Level Up Your Hand Lettering: A 7-Day Challenge to Learn Lettering Art

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Are you into brush pen calligraphy for a while now, probably feel stuck creating the same style wondering what next? Majority of us start a lettering journey with brush pen calligraphy. While is it is a great place to start, it is not really a wonderful place to be trapped in. I feel you because I was there too. I love experimenting with different hand lettering styles in my calligraphy practice because it helps me be able to convey different messages through the feeling that each stroke evokes. Hi, I'm Mithila a calligrapher and hand lettering artist from India. I have been practicing calligraphy and hand lettering since 2018. For the past few years, I have also been conducting workshops. Having practiced brush pen calligraphy for quite a few years, I knew I was lagging in something, but I exactly know what. I kept doing the same stuff over and over again until Monday nitty hit me. I decided to challenge myself to create codes incorporating different hand lettering styles. I self nominated myself for this 100 day challenge, which helped me become more confident and a better lettering artist. It helped me explore and discover multiple styles at my own pace without any pressure. Now, I utilize over 20 different styles and I'm able to incorporate multiple styles to suit the need of the words or the codes and to know what exactly to emphasize and to know what to look for in a layout and all the joy that comes with it. In this class, I will teach you how to use six different hand lettering styles one day at a time with the project on the last day using all of them to make a unique lettering piece. Also, I have designed this planner for you to help you affirm your commitment throughout the next seven days, giving yourself the time to explore this new lettering journey which I presume to be what you will love. I'm super excited to teach this class because I know how overwhelming and disappointing it could be as a lettering enthusiast, not knowing how to level up your lettering game. This course is not just for calligraphers who are struggling to find your unique style, but also for very beginners who are basically interested in letters and are planning to start out as all the lessons are designed from the scratch. The ideal of this class is that you make a reasonable commitment to yourself by spending not more than 15 minutes every day, that I think will help you improve your lettering styles and techniques while you have fun accomplishing the everyday tasks. I can't wait to see what you make. Come let's dive in. 2. Class Orientation: [MUSIC] This class is a seven day challenge at lettering. That means it is intended for you to watch each of the daily videos for seven consecutive days. That's what I encourage students to do as they explore this content. Though, you could choose to take this class however you want. Now, let's talk about the class project because it is a bit different from a traditional Skillshare class. The project is to complete the seven day challenge obviously. However, it is also the activity that the challenge culminates with on Day 7. It is to create a quote using two or more hand lettering techniques that you will practice throughout the challenge. I chose this project because it will help you get out of your comfort zone and explore new styles. Of course, it will help improve your consistency aspect. I invite you to share your finished piece of work in the class project below, as well as your social media. Don't forget to tag me, letterwithmithi on your social media posts. I can't wait to see them actually. I would also encourage you to share this sheet with your word of your choice in different styles that was demonstrated in the class. It is super helpful for all the students to see each other's work in progress. You may also find the worksheets for each lettering style in the resources section below. You may print them, trace them, or just use it as a reference. To complete this challenge, you may choose to use specific calligraphy tools, but a basic pen and papers will work fine. You might be thinking that seven days of hand lettering might be a little overwhelming but don't worry, I will lead you through it step-by-step. You might be surprised by what you can create with a little dedicated practice. The next two videos are for Day 0, which means they are meant to prepare you to complete this challenge successfully. I will be teaching lettering anatomy and help you understand guidelines. Watch those if you are unfamiliar with those hand lettering techniques or if you will need some practice before entering into this challenge. I see you in the next lesson, where you will learn some background about hand lettering. 3. Day 0 - What Lettering Actually Is!: [MUSIC] Let's start by talking about what lettering actually is. Though both calligraphy and hand lettering are visual arts dealing with letters, the major difference between them is that calligraphy is writing letters, whereas hand lettering is drawing the letters. Although, as a beginner, you may not be able to notice a prominent difference between calligraphy and hand lettering as the output or the end result looks similar. The main difference lies in the method that is adopted to create those letters. In calligraphy, we use the basic strokes to form each and every alphabet. Whereas in hand lettering, we may use as many strokes as necessary to draw those letters. Also in hand lettering, you may vary the letter sizes, script type, and pretty much everything about the letters. Whereas in calligraphy, the letters are in a set size relation to one another, which are dictated by various factors, including the size of the brush pen, the size of the nib, and so on. Let's look into this quick demonstration. I'm writing the word hello here in calligraphy using a brush pen and using the basic strokes to form the letters, and creating the variation in the thickness of the strokes by controlling the pressure while writing. Then I'm now doing the same word hello using the non-flexible tip to demonstrate hand lettering. Unlike the calligraphy where I wrote, I'm drawing the letters here, as you can see. Both look similar. To sum up, the primary difference between calligraphy and hand lettering lies in the process of creating the letter forms and of course, the tools that we use. The calligraphy requires tools that have flexible tips, like brush pen. On the other hand, hand lettering can be done using any drawing tool like pencil, pen, sketch pens, glass pens, chalk pieces, even iPad, and so on. Join me in the next lesson to learn some letter anatomy that will serve as a foundation on how you will build the strokes for the letters in this challenge. See you there. 4. Day 0 - Lettering Basics: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we shall quickly brush up on the anatomy of letters and how to connect them. So if you have already taken my first class on beginner's guide to modern brush pen calligraphy, you must be familiar with all these concepts. Free to skip ahead to Day 1. This particular lesson is for very beginners who are not familiar with lettering tones. I however recommend you to watch my first class if you feel lost at any point and if you want to learn brush pen calligraphy specifically. Guidelines are important to understand the structure of the letterforms so they help us keep our alphabets in proportion so that they are in a harmonious relationship with one another. The first one is the baseline. It is nothing but the line on which the alphabet sits on. So baseline. Next, we have waistline, which is above the baseline. The baseline marks the top of the lowercase alphabet. Now the distance between these two, the baseline and the waistline is known as the x-height. The basic structure of the alphabets will fall under this x-height. We can take the example of a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s u, v, w, and x. Now moving on to ascender. Ascender is the line that falls above the waistline. Few alphabets will have ascender. Now, the examples for ascender includes b, d, h, k, l, and t. Next is our descender. Descender is the line that falls below the baseline. Few alphabets like this g touches the descender. The other examples will include g, j, p, q, y, and z. Exceptionally, lowercase f covers all these three ascender, x-height, and the descender. About the uppercase alphabets, almost all the uppercase alphabet make use of ascender and the x-height, while g, j, and y includes all the three ascender, x-height, and the descender. While connecting the alphabets just remember that one alphabet exit stroke will be the entry stroke of the next alphabet. You can find Day 0 practice sheets in the resources section below where I have added few examples to differentiate calligraphy and hand lettering and about the guidelines in brief for your reference. Without any further ado, let's start with our first time for Day 1. 5. Day 1 - Print: Welcome to Day 1. Today we'll be exploring print style. Now what does the print style of lettering? Print style is one of the widely used hand lettering styles in which the alphabets are not connected to one another and basically the inspiration for this style is from the printed forms that we get to see in books, newspapers and so on and hence the name. I like to use this style when I want to produce splitting ink letters that will play subtle and give emphasis to more important words in a code like this. Any of these lettering styles may not necessarily adhere to strict rules as in how they look because you can get inspiration from any style of the letter forms. With regard to print style, you may like forms like serif, sans serif and so on, while my preferences may be different from yours. The first step is to collect the references of your preferences observe and try to recreate it so let's do it. I'm going to open up a document, check out some fonts and see what I like. I'm first pasting A to Z and I'm going to make this standard Times New Roman to compare with my favorite fonts. I'm making this one to Times New Roman font. Next I'm pasting another set of A to Z, both uppercase and lowercase and checking the next font that I like, you can see from the preview and choose your favorite font. I like this American typewriter. We have our first favorite font now. I think we can see lots of variation from Times New Roman to American Typewriter. Our next set of A to Z. My all-time favorite font is a courier new font. I'm just scrolling through, but I think I will just pick Courier New. To move on to the next set, I think I will have to choose a contrasting font so that I can show you the differences better. Set of A to Z. Now, let's see. I think this Comic Sans will be apt. I have picked three font styles as my reference. You may also find them in the worksheet in case you need. Now what I'm going to do is to randomly pick few alphabets and see how similar or different they are. Let's start with A. This A, so let's just observe its features. Ii has a curvy ending like this. Let's do this uppercase A. It just has two lines in the baseline and this crossbar, just straight. Moving on to lowercase a. This one has a curvy feature like this, and it just occupies the x-height. Next we have our Courier New A, so unlike the previous one, this one has a line above the a also. This has three lines in total. All these adds to the personality of the fonts. Now the lowercase a, it doesn't have a curvy feature, but a line in the baseline. Moving on to Comic Sans. Unlike both of those, this A doesn't have any lines. This is just a simple handwritten A. Let's do this now. Uppercase A and the lowercase a like this. Now, you can see a lot of variation in each and every font. The curvy features here, a line here, and a simple A like this here. Now next, shall we try G? Let's see. This G, the structure of the G itself is unique. Let's try this now. So and a line like this. We have a line there as well. Now, the lowercase g, there is an oval, but that doesn't occupy the whole of Excite, so we have to absorb all these details and a curvy feature like this. Then moving on to my favorite Courier New. It is just a simple G with the lines. This G just finishes here, unlike that one which touched the baseline. We have a line here, so I'm doing this, lowercase g, a circle here and a thing like this with a line. Now, Comic Sans. It is just a simple G with no lines in it. To observe these and recreate, it is super interesting. I hope you enjoy this process as well. The curvy line here, a line here, and a simple g here. Then I like this R because they are different. Let's try this next. The first American typewriter R so a line here, and there is a curvy feature just like the a. This one. There is a dot to finish that R like the G. Now courier new R. No curvy features here. Just we have lines. Here there is a straight line like this and r with just lines and no dots, like American typewriter. Now we have our comic sense. The simplest one, I will say, no lines, no curvy features, just one R. Then we have the r like this. You can see a lot of variations in just these three states. Try to explore your preferences and write out your fonts and have fun with it. Now, let's try doing my favorite courier new font in the background, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. I'm writing out the T, it has lines like this. The courier new fonts tie in itself lies in the lines. It gives a distinct character to all the alphabets. You will have to observe whether the alphabets touch the whole of x-height, just the descender, ascend-er, all the aspects in order to recreate it [MUSIC]. Basically in the print, we don't connect alphabets and their lies it's style. They say separate unlike the cursive handwriting or our calligraphy. We'll have to define each letter distinctively because the letters like B, D, E might look similar when the D stroke or B stroke doesn't touch the center, and hence, it is very important for us to make each and every letter very distinct. The key lies in the consistency. Like any other style, you'll have to maintain the consistency in all the aspects, as in the thickness of strokes, size of the alphabets, spacing and the angle. If you like slant style, you can go with the slant, but you'll have to make sure all the letters of your style is in this same slant. That is the thing. [MUSIC] In some fonts, this all might be circular and some will have oval. We have to absorb all the minor details. Of course, you can change the style according to your preference. It is not a must that you will have to recreate the exact same font. [MUSIC] We are done. Pick any three of your favorite font styles. Observe and compare the differences by trying out different alphabets and pick one of your most favorite word and write it out in the accomplishment sheet or just any sheet. I'm writing mine. I have chosen my favorite word, fantasy here. I'm doing the same courier new font because that's my favorite style. The lines make this font look beautiful in my opinion. Make sure your spacing is of good consistency and if there are going to be two a's like this, you will have to make sure both of them look similar. That's how the consistency can be maintained. [MUSIC] Free to upload images of any part of this process in the project gallery. You may also find the worksheets in the resources section below for your reference. See you tomorrow, with the new lettering style. 6. Day 2 - Monoline: [MUSIC] Today's style is monoline lettering, so monoline lettering is hand lettering style that all the lines of the alphabets are of same consistent thickness that are connected to one another. Now you may wonder how this is going to be different from our normal cursive handwriting. We make use of the basic strokes that we use for calligraphy to make our letters look consistent. One amazing thing about monoline lettering is that you don't need any fancy tools, but any normal pencil pen, sketch pen, markers and just any non-flexible writing tool will work wonder. The beauty of the monoline lettering lies in its simplicity. If you are a minimalistic person, I'm sure you'll appreciate this style. I like using the style when I need minimalistic letter designs as in my quotes, bookmarks, envelopes and so on. Again, I'm using the non-flexible side of the tombow. You can use any non-flexible writing tool that you have with you. Now before jumping into how we do this, I thought it is important to show some examples, as in my handwriting versus monoline lettering versus calligraphy in order to make it clearer. The first happy is my handwriting. It does not follow any basic strokes principle. The second one is calligraphy. It has varied thickness, as in some strokes are thicker than the other. The third one, monoline lettering, is of consistent thickness while following the basic strokes principles. Now that we know what monoline lettering is and is not, we shall move on to the basic strokes, which is basically our warm-ups. Start off with straight lines like this. Practice both from down to up, as well as up to down. Just make sure the lines are of the same width. You may also try to do it in a different angle, like what we call a slant and so on. Next is an underturn. It is just a u. Then we have our overturn. It is an inverted u. Next is our compound curve, which is a combination of our overturn and underturn. Then we have our oval, just a normal o. Then we have ascending loop. It starts from the waistline and the loop like this and goes up to the baseline. Next is our descending loop. It is just the inverted version of our ascending loop. Now we construct alphabets with these strokes, and hence it is very important for us to warm up these drills. A, it's alphabet time now. We will start with A, a downstroke, upstroke, a downstroke, a crossbar like this, which can be stylish or straight. An oval underturn here. Next is B. We have our downstroke loop and partially ovals here. An ascending loop here and oval, and you can finish it off with an upstroke. Next is C, an upstroke and then unfinished oval like this. The lowercase c, is the same as uppercase 1. Next is D, a downstroke like this, a loop like this. This one, an upstroke and oval, and ascending loop with an upstroke to finish it off. You can take any alphabet, it will be a combination of all the basic strokes that we saw previously. You can even do this as a task, as in which alphabets have which basic strokes. You can break them down for your better understanding. With regard to monoline, all your strokes have to be of consistent thickness. Next is G, a descending loop here, and then upstroke to finish it. When we use these basic strokes, your letters automatically will become consistent in all aspects, as in with spacing and everything, unlike handwriting. An upstroke and ascending loop, a compound curve here. Then we have the I, an upstroke and then unfinished underturn. You can find the same sheet in the Resources tab below for your reference. All these alphabets will have the basic strokes as their basic structure, like an ascending loop in the hedge, overturn and compound curve in The M. We have ovals in these O. For this style monoline, all your strokes have to be of consistent thickness. Now I'm writing the same word, fantasy in monoline lettering, incorporating all the basic strokes. Fantasy in monoline lettering. All these alphabets, I'm doing using the basic strokes that we learned. An upstroke and oval, underturn, and we have our overturn, overturn again and oval, underturn, upstroke. All these alphabets, make sure you are using the principle of basic strokes. Descending loop here and the crossbar. [MUSIC] Now your turn, go through and practice monoline lettering, so lowercase letters, uppercase letters, and your favorite work in the accomplishment sheet. Feel free to use the worksheets as your reference, which is there in the resources section below. Make sure to share your work in the project gallery once you are done. See you tomorrow for four calligraphy. 7. Day 3 - Faux Calligraphy: [MUSIC] Hi, welcome back. I'm extra excited about today's topic. It is called faux calligraphy. Faux in French means false. Basically, faux calligraphy is imitating the look of calligraphy using basic writing tools. For calligraphy, we need a flexible tips like best pens, flexible nibs, with oblique holders, and so on. But faux calligraphy can be done using basic writing tools like pens, pencils, sketch pens, markers, and even chalk pieces. I like using this style when I don't have a brush pen or any flexible tool to do the actual calligraphy, and even when I have to cover some surface like glass, blackboards, or a big wall where brush pens don't work. For this demonstration, I'm using the non-flexible side of Tombow, but you can choose to use any tool that you have. Let's get started. The Step 1 for faux calligraphy is monoline lettering. I'm using the same thing that we did yesterday for monoline lettering. Now our Step 2 is to identify which strokes have to be thick and which have to be thin. Our upstrokes have to be thin and our downstrokes have to be thick, so the second step is to identify the downstrokes. Then our third step will be to draw a line parallel to the identified downstrokes and then fill them up like this so that it gives an imitation of calligraphy's look, thin upstroke, and thick downstroke. Here it starts with an upstroke and oval. This starts with an upstroke and we have a downstroke here. I'm filling this up. Then this one is upstroke, we have a downstroke here. Draw a line parallel to it, fill it up, and make that stroke thick. It is the same process. I'll repeat step by step again. Step 1 is monoline lettering that we already have from yesterday's topic. The Step 2 is to identify which strokes are thick and which strokes are thin, as in which strokes are upstrokes and which strokes are downstrokes. You can also use an arrow mark for your reference. Of course, in pencil later you can erase it. Then our third step will be to draw a line parallel to the identified downstrokes and then fill them up like this to imitate the calligraphies' look using the basic writing tools that are not flexible. You can do the same thing using a pencil, pens, sketch pen, any non-flexible tool like this. Now Cc is very easy. Just one downstroke. The c is similar to the uppercase one, it is the same. We have the D. It is a downstroke, so I'm just cutting it up. This stroke is actually a downstroke, but you can choose to focus on the structure of the alphabet small so that the legibility will be maintained. An upstroke here, we have a downstroke here, so I'm repeating the same process. Then another downstroke here, so we'll do this. Just keep it in your mind, that thin up and thick down. We are done with all the alphabets. You can see the same sheet in the resources tab for your reference. I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun doing this. Fun tips, you may use a different color to fill in the space, or even use patterns like diagonal lines instead of filling it up as such. How cool. Isn't it? It's your turn. Practice writing both lowercase and uppercase alphabet in faux calligraphy, and you may find the worksheets in the resources section for your reference, and don't forget to write your favorite word in your accomplishment sheet. I'm writing mine. Step 1 is monoline lettering, so I'm repeating the same as yesterday's. Now I'm identifying the downstrokes and filling it up to make it a thick stroke like this. You can choose to use a different color to fill in or use different patterns to create variety in the same sheet because you will be submitting this sheet in the Project Gallery. Make sure to have a lot of fun while doing this. Just remember the rule of calligraphy is thin up and thick down. This downstroke, so done. [MUSIC] When you're done, post your updated work in the Project Gallery. See you tomorrow. 8. Day 4 - Extended: Today, we'll be doing the extender, or the expanded style of lettering. The idea here is to play with spacing to create a variety. This is such a cool style that I personally like, because it is super versatile that you can incorporate this both in your hand lettering as well as calligraphy. I love using this style when I have to balance out the spacing in quote, as you can see here. For this style, I'm using the same non-flexible side of the tombow brush pen. You can choose to use any writing tool, even a brush pen if you are already into brush pen calligraphy. Now, let's break this down to one alphabet to understand the concept better. Let's do a. As we already know, each and every alphabet starts with an entrance stroke and the ends with an exit stroke. In this style, we are going to expand or extend the length of both the entrance and exit stroke like this. I won't demonstrate every other letter here in this style, because it is essentially the same lettering that we saw yesterday in for calligraphy. The difference comes when we try to put all the letters together in a word. Shall we do a word now? The word I have chosen for this style is extender. Now, extender in extended style. Here, I'm increasing the length of the entrance stroke of the e. I'm now expanding the exit stroke of e, which turns out to be the entrance stroke of the x. Now, while connecting to form a word, the first alphabet's exit stroke becomes the entrance stroke of the next one. It is the same concept for all the alphabets. Just make the length of the entrance stroke and the exit strokes, say 2x or 3x than the usual. Now, this d's exit stroke becomes the entry stroke of e and this e's exit stroke becomes the entry stroke for last d. We are just expanding the exit stroke like this. For crossbars, we are again expanding and I have done the for calligraphy for the same style. Done. Did you like this style? Now, your turn, lowercase letters, uppercase letters and your favorite word in the worksheet. I'm doing mine. Fantasy. I'm expanding this stroke of the f. You can decide on which stroke you have to expand based on the structure of that particular uppercase alphabet. It is the same concept for all the other alphabets as in your entrance stroke and the exit strokes, have to be extended 2x or 3x according to your preference. This a's exit stroke becomes the entry stroke of the s. We are finishing like this in an expanded style. Also the crossbars can be expanded like this. I have done the for calligraphy for the same. As always, you can find the worksheets for this style in the resources section for your reference. See you tomorrow. 9. Day 5 - Bouncy: [MUSIC] Today I'm super excited to show you the bouncy style of lettering where you can make your letters dance. The idea here is to play with the guidelines. Before that, we have a disclaimer here. This style is very easy for your words and letters to be looking illegible so make sure to keep in your mind how readable is your word or code while you are going to explore this style of lettering. Now, I can see you're wondering how to keep your words legible while breaking the rules with guidelines intentionally. That's what this lesson is going to be about. Come let's explore. I like using this style when there is a need to create variety in terms of spacing and also when there is a need to create movements in the code. Again, for this style, I'm using the Tombow's non-flexible tip side. You may use any writing tool, even a brush pen if you're already into brush pen calligraphy. Again, I will not be demonstrating each and every letter here because it is essentially the same as for calligraphy that we saw already. The difference comes only when we put the letters together in a word. I'm doing this word bouncy in the style as it has both ascending as well as descending loops and I find it to be a perfect example for this style. I'm just doing this in a useful way. All right, now the bouncy style. Observe the guidelines while I do this, we shall break down as I finish. You can see the letters having a movement. Now I think you'll be able to see a prominent difference between the normal and the bouncy style, how it has created a movement. Let me quickly brush up the concept of guidelines again. This one is our baseline and the baseline that marks the top of the lower-case alphabet. These two together contribute to our x-height. Next, we have our ascender that disable the waistline, and then the descender that is below the baseline. Now what we have done here is I have drawn a imaginary line here between the waistline and the ascender as you can see, this can be imaginary. The alphabets that fall only in the x-height should not cross this line. It is the same for the baseline as well. We have an imaginary line between baseline and the descender. The x-height should not cross this line. If at all it is going to touch the ascender or the descender, it may look like a whole new alphabet that will make the word look illegible. That is the concept here. Again, you can see the difference as how the x-height has played a lot of movements. Even for the descender, we can go further beyond the same way for the ascender have gone a further above the ascender line. That produces a movement for a word. Again, you can use this style both in hand lettering as well as calligraphy, just like the extended style that we saw yesterday. Now we have done lowercase letters, uppercase letters, and your favorite word in this style. I'm doing mine. Now, a word fantasy. I'm going a little beyond ascender to produce a movement and a little beyond the x-height like this. All right, now the a I'm going above the x-height and this stroke. Few strokes, you can keep it just in the x-height. The t I'm going above the ascender and a again above the x-height and this stroke I have gone below the x-height. Again, just play as you like. There is no strict rule as in this stroke has to be down and this stroke has to be up, it is just a playful style that you can explore. [MUSIC] Feel free to use the worksheets that are available in the resources section. See you tomorrow for our lesson on the flourishing lettering style. [MUSIC] 10. Day 6 - Flourishing: [MUSIC] Welcome to Day 6. Today, we are going to flourish our letters. First things first, what is flourishing? Flourishing is adding decorative details to your letters and magically turning ordinary into extraordinary. I like using this style when I feel like playing with letters and sometimes to make the letters look decorative and stylish according to the relevance of the project. Again, I'm using the Tombow small, flexible side of tip. You can use any writing tool even a brush pen if you are already into brush pen calligraphy. Let's look at this example. The first beauty without flourishing and the second beauty with flourishing. Which one would you prefer? If you are a minimalistic person, probably you will like the first one better, but I would strongly recommend you to try this flourishing style just to experience and have fun with it. Now, which spots are apt for flourishing? The ideal spots for flourishing will be, the first one is the entrance stroke. Almost all the alphabets will be having an entrance stroke, be it uppercase or lowercase alphabets. I'm going to just do it here again to break down. This entrance stroke, an oval like this, and finishing it like this. This flourish can be used for almost all the alphabets from a, n, m, p, t, f, and almost all the alphabets so entrance stroke is excellent to flourish. Now moving on to the next one, ye. If you are going to hide this flourish from the word that might look empty. To balance out the word, we can always use a flourish under the word to balance it out. I have just used two ovals like this. You can use the same thing for n, m, anything that is going to have an exit stroke like this. I'm doing this here again. An oval and this stroke to flourish. Two ovals like this. Now moving on to t's crossbar. This flourish might look a little complex. Just a simple over like this will be great when compared to this trait t. That's about this one. I'm going to do this here again. This is our t and flourish like this. Now, if at all the t was somewhere in the middle of the thing, you might also place the flourish in the right side of the crossbar that will still look elegant. You just have to balance the word out using the flourishes. Now, moving on to the descending loop, both ascending and descending loops are great for flourishing. First we'll do the y here. This flourish like this. I also thought I will do an ascending loop here to show you how flourish will look. Shall we take an example of h? Let me draw the basic structure of h here. The simple flourish like this will also look elegant when you're going to do this. Now, to sum up, entrance stroke, exit stroke under the word, below the word, t's crossbar, descending loop and ascending loops. Now, are there any rules for flourishing? Not exactly, but you can make your flourishes look aesthetically better by following few things that I'm going to share now. Prefer oval flourish loops over circular ones. Make sure your flourishes don't look like any other alphabets to ensure legibility. In this example, the final flourish looks like an e, making it a whole another alphabet. Don't overlap two thick strokes, it makes the letter messy. However, you can overlap them with thin stroke and the thick with a thin stroke. Make sure your flourishes are confident and spaced well so that it doesn't look like you have made one mistake or in order to hide a mistake. Make sense? Now, a pro tip. While practicing wobbles like this, it helps you improve your muscle memory, and since flourishes are all about ovals, this will give you a great practice to keep your flourishes elegant. You may not concentrate more on the guidelines, whether it is touching ascender, x-height, or anything like that. You just have to concentrate on your ovals like this. This can be done using a pen or a pencil, that is totally up to you. Now your turn. Explore and have fun flourishing the lowercase letters, uppercase letters and your favorite work in this time. I'm doing mine. I'm going to keep this flourishing very simple because all that we demonstrated were little complicated. I'm just going to keep it very simple for your reference to start with. Just doing all this and I'm going to flourish only in the t's crossbar and the y's descending loop. If you are open to explore, you can do in yen and so on. Just an oval, and I'm just extending this. This is the very simplest version of flourishing. I'm doing the same with t. [MUSIC] You can have a look at the basics worksheet for our furnishing inspirations where I have compiled the styles that I regularly use. You can explore and even come up with better flourishing ideas. What do you do then? Immediately upload it in the project gallery to inspire all of us. See you in tomorrow's class. 11. Day 7 - How to Compose Your Lettering Quote - Part I: We're on the final day of the challenge, so roll up your sleeves, time to apply all that we have learned in the past six days to compose your favorite quote. In this lesson, I will be sharing my entire process of how I compose a quote from start to finish. I have to this quote, if you can dream it, you can do it. Let me be honest with you. I did the same quote in their year 2018 as a very beginner. I didn't know what layout or composition had to do with lettering basically, so though it is embarrassing for me to see or show my old works, I have to tell I was super proud about this back then. I think this phase was necessary for me to be here. Yeah. Let's do this. Step 1, I simply write the quote and decide which words are important and the emphasis should be on. My choice for this quote is to emphasize dream it and do it or at least just dream and do. Now you may wonder why emphasis only certain words. When you emphasize the right words, your message will be more powerful. When you don't emphasize or say accentuate the wrong words, chances are that the viewer would get disoriented and in turn, your purpose of lettering will not be fulfilled. Now Step 2 is to try out different layouts to compose the lettering quote. I'm starting with our first style. I'm just writing out if you can, in print style, all caps. Since emphasis is going to be on dream and do, I'm writing the dream in monoline lettering first, so this can be super rough, you need not focus on consistency, spacing or just anything. This is just for you to have an idea about how the quote might look. Now I can't just write the it there so I'm going to do it in extended style like this to fill in the space properly. Now, we have the you can, so I think we'll first do the do it because D and T has techstar ascender, so I will have the space in-between for O and I, so I may fill the you can there. We'll just do the do it first and see how it goes. I have chosen the same style for do it as dream. It is just the normal monoline lettering that we saw. Now we have a space here, so I'm going to write, you can in the same style as if you can. Again, you can work on the spacing later. Now, I think we can have an exclamatory mark here to adjust the space. Now we have a square or rectangular lettering. We'll name it one. Now, moving on to second one, I'm starting with dre. Then we'll later see how if you can can be accommodated. I thought I will try my hands with some flourishing in this style. I have some idea. Let's see. I'm going to flourish the D here to accommodate the if you can, about that. I'm going to write the if can in the same print style. Now, I thought I will flourish the am also, just like the inverted D flourish. Now since we have to write the T there, I thought we can use the same flourish as the T's crossbar. Now, again, we'll go to the do it and then accommodate the you can. I'm just sticking with the same D as in dream. I think the T's crossbar can be a little extended so that I can accommodate the you can there. It is the baseline for those things and then I will do this D, just like the dre and I will make that the entrance stroke of the I. I like this style, maybe I will use a slant later if at all I'm going to choose this for our fair one. We'll name it two. Now moving on to Style 3. I'm first going to write the dream, maybe with a different flourish this time. I'm going to use a loop here for the D and I'm thinking of flourishing these R. Maybe if I don't feel like I will just extend that as the exit stroke along with E later, if at all I don't choose to flourish. Let's explore. I have a flourish already in my mind. I'm just going to try that out for the am. Now, I'm going to accommodate the if you can, in that arch style. I'm going to draw another arc. Now, we have a flourish and I thought we should do for the R as I already had planned. I'm doing the same flourish as here. I'm going to write the it here. Now, if you can dream it this time, so you can do it. Maybe I write the you can in this downwards arc shape. For that I'm going to do the do it first in order to get the base orientation of it. Do it like this. I'm going to keep the crossbar of t parallel to that arc line. All right, now we have a space to write you can. Now I'm going to do this kind of flourish in this d, so that I have collected all these things together. I think I like this one the most for now, so we name it three. Let's do one last style and finalize on which one we have to file. I'm going to explore shapes this time. We have squares, kind of rectangles, and ovals here. I thought we should try a triangle now. I'm starting with if and then bringing down this you so that it will form a nice triangle. I'm writing this you like this. Now next is can. I thought I'll just do like this so that it can bring a separation. I will erase that later. We'll write the can here. All right, now dream, and just separating each and every word here. I'm just trying to do that. Maybe I will change this idea in the next few words, so dream here. If you see I have left few space below the word in order to accommodate the next word so that I can have a proper separation like we had for you. Now, we have the space for it. Obviously, as you guessed, I'm going to do this extended it here. Now I'm going to draw a separation here. Now, moving on you can do it. I think I can do you can, so that the triangular shape is still maintained. All right. Okay, now I think we need a separation, or maybe I think we'll have to do the do it. We can still keep the triangular shape, so I'm just moving on to the rhombus shape. Do it. This separation I'm going to do in this piece crossbar like this. Now I'm going to do a flourish like this to finish it off like a proper rhombus, or maybe a Christmas tree shape. All right, we can later adjust the spacing and make it look like that structure, then we are going to do a fair one if at all this is going to be selected. We'll name it four. Which one do you like the most among these four? I think I still like the third one the most. We can go for it and worked further on it. I'm going to do the four calligraphy for the words that we chose to emphasize, dream and do it. [MUSIC] Four calligraphy, so as we already know, we are just going to thicken the downstrokes of those words. The first step will be to do the mono line that we already have in a rough draft. The next one is to draw parallel lines next to the downstrokes and fill it up. Maybe I will use a different color, or patterns to fill it all in the far one. Let's see. All right. I'm going to repeat the same thing for do it now. I'm just going to keep this flourish as single line. I'm not going to thicken that even for downstroke. Otherwise, if you get might not be legible, that's why. Do it now. I mean, the word do it now. And thickening up all the downstrokes. If you have any confusion, you can always draw an arrow mark for you to identify which ones are downstrokes and which ones are the upstrokes. I thought I will draw a line below this to make to produce some harmony. Now I see a lot of blank space here. I thought I will draw some stars or diamonds star dust things to fill them up. All these elements add up to the court because since it is going to have dream in it, maybe it might look like a starry night and you are dreaming, so I'm adding these. I still like this one the most. Nevertheless, I'm going to try the four calligraphy for all these four and see if I still like the third one. Which one do you like? I still see a lot of scope in three only. Probably I'm biased, but I think we'll make this one the fair one. See you there. 12. Day 7 - How to Compose Your Lettering Quote - Part II: [MUSIC] Welcome back. This is a continuation video. Come let's make our rough draft into a fair one. So I'm doing a rough sketch using a pencil first so that we can improvise or erase later if we require. So the idea here is we are going to scale up our existing rough sketch. We have guidelines here. I'm just going to write the dream first because that is the word that we are going to emphasize. It is of a bigger size comparatively, and based on this reference, I will do the do it in the same size. [MUSIC] Now you know why hand-lettering is drawing letters or strokes can go over and over again unlike calligraphy, where we had to write the letters. Now we have this space. I'm just going to extend the crossbar like this so it will look organic. We have the empty spaces. I'm just going to bounce that e so that the space is balanced out. I think I'm going to work on the m. I hope you get an idea about how I'm going about the spacing. I'm just redesigning the flourish. Now this D is not in the same guideline as the m. So I'm just going to adjust that a bit. Now it is in the same line. Now I'm adding the elements that we had in the rough sketch so that we're going to balance the spacing like this. The next step is to do for calligraphy, for dream and do it. Let's do that. We already have the rough sketch for a reference, so we can just go about that and thickening all the downstrokes like this. Make sure the thickness of the downstrokes are of the same width, same consistency. That will make your lettering very neat. You can even adjust the first basic structure that you did because again, you can erase as much as you can when you are in this step. I'm just going to do the four for all the dream and do it. Now, let's do the fair one. Using the same non-flexible side of the Tombow brush pen and using black color for the outline. First, try to draw the basic structure and then go for the four. You can do it at your pace. No hurry. Why we do the basic structure is that if you are going to do the whole thing, there might be some overlapping happening between the downstrokes and upstroke because if at all you are going to use a different color to fill in, it might look odd. You can plan well in the rough sketch itself and execute it like this so that there is no overlapping or any miss in your final sketch. Again, make sure all your strokes are of one single stroke unlike your previous stuff sketch. If at all you are going to go over and over again, it might look very messy. Make sure all the strokes are of just one stroke. Like this. Now you can see how calming it is to just trace this rough sketch. I'm sure everyone can resonate with me. We have our m. You can do the thick stroke freely and then do this so that you might not overlap. This is a better choice, actually. Also make sure to erase your unwanted strokes that you previously did in the rough sketch. Otherwise, that might be a confusion while faring it up. Flourish. Make sure that it is oval. This flourish should be parallel to that one. Make sure all your flourishes are oval in shape. Again, make sure you don't overlap. [MUSIC] Now we can do the if you can and it in print style. I'm doing the if you can, in the arc. Of course, you will be doing your own favorite quote. But when you are going to do this print style, feel free to explore your favorite. You need not stick to the uppercase letters only or something like that. After a lots of trial and error, this is the print style I have liked a lot. I use this a lot. [MUSIC] I like to draw these lines in the fonts. That's why I like career new a lot. [MUSIC] Now, I'm going to fill in with some patterns, obviously using a different color. I'm using some diagonal lines or you can call it triangles. I'm filling them with such patterns as well. I mostly like this design because drawing repetitive patterns give us some meditative feel. I like to do this. You can choose to do your one favorite pattern. Or if you like to fill in, you can use a different color to fill in. Feel free to have a lot of fun when you are doing this. You can use polka dots. You can just do anything that you like. You can also try using two different colors as in, you can use a different color for top part and a different color for bottom part. It is totally up to you. That is the fun we can have in hand lettering, especially for calligraphy. It gives a lot of creative freedom. We are almost done. [MUSIC] Are you ready to compose your code, incorporating your favorite lettering styles? Great. Now choose your code, space it out in a paper, try out different layouts, letter sizes, fonts, and just anything. Don't forget to have fun. I really can't wait to see what you create. Meet me in the last class to hear the concluding remarks. 13. Conclusion: [MUSIC] Many congratulations on finishing this course. I hope you had fun as much as I did and found this course useful along your journey to level up your calligraphy. I hope practicing these new styles helped you open up to explore and incorporate new flavors to your already existing skills. If you are a newbie and took this course even amazing for having started off with these many varieties. I would also love to see all your work, so make sure to post them in the project gallery below. I actually cannot wait to see them. You can also follow me on Instagram at the handle letterwithmithi. If you would be able to start to learn brush pen calligraphy, please do check out our previous or my first Skillshare class on beginner's guide to modern brush pen calligraphy if you already haven't and thank you again for joining. Have a nice day. [MUSIC]