probably letter Y that
we could flourish. We could also add
something at the beginning of the letter E. So
let's see what happens. So maybe We're starting the letter E with a
long entry stroke, where we've been blending a
little secret flourish there, so let's just go back to this
loop and just create like a manual loop and extend this shape into like
a half oval shape. Imagining we can fit a
little oval in there. Okay, let's do the letter
d. So let's be mindful. When we are then it flourishes
the letter end here. You want to be mindful of
this descender shape, right? So we don't want the
lattiJ to get in the way. So we are going to
maybe make the loop a bit smaller and just focus
on the left side, okay? So we're stretching this
florish to the left. And now we're going to start
the lattiJ individually, maybe do the loop in a more of a narrow way so we don't so
these two don't overlap. It's a bit of a tricky
trapped situation there. So yeah, try your
best to navigate it. Right, and maybe we could order a little flourish to the letter. Why? At the end like this we go down to the right,
back to the left, focusing on the infinity sign, thinking that this is
the infinity sign. Okay. We're gonna do one more word. Let's do the word Trust. It's quite short, but it's got some nice letters in there. So let's start with this
fast version, okay? So we're going to do we're gonna try and focus on
this lovely rhythm. So start with the letter
T going straight into the letter, stopping so here, again, I'm not really moving my hand just
yet because I haven't I haven't really
gone from left to right much in my ward, right? So I think I'm going to
keep it where it is. But then as I do the letter R, I'm definitely doing a quick
movement to the right, fast part of the letter U. Now, quick moment to right before we do the second
part and flowing straight into the letter S. And here we definitely need a bigger bigger
moment to the right. To finish the word, okay? So I honestly wasn't focusing on anything
else, just rhythm. So again, please don't worry if your word just appears a little bit unbalanced or
anything like that. So yeah, definitely not worry. Okay, so how about we
try and stylize it, so we could start the letter
T as it is kind of normally. And then we do, like, a big flourish on the letter. We could go to the left
and back to the right. Okay, so I chose to do a bigger flourish because we don't really have
any letters, like, after the letter R that
would interfere with this florish like letter
U and S and I mean, yes, letter S might be a
bit bigger with the loop, you know, but it's not
going to get in a way. If we had the letter Y here, I would never go for
this flourish, okay? So if we had Y
following the letter R, it would be very obvious that it would get in a way, right? So just try to assess, as well. I am doing, like,
a big art letter S. And as we do the letter T, we go to finish with
the exit stroke, and maybe we can focus on cross lines to create,
like, more flourishing. So perhaps you could
just do, like, a longer waved crossline and then blend in some
secret flourishes. I'll love calling these
secret flourishes, where you do your cross
line or you do your stroke, and then you go back and
you add in these, like, manual loops to create
to create more movement. I love doing this.
It's a lot of fun. So well, done, everybody, I
hope you enjoy this session. I feel like, you know, it's
quite a productive one. So see if you want to try some more words
throughout the week, focusing on this or just
the next time you practice, maybe notice if you are
adding the rhythm by gliding your hand to the right in a very systematic and
rhythmical way, okay? So all of the pauses in between the shapes
are quite similar. Helping you to get in a flow and see if you can take
away anything new about these flourishes or maybe
just repeating them again and again might make you feel a bit more comfortable or
confident with them. So I hope you found this
helpful and insightful, and I can't wait to see
your version of this.
20. Pressure Changes: Hello, members.
And happy Tuesday, I've been planning and thinking about this
week's tutorial, and I've landed on
practicing something really, really important, and
it's pressure changes. I know that a lot
of people struggle with this when they
learn calligraphy, but I haven't talked about
it a lot in this membership, so I thought we could just revisit the basics a little
bit and just really, really focus on
pressure changes. And we are going to
draw six lines today. So the first line is going
to be a little warm up. Okay. There we go. I hope you
all had a wonderful week. I had a really eventful week. I got engaged, which
is, you know, amazing. But that also means that all of my tutorials now have a ring, and I do feel like
it's really strange, like I need to get used to it. It's not like it's
getting in a way because it's on the left hand, but I still feel
like my attention is just on the ring and not
in my calligraphies. It's really funny. But yes,
I'm getting used to it. Not that I'm complaining,
but there we are. So perhaps my
tutorials will have a little extra
sparkle in them now, which is always nice. Okay, so one, two,
three, four, five, six. So six lines, and I feel like I feel like using
colorful pens today. It's actually my
business anniversary, so I've been doing the
business for seven years, so I do feel like celebrating, and I think I'll use
these colorful pens. So if you want to
celebrate with me, get your most colorful pens out, as well, and we can do some
beautiful calligraphy today. So I really want to talk about
some satin letters today, and focus on making the transition point really really smooth in smaller loops. So I'm not going to
be talking about the bigger loop shapes
like letter D. You know, when we do the letter D, we stretch all the
way up and we make a big loop or letter L or H. But I do want to focus on
smaller letters like V or U or M or W. So for example, let's maybe use this
fast line to warm up. So you can do the
letter this way, but you just start
with a downstroke. Or you can do it this way, but you add in a little
loop at the beginning. Okay. So this fast
loop is really small, and sometimes it can
be really hard to make this pressure change
from thin to thick. Look good. So that's what we're going
to be focusing on today. So this will also
apply to letters like M. So you could
do the letter M, again, in a really
simple way like this, or you could add
in a little loop. And to make the
pressure change a bit easier when you do
these little loops, I recommend making
your loop bigger, so that could be
one thing to try. So making the bigger,
although it can be a bit tricky sometimes you can get
in the way of the letter, especially for the letter M, you to have to go up now. But that could be something
you focus on to help you. The other thing I'd recommend
is here at the top, imagine that you're going backwards a little
bit to decide. So instead of just going
up and down, okay. So try to imagine
that you're going up, to the side and down. Okay? So we go in up a little
bit to the side and down. And also try to think about
your thick struck in advance. So when you do this thin struck, when you started here, try to think about this
pressure change already. So kind of preparing your
hand to change the pressure, even though you're not
doing it just yet, but thinking about it in advance will really, really help. Okay, so this can also
apply to lettuce like you. So we could start the letter U in a really simplistic way, or we could add
in a little Loop. So maybe you noticed
this already. So sometimes even, you know, it happens to me all
the time, as well, very often, when I
don't focus enough. So sometimes this pressure
change can be quite uneven. Like, sometimes a part of your upstroke might be missing or it's hard
to do on purpose, but I'm sure you know
what I'm talking about. So sometimes you would go
thin for too long and then only go thick kind of past
the transition point. And I know it's really easy to color in and correct
it slightly, but let's just focus today on making these transition
points at the top, really, really smooth, okay? So we could also apply
this to the letter Y. So we could do the
letter Y like this or or we could add
in a little loop. Like this. So I think these smaller
loops are trickier just in general because
they're smaller, okay? So there just isn't a lot
of time to transition. So the transition
is definitely a bit more sharp, a
bit more sudden. So see if you can apply some of these tips today as we
practice some words. Are we going to do a
few words to get that. So let's do the word vivid and see if we can
apply this technique to the letter V. So
I'm going to start the word with a lovely
long entry stroke, do the little loop
to begin with. Pick up the pen in between, so breaking this letter
into two shapes. So just carrying
on with the word. So I could do another loop here, but I think that might
just look a bit unnatural. So I'm just going to do
the letter B normally, but I will do a
little loop here. As we do the letter D, let's just try and focus on
this technique as well as we do the acenda shape. There we go. So definitely spacing
the lettuce quite well. It's a short word. I think that's a really good
one to begin with. Okay. Let's do the word beyond. So I'm going to use this
beautiful purple pen, actually. So beyond. So we're going to
focus on lettuce, um, Y, and maybe N. Let's see if we can add
a little lobe to let N. So starting letter B
also with a little loop, but this is, uh I mean, it's not so little. This
one's a bit bigger. Let's do the second
part of the letter B. We have the letter E, and then as we start
doing the letter Y. I've gone straight.
It kind of looks like it's another E.
Really interesting. What a beautiful example here. So now I'm going to
just finish a letter Y, but see how we've started. See how we've started the
letter Y with a little loop. So that was quite tricky. See if you want to try
this a few times, maybe. Now, I've finished the letter O, I've picked up my pen here, but let's see if I can
blend in a little loop. So that felts a little
bit unnatural to me, but I think it's
good to practice. And a bigger loop for
the letter D at the end. I'm not gonna lie. This
is a tricky, tricky word. If you managed, well done, this one is definitely
a bit hard. A lot to think about. Okay. Alright. Let's
do another word. Let's do the word window. It's just a good
word 'cause we got the letter W to focus on here. So, starting with a
beautiful little loop, you can do the fast part of the letter W. Pick up the pen. This is our stopping point. Do the second part, and we also do a little loop
at the end there. Alright, let's carry on, so letter I letter N. So I
didn't do a loop on this one. I'm just going to
keep it simplistic. We have another W
to think about. And also the letter D. So let's see if we can make
this loop quite smooth. And so I'm just
preparing myself, I'm gonna go straight
into this fast part. I get a bit of a
handful, you know, 'cause we're doing the
letter O probably in one go, and then we want to
go straight into this fast loop
with the letter W, which can be a bit hard. But you've got this. It's good to practice. There we go. Lovely. Beautiful.
Let's do the word Amba. I really loved this word. Amba. I was actually in
Latvia last week, and you just get so much ambo just like
naturally on the beach. Like little pieces.
It's so beautiful. So yeah, this word has
been on my mind. So Amba. So let's do the letter A. And now I'm going to do
the letter M with a loop. So a little challenge, see
if you can do this with me. So my loop is quite small here. There's no need to make
it really big. Okay. Now, we've got the letter B to Farkus on so we
get a bigger loop. Again, try to pay attention in your transition point
between thin and thick. I'm spacing the letters
quite well here again kind of I kind of do it naturally when
it's a shorter word. Let me know if you do that two. Lovely. So let's see. We could do one or two more. Let's do the word smooth. So that's a good one because we have another letter
that flows in one go, which is the letter S,
and then we need to go straight into the loop
with the letter M, okay? So this might be a bit tricky, so let's try this together. So starting the letter S. And
straight into the letter M. There we go. You
could, of course, have a stopping
point kind of here, but I think it's not too bad, especially for this
size lettering. It's not too bad
to do it in Mongo. Right, so let's
carry on with the O. So we got the letter
T, and we have a beautiful loop and
the letter H, as well. This is a beautiful word, actually. Quite nice. Lets. Things really satisfying. Lovely. Okay. Smooth. Do we have more time? I think
we can do one more word, but you guys think, so I'm just going to draw another guideline. Let's do one more to
finish the session. Let's do the word jigsaw. Mm, quite tricky again. So we have W, we have Letty J. And the letter S, in general, you know, also has,
like, a little loop. So let's try and focus on those. Right, so we are actually going to start the letter J
with a loop, right? So starting here with
a lovely entries, child and doing a little loop. See, mine wasn't 100% smooth, so I will actually
correct it slightly, but it's a very small loop, and just this exercise is
just excellent for that. For noticing, for correcting, even if it doesn't look smooth, even if you're just
thinking about it and practicing it, it will help. It definitely helps because
you're paying attention on it and you're trying to improve
and you're reassessing. That's what it's
all about, okay? So not a redoing, and it's really
good to be aware. Even if your transition
points aren't smooth, it's good to be aware
that they're not, and then you're just automatically trying
to improve, okay? So it could be your focus
point when you practice. Right, so I'm going
straight into the letter S, doing a little loop
there before I stop. And then we are going to
focus on the letter W, right? So finishing the letter A, going straight into
the letter W with a little loop if we can
and finishing this way. Okay, so I'm not going to lie. This is quite challenging to do, and I hope you found
it interesting, you know, quite a random
combination of words, but quite funny to read,
actually. But there you go. So I think this is a
really productive session, and I hope you enjoyed
focusing on this little detail of trying to make your pressure points
smooth in small lopes. I can w to see your practice. Please share, and I'll
see you next week.
21. Ocean Themed Practice: Hello, members. I
hope you're all ready for a lovely
midweek practice. And we are going to be focusing on some lovely, fresh phrases. We'll let to some ocean
related words and phrases, and we're going to do
something really, really fun. But to begin with, we
are going to warm up. So let's start by
focusing on the letter R, and imagining is the
first letter of the word, see if you can extend
the entry stroke, make it really flowy, very long. And see if you can start that
entry stroke differently, maybe change the angle, start it from the baseline, and then try starting
from the side. So just focus on the
thin flowy stroke. We'll then do the letter T, and we'll also fog on
that flowy cross line. So super thin, very
long, quite flowy. And we can also try
doing the letter W that starts with
a flowy stroke. So beautiful entry stroke again, maybe started from the bottom, like from the baseline position
and then stretch it up. And we can try
doing the letter E and focusing on the exit stroke. So we're stretching
that last stroke of the letter E upwards or
a bit more to the side. So he just wants to fill
that space at the end, being long and flowy. And we can also do the entry
and the exist track for the letter E. So see how it just becomes very
kind of full looking. So there's a beautiful
beginning and the end, so it looks really complete
and takes a lot of room. Notice how it takes a lot
of room on the page. Okay. So that's a nice
warm up. Well done. So we are going to
use these letters now to letter a short phrase, but we are going to
try and position it on a wavy baseline. We are going to letter
write the tide. And just do a really
wavy line like this, like a wave in pencil and then start
lettering on top of it. So starting with the wide right. I'm starting the letter R
by kind of going parallel, trying to do a parallel line to the actual baseline so that it does look that alcaligaphy takes the shape of this wave. So just go around. You might need to
rotate your page to adjust and that's fine.
So this is just a draft. You are going to do
it again. So don't worry, do it slowly. And don't worry if
you run out of room, like I have. So it's fine. We're going to try this again. So if you run out of space, just just kind of continue extending in the same
direction, really. And when you're ready, just draw another wavy line
resembling a little wave. And we're going to try
again, and maybe this time, again, I'm learning from my draft and you
can do the same. So I'm just going to keep my
calligraphy a bit smaller, and I'm not going to
stretch let so much. So I'm just starting with
a shorter entry stroke. Now it is how you can detach the letter D into
a little flourish that will look really nice. I'm just being a bit more
cautious about the spacing. Still focusing on
entry and exit drugs, but maybe positioning
all the words a little bit closer together. Now it goes, just check in with yourself
from time to time, it's fine to stop, to adjust to change the
position of your page. You can always do a few lattice and then just kind
of check where you at before you continue. So there you go.
This looks a bit better, a bit more balanced. I hope it's the same for you. And sometimes it takes
more tries, obviously. But I think it's such
a good exercise. It teaches us to
control the pen, to adjust a certain angle. It can be quite difficult. So just now that you're doing
a great job, even trying. Okay, we're going to
do something fun now, so we're going to try doing
this little shell design and just do this sort of
shape with your pencil. I recommend doing it
fairly big if you can. And we are going to letter, catch the tide, catch
the tide all over again. So do it once, do it twice, do it three times, do it as many times as you can fit it in. So we're going to
do this one twice, and you can already try
spotting what it is that you'd like to improve
the next time you do it. In general, I think
I need to remind myself to keep my
calligraphy smaller. By default, I think I'm just doing it bigger for some reason. So I'm just being
mindful of that. And I will be mindful of that
mod the next time I do it. So catch the tide, and your calligraphy will get smaller towards the
middle, towards the end. So that's normal, obviously,
we have less room. But this is really fun, and I think it's super
challenging as well. So give it a go,
see how it goes. I'm definitely just completely turning my page upside
down here to kind of try and adjust to see how
we obviously want to change the positioning
and angle of the page. So it's not as much that you
are adjusting your hand. So your hand really kind of
stays in the same position. So the worst thing you
can do here is try to maneuver your hand
to fit the angle. So that's probably not
going to end well. It'll probably really kind
of hurt your hand as well. So try not to do
that, obviously, so just work with the
angle of your page and see how your hand just
kind of does its job, and that calligraphy is normal, just focusing on a
slightly curved baseline. But it's the other
hand that's rotating the page and helping you adjust. And it could be that
towards the end, you need to turn your
page all the time after every single latter because it does get really kind
of curvy there. So that's absolutely fine. It does look really fun. I think I absolutely
love creating these shapes and feeling
shapes with calligraphy. That can be so much fun. I feel like I don't do
it enough, so maybe, maybe I need to remind
myself to maybe do more things like that,
something to think about. In the future, Tutorials. Let me know if you
enjoy this as well. I think it just gives it
another level of practice, of inspiration as
well, of creativity. It's a lot of fun. Okay,
so here's my draft. I think it's not too bad, but I think it's
nice to try again. So I'm just going
to turn my page, and I'm going to start
with the same process. So just sketching a
really rough outline of a little spirally
kind of looking shell and make it quite big. I think it really, really
helps if it's not too small, obviously, your calligraphy gets quite small right at the end. And I'm just going
to try this again, maybe keeping everything
a little bit smaller. So just focusing, doing it very slowly so that I can
focus on my technique. You probably want to look
at your previous one and also try and
improve some things. And I'm doing this kind of
like a semi bouncy look. So I'm aware there isn't a lot of room to do
a lot of bounds. So I'm just keeping the
bounds quite subtle in a way, especially as I got
towards the middle, towards the end here because it'll start to interfere
with other lines. But I think it helps
when you're just focusing on three wires that repeat and repeat because it kind of takes the
focus off a little bit. From the actual phrase. But this is really, really fun, and I love how this can be done, like, with so many
other shapes, yeah, I just thought I keep this
quite fresh and ocean themed I had to use a blue pen, of course, see if you have
any fresh colors for this. And here, it starts
to get a bit tricky. So it's normal for
your calligraphy to become smaller and smaller. And of course, it's
harder to control, and you probably want to
turn your page even more. So definitely it's
definitely quite hard here. So if you're managing to
fit it in, well done. And by the way, if you don't finish on the word
tide, that's also fine. Think of this as a pattern as a repeating repeatable
pattern, right? So it doesn't have to finish. With the last word, it still makes sense, 'cause you can still read it. Okay, there we go. That's really fun. I hope you enjoyed it. And when you're
ready, we're going to try one more design. And this is fairly simplistic. So we're going to use
our pencil to just do a little oyster oyster
shape a little shell. And we're going to
start with, like, a teardrop shape in the middle, and then we're going to add
three, like overlapping ones that come out from the
side like this on each side. So three on one
side and three on another side. There we go. And then we're just going
to add two little kind of detailed shapes at the bottom. Lovely. And we are
just going to let it inside of each little segment. So this time, we are not going
to really focus on, like, the baseline as much, but we're just going to try and fill in we're going to try
and fill in the shape. And we're going
to letter a short phrase that goes like this. Waves carry whispers,
only heart can hear. So waves is the first part, and we're going to
start lettering. So we're starting by filling
in this first little shape. So here, again, try to work with your entry and exit
strokes to just try and space it nicely
so that it takes the whole kind of
space on the inside. So waves carry whispers. So whispers is the third word, and it's quite long. So
this one's quite long. So maybe r keeping your entry stroke will be shorter, so you
have enough room. And again, this is just a draft, so if something goes wrong,
done way just trying it out. And then only Only is
like the biggest word. It just happens to be
right in the middle. Only. And then heart
heart is the next word. I wish this one was in the
middle. But there we go. So only heart heart is still
quite big, which is nice. It's also fairly,
it's not that long. It's a fairly short word. So it can look
really big in a way. Only heart can here. So can can be a bit hard
to squish in there. So again, I'm just trying to start like longer stroke
at the beginning. And then here is the last
word, which is quite short. So again, maybe a longer entry
and exit stroke to fill it all in. Okay, there we go. Not too bad. I feel
like I could have stretched my words a
little bit better, but it's nice for a draft. So how about, again, we learn from this
and take your time, if you want to pause
the video. That's fine. But how about we maybe
try doing this on little like separate piece of
paper or a little project. So if you try to do this again, see if you want to keep
it bigger or smaller, I might actually make mine a little bit smaller this time. Again, just try to position
the middle one right in the center of your
page. There we go. So once you do
your pencil draft, you can pick the
colors you'll use. I might actually
alternate between brown and blue. That
can look quite nice. And again, just
slowly and focused. I'm going in with the fast word, trying to keep everything
a bit more balanced, maybe focusing a bit more. So I'll give you some space
here to just focus get into a nice flow
and relax rhythm, and I can't wait to see
your finished project. So please, please
shout in the group. You can always color retain or decorate it a little
bit, as well. I hope you enjoyed this An Walden for trying
this with me.
22. Well done!: I really hope that you
enjoyed this course. I am confident that your
calligraphy has improved, and I would love to
hear your thoughts. I would love to
see your progress. So please please
share, tag me on Instagram or leave a
photo or a comment here. I would love to know
how you're getting on, and I hope that this has showed you that regular
practice does pay off, and it doesn't mean that
you have to practice for hours and hours
and hours every week. It's all about doing
it in a focused way. And I hope you've
learned something. I hope you picked up some tips, and I hope that your
confidence has grown. Thank you so much for
going through this course, for learning with me,
and I wish you the best of luck with your
calligraphy journey. You Taka.
Alina Snepste
