Modern Calligraphy: Flourish Confidently

1. Welcome Intro: Welcome to Flourish Confidently, where we're going to dive deep into the world of calligraphy flourishes. Have you ever been frustrated with where and how to add flourishes? Or were you ever confused at why your flourishes don't look organic and natural? While there is personal style, intuition, and some improvisation that goes into flourishing, there are also some basic rules and shapes to help lay a strong foundation. This class is perfect for calligraphers who want to understand and practice the art of flourishing. You should already know the basics such as the strokes and the lowercase and uppercase alphabets. I will be coming out with a class on these topics too be on the lookout. This class is jam packed with demonstrations and practical application. You'll be equipped with everything you need to know in order to create the simplest of flourishes to the most complex. By the end, you'll know 150 different flourishes to add to your calligraphy toolkit. You'll also gain the confidence you need to create flourishes effortlessly. I've provided free guidelines and worksheets to help you in this class you can find them in the your project section. My name is Audrey. I'm a watercolors calligrapher and a teacher here on skill share. I'm really excited to start on this journey of flourish and confidently together with you. I'll see you in class. 2. Prerequisites and Assumptions: Hi there. I want to briefly address some prerequisites and assumptions I'm making about you who are taking this class. First, I'm assuming that you already have a basic knowledge of the eight basic stroke and the lowercase and uppercase alphabets. I will be coming out with a class on these later. So be on the lookout. Second, I'm assuming that you're using a pointed pen and not any other type of metal nib. It's okay if you're using a brush pen, but I do recommend using a brush pen with a smaller tip, just because the worksheets are designed like that. You can also use an iPad and the Procreate app and even just a pencil and paper is fine too. Finally, although calligraphy and lettering are sometimes used interchangeably, they're technically two different forms. While some of these flourishes can be used for your lettering, this class is specifically for calligraphy. That means that all of the letters are going to be written on a 55 degree slant. The x-height is going to be three 16th of an inch. Thanks for listening. I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a note in the discussion section and I'll get back to you. 3. What is a Flourish : What exactly is a Flourish? Well, it can be understood as embellishments, accessories, decoration. For me, I like to think of it as icing on the cake. Your calligraphy on its own probably looks beautiful in its own light. Just like how a cake tastes and looks fine without icing. But when you add a flourish, it enhances the visual appeal. It's pleasing to the eye. Similarly, when you add icing to the cake, it makes it taste that much sweeter. However, the opposite is also true. If you were to add too much icing that it overpowers the cake and it makes it inedible. So be careful of how much flourishing you actually do because too much of it and it could be really hard to read your work. Well, that was a quick overview on what a Flourish is. Let's get started. 4. Supplies Overview: Hey everyone. Let's talk about the tools and supplies that you'll need for this class. At the bare minimum, you will need a pencil, eraser, and paper. You can download my blink guide sheet in the Your Project section. Throughout this class, I will be using a pencil and paper and also the iPad and the Procreate app. You can use other calligraphy tools too, such as the pointed pen, brush pens, other tracing paper, and your iPad with appropriate app. Well, that's it. Let's grab our supplies and get started. 5. 7 locations where you can add flourishes: Hey, everyone, welcome to this video and I'm going to show you the seven different places that you could potentially add flourishes. Now, some of these places are quite common and some of these are not. Some of these might be surprises to you, and some of them not. But these are all the places that I personally use flourishes. There could be more locations that I haven't explored yet. If there is a location that I haven't pointed out but that you use, I'd love to hear from you. Without any further ado, I'm going to be using my iPad and the procreate app to start drawing on here the seven different locations. I'm using the word magnificent as my example. Going from left to right, the first place that you're going to encounter is the entrance stroke. You don't always have to add a flourish at the entrance stroke. But you can if it's part of a capital letter or if you just need to fill in some space. Just be careful that your flourishes don't hinder the readability of the word, and the flourishes don't look like another letter. The second place that we'll look at is the apex. The apex is probably a place that you might not have heard of or it may not be as common to you. It's not often that you will see this apex in letters. You're most likely to find it in capital letters such as the M, N, also the A, and possibly the V and X and Y, depending on how you write your capital letters and maybe some other capital letters, if you write them differently. Basically the apex is the topmost point to any letter. You could even potentially add it to the T, but again, just being mindful so that it still looks like the letter T and doesn't hinder the readability of it. But for example, if I were to continue to do a flourish on this apex, I could extend this come out, loop around and do something like that. If you're an experienced calligrapher, you might already be doing something like this. There just wasn't a name attached to it, so I just thought I would go ahead and attach a name. That's that. The next location that we'll look at is the descender loop. Now the descender loop is one of the most common places to add a flourish. It's really fun because there are a lot of letters that have this stroke, and you can make this loop narrow or wide, it can extend out to the right, it can curl back to the left, there's just so much you can do. In addition, if you have multiple lines in your composition, this flourish could potentially add on to a letter in the line below it, moving on. We have the ascender loop. Similar to the descender loop, the ascender has just as many possibilities. It can be a really wide loop or a very narrow loop, it can go to the left, to the right. Sometimes you can even forego the loop and just do your own thing. Really take some time to experiment throughout this class. The next one is a little bit obscure, and you can find it at the down-stroke of certain letters like H, M, N, and R, and I'm going to be super creative and just call it middle of word down-stroke. I'm such a word master. But basically what this means is that you can extend this down-stroke below the baseline and then do all sorts of fun flourishes. We'll explore that later on. Two more to go. Then next is the cross stroke. The cross stroke you'll really only see in the letter t and the capital T and capital F. It's not quite common, but the lowercase t is a very common letter, so you will see it a lot in your writing. You might already be doing flourishes at the letter T, because with this cross stroke, you can add loops, you can add spirals, you can add figure eights. There's a lot you can do here, but I just wanted to identify that as another location that you could add flourishes. Last but not least, we have the exit stroke The exit stroke is another really common area to add a flourish because it just completes a word and you can do a lot. You can come back up, you can come down, you can go to the right, you can also connect to the line below or connect to line above, so there are a lot of opportunities there. I can't wait to dive into all of these different locations with you and practice variations on flourishes. Let's go ahead and grab our supplies and dive right in. I'll see you in the next video. 6. Flourish Rules: Hey everyone, let's talk about rules. I know it's not a lot of fun when we have to talk about rules but in calligraphy, there are some basic rules that we're always having to follow. For example, when you're writing calligraphy you always want the downstrokes and the upstrokes to have a difference in thickness. Also in calligraphy, you usually want your letters to be on a slant instead of straight up and down. Now, this degree of slant can vary from person to person and it sometimes depends on your personal preference too. It could be anywhere between 45-60 degrees but I personally like 55 degrees. Aside from those basic rules, flourishes also has its own set of rules. These rules are in place because they help make flourishes look balanced, natural and visually elegant. Here, I'm going to use the word hope as our example to demonstrate some of the flourishing rules that we should be following. The first rule is that only two lines should ever intersect. If you intersect three or more lines, it starts to look a little messy and the flourishes don't look as balanced anymore. In this example here, you can see that there are three lines intersecting at this point. There are two flourished lines and the descender stroke that intersects here. Intersecting more lines really makes this word look messy and disorganized. If we want to look at examples of good flourishes, you can look here. There are two points where only two lines are intersecting at anytime as well as right here where you have two lines as well. There are lots of other locations up here but I'm not going to circle all of them. The second rule is to try to intersect your flourishes at approximately 90 degrees. This is not an exact science because when you are in the flow of creating your flourishes, you're not going to stop and try to measure all of your angles but it is a good suggestion. Because if you look at this example here, the flourish is hard to read. I'm not sure if it's another letter or if it was a mistake, so this angle is way too wide. It's almost a 180 degrees. That's what you don't want. What you do want is an angle that's close to 90 degrees like in this spot here as well as this spot and then all of the other opposing spots. Now, when we look at this angle here, it's not quite 90 degrees. It's definitely more, maybe a hundred, 10 hundred degrees but because it's closer to 90 degrees then it is 180 degrees, it still looks pleasing to the eye, it doesn't look too distracting. Same thing in this spot. It's a little bit smaller than 90 degrees but again, it's still closer to 90 than anything else. The third rule is you never want to intersect two downstrokes or two thick lines like in this spot here. Again, it just makes your flourishes look a little messy and this is just a general rule in calligraphy too, you never want to intersect two downstrokes. If I didn't have this heavy stroke here and just kept it thin, that would've been fine. Now, I like to keep my flourishes pretty thin so I don't normally run into this problem but just in case you like to do those stand alone flourishes like this, you never want to intersect two thick lines at the same time. You really have to be careful that you're only intersecting thin and thick. Obviously, there are a lot of good examples of flourishes intersections where you have thin and thin lines like in that spot there and all of these spots here as well as this spot and that spot. Those are all okay. This last rule really depends on your personal style. If your calligraphy style has more ovals, then your flourishes should also have ovals. If your calligraphy style is more round and circular, then your flourishes will also follow suit. You can try this with your own calligraphy. Try to create some ovals around your letters, some general ovals. They don't have to be exact but you'll notice that, hey, they all slant the same way which is good, which is another rule and they all have the same general shape. These are my letters, therefore my flourishes should also have the same general shape. You've got an oval here, another oval here, another one over here. Now, this one is a little bit of an anomaly. This one should look like that, but I have all of this extra space and so if I were to revise this word and the flourishes, I should bring in this flourish a little bit narrower so that it doesn't come out so rounded like that. An example of a bad oval flourish would be over here because this is way too circular. Look at that, it's almost a circle. This is what I don't want in my particular style of calligraphy flourishes. I want mine to be nice and rounded. Those are some of the rules that we should be following when we're doing flourishes. Sometimes you can bend the rules and sometimes you can even break them but for the most part we should be following these rules because our number one priority is to use these flourishes to enhance our writing and not to distract from it or to make it even harder to read. Be thoughtful and strategic about where and how you add your flourishes and don't worry, this will come with time and practice. It's not meant to be something that you learn and achieve and perfect overnight. As you continue to practice, you'll develop an intuition and you'll start to develop your own style of flourishes and from there, you will have already practiced these rules and put them into action so you don't even have to think about it anymore. Now that we've got these rules down, let's practice writing some flourishes. I'll see you in the next video. 7. Drills: Welcome to this video, where we're going to practice drills.These drills are really important when practicing flourishes, because these are going to be the building blocks for your flourishes. If you don't know what to write or practice, you can always come back to these drills because you can always build on those muscle memory. The first drill that we're going to do, are C-Curves. Grab and set your pencil, and draw a C curve counterclockwise, just slightly curved. Now you can create your C-curve from the top going down, but you can also start from the bottom and go up. We'll fill in these lines later. The next C-curve is going to be counterclockwise. Like so, again, you can start at the top and then go down. We can also start at the bottom and go up. Let's practice these C-curves. Go ahead and fill in the line. The next C-curve that we'll look at, are going to be horizontal. You can start from the left, and go to the right. We can also go from the right, to the left. Let's also do the bottom counterpart. The reason why we're practicing all sorts of different directional C curves, is because when you create flourishes, you don't always know exactly what it's going to look like. You might have some curves that are going from right to left and then from left to right, and then from up and down, down to up. You have to build your muscles so that you can be prepared to create a flourish that points in any odd direction. Now let's start putting some of these C-curves together. When you add two of the same C-curves, for example, two of these, or two of these, you're going to create a scallop formation. Again, go from the bottom up. We can also go in the other angle too. Besides vertical, we can also add two of the same horizontal C-curves too. Let's practice these C-curves. Let's continue adding our C-curves to create more shapes. Next, we'll create the oval. The oval happens when you combine two opposite facing C-curves. If you think of the oval like this, it is essentially one C-curve plus the other C-curve. Go ahead and practice the oval, and start from different starting points.For example, this one I started up at the top. Maybe this one I'll start here in the middle. Maybe this one I'll start from the bottom and this one I'll start from the right. Knowing how to draw these ovals are going to be really important, because in calligraphy, at least in my style, all of my letters are based on this general oval shape. My flourishes should also follow that same shape, which is one of the rules. If your calligraphy style is a little bit different, then you can draw your oval a little bit differently too. Maybe it's a little bit more round, maybe it's narrower.Whatever your style is, just make sure that these oval shapes also match that. But if you're following my style, then this size oval is going to work just fine. Let's go ahead and write in these ovals. Aside from these vertical ovals, we can also create horizontal ovals. Go ahead and fill these in too. Now let's practice some loops. Since we just practiced the ovals, loops are basically a lot of ovals connected. If you wanna do the clockwise ones first, you can start here at the bottom.,and then almost create an oval, but don't close it up just yet. Instead, loop around and then create another identical oval like so. You wanna to try to keep your oval shapes as consistent as possible. Try to see how far you can go, before you get tired. That's pretty good. Now you can also do the opposite way, you can start from the top. Now, none of your flourishes will actually look like these loops. But again, it's just good practice to get your fingers and wrists and your arm relaxed so that making these movements start to come naturally to you. We've done a couple of vertical aligned ovals and loops, and now let's do some horizontal ones. For me, these are satisfying just to practice. They're not perfect every time. But with more and more practice, you'll get there. We'll just take it easy, take it slow. There's no need to rush. Once you've done a series of these loops, we're going to move on to our next curve. The next curve that we're going to look at is the S-curve. Now the S-curve is basically what you are thinking of. But the S-curve is also tricky. It's actually two C-curves put together. It's one C-curve facing one way, plus another C-curve facing the other way. They're just arranged in a way so that it looks like the letter S, although it's a backwards S. We can also go the other way. You can do the open side facing right first, and then do the other C-curve as well. Again, we can go from the bottom-up as well. We can also do the horizontal ones too. Let's go ahead and practice these S-curves. After you've done a series of those, we're going to do our last drills, which is the Figure 8. Now the Figure 8 looks like this. You can think of it as a combination of two S-curves. This plus this. Or you can also think of it as four C-curves. One, two, plus three and four. But either way, when you combine these into a more seamless shape, you get the Figure 8. We're practicing our muscle memory, so they don't have to be perfect. But try creating these Figure 8s starting at different points. You can also practice these in the vertical way too. Now let's practice some Figure 8s that go on and on in a ribbon formation. You're going to start your Figure 8, like normal, but this time, extend a little bit below so that you're not going to close up the Figure 8 here. Instead, you're going to loop around. But this time, go under that other loop that you just drew, and then create another. The goal is to try to make these as even as possible. But it's okay if it's not perfect. Now you can also have these Figure 8s not intersecting as well. If you don't want them to intersect, you could just have the loop stop right there, and then come down, and then create the second loop there, or the third loop. You can practice starting from right to left. You can also practice from left to right. I just ran out of room on my paper, so I'm going to stop there, but I want you to go ahead and continue to practice these drills until your hand, your arm, your fingers, and eventually your brain just locks these into your muscles, so that you can remember them the next time you have to create these kinds of flourishes. So go ahead and practice. Remember to breathe, and take it slowly. I'll see you in the next video. 8. Exit stroke flourish: Hey everyone, starting with this video, we're going to look at each of those seven locations pointed out in the previous video, and then look at 25 variations of a flourish that you could potentially add. Now, these are not 25, the only flourishes that you could ever add, but these are designed to show you how you can build on the drills that we practiced, and so that you can create even more complex and intricate flourishes. We're going to start off simple and get more complicated by adding more of the drills like the C curves, the S curves, the ovals, etc. At the end of these videos, you'll get a chance to create your own flourishes too. These 25 ways are just ways that you can jump start your flourishing ideas, but then from there you can really go crazy and really add a lot more that you want to. Let's go ahead and get started and look at the first area. We're first going to look at flourishes at the exit stroke. We're going to look at 25 different ways. Now, the basic shape of the exit stroke is the undertone stroke basically, and it looks like that, although the down stroke is a little bit thicker, like that. All of the flourishes that we're going to look at starts with this basic shape. The first one that we'll look at is this stroke, but then we're going to come up and then curve down. Now, from here, you can go up and then create loops. That's what we're going to do. In this second one, create that down stroke again, come up, but then create a spiral like that. Now, so far, none of our lines are intersecting. But intersecting lines helps us create those, remember those never-ending loops that we were creating, so you can start intersecting now. That will create more opportunities for flourishes. We'll do our down stroke again, we'll come up, but this time create a loop. Again, remember that we want these intersecting lines to be at 90 degrees. They don't have to be perfectly 90 degrees, but as close to 90 as you can get them. For our fourth variation, let's take that intersecting loop, and then this exit line, let's intersect that back into this loop. Come down, go up, loop, and then intersect, not too bad. For the fifth one, we're going to create a similar intersecting line, but instead of looping like this, we're going to create a wider oval, and then intersect right about here. Then you can loop back as well. If you want to see the first five flourishes in action, I'll write the word, hi, a couple of times, so that you can see what they look like when it's put together on a word. Now, remember our flourishes should never take away from being able to read our word, so the only dangerous one I can see here is maybe the third one. Because if you were to write this flourish with a thicker down stroke, then this could look like the word, his. You don't want that to happen. Make sure that all of your flourishes are really nice and thin. Let's continue on to the next five flourishes. For number 6, we're going to continue to vary an add on to the fifth one. We're going to do the same exact one, but then right here where this flourish ends, we're going to add a point and then tail out this way, like so. Similarly, the seventh one, you could do the same, but instead of a point you can add a tiny loop, and then loop here, and then tail out. Let me just make this a little bit darker so you guys can see. For number 8, 9 and 10, we're going to still have the same movement, but instead of coming up so high like this, we're going to keep it nice and lower. For number 8, when I come down with the down stroke, but then instead of coming up almost to the same place, we're going to stay low, and then curve around like that. We're almost creating the infinity or the figure 8 flourish. From here, we're going to take that tail and then loop it around, and then intersect into this first loop here. Then for the last one, we're going to, instead of intersecting it back here, we're going to come back to the number 8, and then create a set of ovals over here. Then remember to try to intersect at 90-degree angles. Let's go see what these look like with the word, hi. Again, number 7 is similar, but instead of the point here, we're going to have a small loop. Now, for this we're going to loop back. When we loop back, you have to be careful because you might be crossing some of these previous letters. Just be mindful of how you do it, you can even come a little lower if you want. That one looks really ugly, so let me try it again. Actually, I'm going to extend my down stroke just a little bit further, like that. That looks better. Number 9, this is the one where we loop back and intersect. Then number 10, I'll draw over here so I have enough room. Now, we've done up until now the same movement. We come down with the basic shape and then move up. This time we're going to take this exit stroke here, this upstroke, and then extend it way above this down stroke. What I mean by that is, we're going to come down, and then come all the way up like that. Now, this is one of my favorite ways to end a letter, especially on the exit stroke. It's just really easy, but that extra curve, it just creates this nice roundness to it. That one is very basic. Now, the next couple are going to be built off of this shape. For this one we're going to curve just inward like this. Then for number 13, we're going to take this loop and then intersect. Number 14, we're going to take this intersecting line, and then intersect it one more time as we loop it back. Then finally, we'll do another intersection as we create a smaller spiral there, like so. Like I said, just that extra height makes it really nice and pretty. Again, this is another one where you have to be careful because if you make this down stroke any thicker, or any narrower, or just do something else, it might look like a different letter. Always be conscious of that. That's looking pretty good. For Number 16, I want to go back to the general shape that we did for the first ten because there's one that we can do complicated. I just wanted to show you what that might look like. If you were to extend this first one, but instead of going up, but again, going to the right, you could do something like this, where you come up like this. Then from here what we did before in Number 8, we looped back like the Figure 8 and then cross this down-stroke. But, instead of crossing, we're going to create a loop, but then create another loop almost like a pretzel like that. Then loop up and then do an infinity like this. Again, this is a little bit more complex and intricate. This is great if you really need to fill up space to the right of your word. That's not absolutely necessary, but I just wanted to show you if you could take some of these other ones that we've done, but then continue to build on it. Anyway, so that's done. Let's go on to a new shape. For the next several, we're going to take this shape in 11 that we saw, but instead of just going up, we're going to curve to the left a little bit. That's what we're going to do for number 17. Come down, go up, and they curve a little bit to the left. Now from here we loop around and do like a S curve, and then from here you can do another S curve almost as if you're going to create the Figure 8. Lastly, you can take this and then intersect back, and then intersect here. All right let's go see what these look like with the word hi. Let's look at the next five. We're just going to continue with our variations on this Number 17 over here. Let's build on that and do one where we just loop around itself like a pretzel. We can do another one where you loop and then do another loop out there. Now for this one, let's try to add a set of intersecting ovals. If you have the first set of ovals like this that we've done before, but then have another one that goes down like this, almost like a vertical oval and then intersect there. Just taking our set of ovals and creating horizontal ones and then creating a vertical one. When you intersect them like that, it just creates a nice balance to it. Let's move on to another shape may be. Let's take our down stroke shape or undertone shape, and this time instead of going up or to the right, let's go down. From here, create a loop that goes down like that, and now let's create a loop that intersects back. Let's go see what these look like in action. At this point we've reached 25 and we could stop there, but I feel like there's a lot of potential for this shape. Let's see if we can do just a handful more. Let's see what else we can do. I can take this exit point and then continue to intersect this original basic shape here. Let's try that. What if we did this basic loop, but under this first loop? Like that, and then continue to add other loops, and just see what else you can do. You can get really complicated with these things, but as you can see, you can just use all those ovals. Remember to use the vertical lines and the horizontal ones and try to intersect at 90 degrees, almost as close as you can, and just see where that takes you. Let's see these in action too. There you have it, we worked on 30 different variations of the exit stroke flourish. We created a couple of basic shapes in numbers 1,11, and 17 and 24 and then from there we added ovals and Figure 8s and intersecting lines to create our flourishes. Now take a moment to create maybe five or six of your own. You can create your own basic shape too, or you can use the ones that I've provided for you. You can find these worksheets in the class downloads. Get practicing, and I'll see you in the next video. 9. Entrance Stroke flourish: Hey everyone, welcome to this video. We're going to look at flourishes that you can add to the entrance stroke. Now, as I've mentioned before, you can add flourishes here, but you have to be really careful about how you create them because they can easily end up looking like another letter. To avoid that, just make sure that you're keeping all of your flourishes using only thin lines, and really being careful of those intersecting lines that they're as close to 90 degrees as you can get them. Don't feel like you have to really go wild, and add tons of flourishes. You can keep it simple, and still create a nice, elegant flourish. Without further ado, let's go ahead, and get started. At the entrance stroke, it basically looks like this, it's an upstroke that goes up like that. We're going to use this, and I create variations from that. The first one that we're going to create is one that goes like that. Now there are a couple of different ways that you can write this. You can start with the curve here then go up, or if your hand is pretty steady and you can start from the top then go down just make sure that, you don't put any pressure as you're moving down. Now for me, if I were to use this in a word, I would probably write the whole word first then add this. In that case, I might actually be moving from top down. But that's just my personal preference, if you want to do it a different way, that's totally fine. Let's continue to take this, and create more variations. For the second one, I want to take this curve then intersected down below. I'm going to come down then intersect. Then just as we've done before, you can take this endpoint here then loop back and intersect. Now for this next one we're going to continue to intersect, take this end point, and move to the right then curve downward again. Then the fifth one will look very similar to Number 4, but instead of coming down this far, we're going to make this curve a little narrower then intersect over here. Let's go see these in action. To see these in action, I'm simply going to use the letter a. I'm first going to write my letter a off to the side that I have room up here in the front to do my flourish. The first one. Like I said, I always write my letter first then do the flourish. I'm going to come down, and then just do a simple curve like that. That's our first one. Let's look at Number 2. I come down then do a [inaudible]. As you can see in all of these flourishes, you want to make sure that they are nice and thin, said they don't compete with the actual letter here. Let's continue with some more flourishes. Let's do maybe one more that varies from number five. For Numbers 6, let's do these ovals that we've been doing, and then cross over like we have been. But instead of curving back down like we did for numbers 4, and five, let's extend that to the right, and do another loop. I'm sure there are more possibilities that we could use with this basic shape, but let's try a different one. For this one, we're going to do our entrance stroke, but then bring it up nice and high. Then this due just to loop, we can start really basic, but I think you guys are past that now. For this one, let's take that tail then just continue to extend it. What if we took this tail, but instead of extending it outward, what have we did another loop kind of above it. Then we can also bring it down to intersect. For number 10, let's do this loop, but instead of a vertical loop like this, let's try a horizontal loop. Something like this, actually I don't want to intersect a first. Let's do one that doesn't intersect first. Just simply like that. Let's see these in action. Let's continue with this variation that we did for number ten. Just continue to add loops and in curves. This time, let's go ahead and intersect that. You can also make this loop a little bit bigger then loop around clockwise, like that. You can also intersect through and then extend. In anytime you intersect twice, you can create this middle part into that point or the little loop that we did for the exit stroke. What I mean by that is, you have your oval and then as you're intersecting, you intersect first, then do the point, then exit out. Let's do a different one where you come up, but then just do a simple single loop like that. Let's try a different basic shape. For this one, we're going to create almost like a letter L. When I come down and I do a little loop and then extend below. Why this is really important is because, since this's an entrance stroke, you don't want to be crossing here in the middle because then you might be interfering with any other letters that are on the same plane. If you go below, then hopefully you won't run into other letters. Here, lets continue to make variations of this. You come down again and then loop back almost like a figure 8 and come down and do a slightly bigger loop, and then this time just make ovals. This time you can continue to do that but then intersect, not here at this oval or this loop, but extend this line around and then intersect about here like so. Now, this might interfere with whatever letter you've got going on here. It's okay if that happens, it's not that big of a deal. For number 20, I realize we could still do another variation of number 11. Let's take that one that we did, and then we can just intersect back over like so. Let's look at these five in action. For our last five, we're going to create one more basic shape. This time we're going to take our entrance stroke and then loop it counterclockwise like so, a bigger one. Come up to the same height as where you would have started your entrance stroke. Then for the next one, we're going to loop back down and intersect, but this time stay in the same horizontal plane. This time you can do that same loop, but then come back up, and then create an S curve there. You can take that one a little bit further, come up, and then loop back down. Then lastly, you can do that loop and then you come all the way down and intersect at the bottom there. Here you can clearly see the progression of adding a curve here, adding a loop there to create more and more intricate flourishes. There you have it. Those are 25 flourishes and variations at the entrance stroke. We created some basic shapes, like in numbers 1, 7, 10, 16, and 21, and from there we added S curves and C curves and loops and ovals to create more and more intricate flourishes. Remember that at the entrance stroke, you need to be careful so that your flourishes don't look like other letters, and even if they do, it's okay as long as you don't use thick downstrokes, because then it will definitely resemble other letters. Remember to keep your flourishes lower than the baseline so that it doesn't interfere with other letters, or you can swing it up high above the waistline and create flourishes there. At this time, use the worksheet to create your own flourishes. Remember there aren't really any wrong answers as long as you follow the basic rules. If you use the drills and the basic shapes, you'll create some really awesome flourishes. I can't wait to see what you make. Go ahead and practice, and I'll see you in the next video. 10. Ascender loop: Hey, everyone. In this video, we're going to look at 25 variations of flourishes that we can do at the ascender stroke. All right. To start off, the ascender stroke basically looks like this. From here, we'll do a lot of variations that go to the left, go to the right and go above. Like always, we'll start out pretty basic. We'll go ahead and draw our ascender stroke, and this time, we'll take this line here and then just curve upward, clockwise. Next, we'll take that tail, and that intersect right into here. We're going to cross over or intersect this loop here, again. Anytime we cross two lines, remember that we can use that point. You can make your loop a little bit wider. Come around, intersect, dip down into a point, and then lead back out. This time, let's add a little loop at the end of that tail. For number five, we'll keep this loop on the tail, but change this point to a small loop. Let's see these in action. Remember how we use the word "hi" as our example to show exit stroke flourishes? Well, we'll use that word again, because the letter H has an ascender stroke. We'll draw our H and the I like normal, and for the first variation, we're just going to extend this over, like that. Let's continue to work on our variations. For number six, I'm going to make my loop a little bit wider because I want to intersect like we have been. But then intersect again like that, creating a nice spiral. For number seven, I'm going to do the same as number six, but then from this tail's end, I'm going to do a point and then lead out. This is the same thing as number six, then I stop here, point, and then lead out. Number eight is going to look like number seven, but then come up and then intersect. For number nine, let's dial it back up just a little bit, and we're going to do just a loop just right outside. For number 10, we'll do a series of intersecting ovals like that. Let's see these in action. For number 11, let's take what we have in number 10, and then at this end, let's do a point, and then intersect all through than a center loop. Do a point here, and I make my ovals just a little larger. Point there and then lead there. For number 12, let's just extend that tail. Number 13, let's do something similar, but what we did in number 10, let's just extend that and just go straight through, instead of doing a point. For number 14, just like we did the points in numbers 11 and 12, let's do that same point at this area. For number 15, let's go back to number 13 and just extend that down. Let's go see these in the word "hi". Before we move on to a new basic shape, let's just take number 15 and just continue to extend that tail through this downstroke here. For number 17, let's try a different basic shape. If we go back to number one, super basic. In number two, we started to curl back around through the loop. Let's do that and make that our basic shape. Something as simple as that. Then let's add a little tail at the end there, and then instead of a tail, we can go back to number 17 and then curl that back into the loop here. Number 20, let's take number 19, do a point here, and then come around and then intersect into this oval here. Do a point there, then come back and intersect. I hope you're ready to do the last five. Let's do another basic shape. We have our ascender loop, and we're going to do something similar that we did in number 17. But then, loop all the way back around in an intersect here. Now, let's take this tail and then continue to intersect through the loop. Then take this tail, continue to intersect, and then come back into this oval here. We're going to do a little bit more complicated stuff. Remember, anytime we intersect two areas with the same line, we can create that point. If you do this and come around, stop in the middle of that loop, but then make a point. Come up just a little bit and then come up like that. For number 25, we're going to do something similar to 23, but then take that tail and then intersect back into this loop here. A lot of intersections in that one, so you have to be really careful not to be. It's not quite as rounded as I would like it, but it looks fine. Let's go see these in action. Great job in practicing all these 25 flourishes at the ascender stroke. Like I said, this is one of my favorite places to add a flourish because there are so many letters that have an ascender. It's just a lot of fun to work with all these different sides, ovals, and loops and flourishes. Remember to start with basic shapes, like the ones in numbers 1, 9, 17, and 21. I'd love for you to create your own basic shapes too. With the ascender loop, it's really important that your flourishes don't take away attention from the original loop. Be careful to keep all of your flourishes nice and thin, and keep your intersections at 90 degrees. With the ascender loop, it's a lot of fun going back and forth between the left and right, and then right to left. Have fun experimenting with S curves and flowing between the two areas. Now it's time for you to practice and create your own flourishes. Make sure to download the worksheets. Remember to include these in your project, and I can't wait to see what you create. I'll see you in the next video. 11. Descender loop: Hey everyone. In this video, we're going to look at 25 variations of flourishes at the descender stroke. As I've mentioned, the descender stroke is a really common place to add a flourish. You can use wide loops, narrower loops, and just like the ascender, you can go between left and right, and use the S-curves to travel. Well, I can't wait to start making these with you. Let's get started. Now, the basic descender stroke or the descender loop looks like that. so that's going to be our basic shape that we start out with. Like always, our first variation is going to be really basic. We'll do this descender stroke, and then just extend that tail just around like that. For the next one, we'll just take that tail and then bring it down even further. You could even go below the descender stroke if you wanted to. For number 3, instead of going below, let's intersect the loop. So you can make your loop a little wider if you want, to make that intersection happen. By now, you should know if you are have already crossed a line and you're about to cross another, you can create a point. I'm going to create a point there and then lead back out. For number 5, I'm going to do that same stroke but then bring it back. Let's see these in action. I'm going to use the word go, as my example word. So here's the first variation. Now, sometimes when you do these flourishes, it's not going to connect nicely with the next letter, and that's totally okay. You can still add a little entrance stroke for the o if you want. Let's try creating another basic shape. In numbers one through five, we had a narrow vertical loop. For number 6, I want to create a horizontal loop. So when I come down, I'm going to swing y to the left and then come around like that. For 7, take that and intersect it back. For number 8, I'm going to do the same, but this time I'm going to point and lead out. For number 9, instead of a point, change that to a little loop. Now, there is still a lot more that you could do with this, so I'd love to see what you create. Let's continue on. For number 10, we'll do another basic shape. So we'll come down and just create a small loop that continues further down. Let's see these in action. For the next several flourishes, let's work off of the basic shape that we created in number 10. For number 11, let's do that loop and the intersect it back. For number 12, let's create a point and then lead out. For number 13, instead of that point, just make it a straight line. For number 14, instead of the point being within this loop, create the point out here. For number 15, let's just continue this tail around an intersect back here. Let's go see these in the word go. For number 16, let's try another basic shape. It's going to look similar to number 10, but instead of doing the loop, and then bringing it further down, exit out at the same plane as where you ended that descender loop. So it looks a little bit different than number 10. Now let's make variations from that. So you can come down to the loop, and the intersect. Remember to keep that horizontal plane. Now you can do this point within this loop 2, I just did it outside. So again, more opportunities here to create flourishes. But let's move on to another basic shape, which is one of my favorites, because you're going to be moving from the right to the left. So you're going to use the same basic shape that you did in number 1. You're going to create a narrow loop, go to the right, but then you're going to use an S-curve, and then curl back in front of that loop. So let's try that is for number 20. So when you come down, make a narrow loop like that, loop around and then S-curve out to the front. Let's go ahead and see these in the word go. For the last five, we're going to build off of the basic shape that we created in number 20. So do that basic shape where you do that narrow, loop around, and let's do another loop that goes upwards like that. Number 22, let's just bring that tail and then intersect back into that loop. For 23, at this end point, create a point, and then lead out. For number 24, we're going to do something similar to number 22, we're just going to do a series of ovals over on this side. For number 25, we're going to do something similar to 24, and we're just going to continue to add ovals. Make sure that you're using ovals and not circles, and actually this last loop is almost a circle, so I'm not quite pleased with that one. If I were to redo it, I would probably just make it just a little bit more horizontal, something a little bit more like that. That way this is more of an oval, whereas this is like a circle. Let's go see these in the word go. Great job in writing all of these 25 flourishes at the descender stroke. We started off really basic, like in numbers 1, 6, 10, 16, and 20. From there, we had a loop going to the right, we also had loops going down, and then we also used S-curves to loop to the right, but then come back to the left. Remember to use those points and smaller loops, so that you can create more intricate designs. Don't forget that you can also extend that down stroke in the descender stroke, as far down as you want, to make your flourishes as large as you want them to be. As I mentioned throughout the video, there are so many opportunities and possibilities of flourishes here at the descender loop. So make sure to download the worksheets, so that you can practice further and create your own. I can't wait to see them. I'll see you in the next video. 12. Middle of word downstroke: Hey everyone. In this video we're going to look at flourishes that could happen in the middle of a word. Remember that not every letter is going to fall into this category. But as a general rule of thumb, you could use these flourishes for the letters H, M, N, R, U and X. If you're working on a longer composition that has multiple lines, you could use these flourishes to cross letters or connect to an a center stroke. Now what I mean by the middle of a word downstroke, if we take the word and for example, this stroke right here that is what we can extend down below the baseline and fill in the space under the word. So our basic shape is going to have a downstroke, but then sort of extend down a little bit. So that's what our basic shape is going to look like. Kind of like a C curve sort of. All right let's get started. For our first one, will take this basic shape and then curve up a little bit, like so. For the second will curve and then intersect. For the third one will curve, intersects and come down even further. Remember to try to keep these flourishes low because if you come up too high, then you're going to intersect with the letters that are up here. For number four, let's try a different shape. So, so far we've done vertical loops here, but let's try a more horizontal loop. So swing Y to the right and then loop back with a C curve. For number five, come down, big loop to the right, then to the left, and then intersect. Let's see these in action. So I'm going to use the word and as our example. So for the first one, I'm just going to simply come down like that. For number six, let's try a different basic shape. So we're going to do a loop like we have been like a numbers one through five, but we're going to make a kind of a medium loop and then do an S curve that goes up like that and number seven, bring that around and then intersect and you know what we're going to do here, we're going to do a point. So come around, point, lead out. By now, you'll notice that there are some flourishes that looks similar all across the board and that's okay in calligraphy, it's okay to have consistency. You don't always have to think of something new. So it's actually a good thing if you start developing some flourishes that you seem to kind of default to. For number nine, we're going to come down and then loop further down, loop and then intersect up. All right, let's see these in the word and. For the next five, let's continue to build off of what we did in number nine and just continue to create ovals and use points and smaller loops to create our flourish. For the last 10 flourishes, we're going to do something similar to what we did in number 9, but this time create an S curve that goes up. From here, we're going to do all of the rest of our flourishes. This is another basic shape that we'll work off of. Come up and intersect, and you know what we're going to do next. Point, lead out. This time use a loop and therefore number 20, just continue that tail to intersect. I'm going to go ahead and do the last five as well, because we're going to continue to use this basic shape. For number 21, let's take what we did in number 20 and then just extend that tail. For 22, just take that tail and continue to curve outward with an S curve. Now let's create a loop at the end. This time bring it back with an S curve or C curve and intersect. For 25 it's going to look like 24 but then after you intersect here, continue that tail upward to intersect again over here. These last five are probably one of my favorite ones to use for this type of flourish. You can make these as large as you want. These look very condensed but if you were to expand upon them, they could really fill up a lot of room. We're also using a lot of ovals here. Remember to loosen your wrist so that you can create these flourishes. Especially when you magnify these and make them a lot larger, you're really going to need your arm to make that movement for you. Now let's see, all 10 of these in the word and. Well, it's no secret that this is one of my favorite places to add a flourish. I hope you had a lot of fun creating these flourishes with me. We started with some basic shapes, like the ones in numbers 1, 4, 6, 9 and 16 and there are still so many other possibilities for flourishes here. Remember to use different shaped ovals. We can use vertical and horizontal and even those on an angle. Use S curves wisely so that you can navigate between the left side and the right side of the down-stroke. If you want to challenge yourself, try creating these same flourishes but in a much larger size so that you can practice your arm movements. I can't wait to see the flourishes that you create. Go ahead and download the worksheet so that you can create your own flourishes. Then make sure to upload it to your project. I'll see you in the next video. 13. Cross Stroke: Hey everyone. In this video, we're going to look at 25 variations that we can use at the cross stroke. There are only a handful of instances were a cross stroke could be used and one of them is for the lowercase t, which is a very common letter. You can also use it on the capital F, capital T, and even on the capital A and H if you wanted to. Remember to keep your flourishes balanced and not do too much of it. But it's a great way to add just a little bit of flourish to level up your work. Let's get started. For the examples here, I'm going to use the lowercase t as our basic shape. Now when you do a cross stroke, the most basic way that you could cross is with a straight line. From here, we're going to expand on that and use curves and use ovals to really go wild with this flourish. We're going to focus here on that stroke. Our first one is going to be really basic. We'll do that under turn and then instead of a straight line, we'll do a curved line. Now I'm going to pause here because some people cross their T from left to right and some cross from right to left. It doesn't really matter which way you cross. Whatever feels comfortable for you, use it. For me, because I'm right-handed, I tend to go from left to right. But sometimes there are flourishes that make more sense if you go from right to left and so you'll see that as I demonstrate here in this video. But try it both ways and see what feels natural and comfortable for you. For the second one, let's do this basic shape here, number one, but then do a small loop at one of the ends. For the third one, let's intersect, then do a little loop and then finish it off. For number four, it will look similar to number two, but then just do a bigger loop. For the last one, this is the one where I might cross from right to left. It's going to look very similar to four but you're just going to intersect and have that tail go up a little bit more. For this one I'm going to start from the right, come down, loop, extend upward. For me it feels more natural to go from the right to the left for this particular flourish. All right, I'm going to use my brush pen and I'm going to write the word "to". For the first example, instead of a straight line, we created an S curve. Small loop, S curve. For number three, we're going to do an S curve, but then add a loop. For four, add a big loop and then for five, like I said, it's easier for me to go from the right to the left. For number six, let's look at what we did for number two but then also what we did for number five and have a small loop on both ends. But this time have the ends intersecting the cross stroke. Okay, now let's start to add a little bit more intersections and ovals. For seven, let's start by creating a pretzel shape like that and then an S curve. For eight, let's do that same pretzel kind of oval interlocking shape here and then add a loop at the end. Now for number nine, let's add this oval shape on both sides. You can try to make them about the same size just so that it looks more balanced. All right, for number 10, I'm going to start from the right again and this time we're going to do a point here and then do an oval around it. All right, let's see what these look like. I apologize, I mixed up numbers eight and nine, sorry about that. For numbers 11 through maybe 13 or 14, let's focus on flourishes and ovals that happen on the right side of the cross stroke. You're going to start from your left, create an oval intersect like that, we've seen that shape before, and then do a point that leads out. For number 12, we're going to do the vertical mirror image of this one. Instead of the S-shape going up, then down, we're going to have the S-shape going down, then up, and then oval point out. Remember how we can vary the S-shape can help us create different ovals. Let's just create a set of like intersecting ovals like that and then for 15, let's create something similar to this, but this is more horizontal. Let's create a more vertical one and I'm going to do it just for the heck of it on the left side. So I'm going to start from my right, because again for me, it just feels more natural, then I come down big loop, smaller loop, finish off with an intersection. Let's go see these in the word to. So far we've really concentrated on flourishes that are happening on either side of the cross stroke, but generally in the same horizontal plane. Now we're going to kind of break out of that and do some flourishes above and further to the right or further to the left, or we're going to use s-curves and c-curves to start on one end and then curve back to where we started. So I know that sound like a lot of information, but it'll all make sense. So for example, in number 16, we have our shape. I'm going to start on the left. I'm going to do an s curve that goes up and then a loop and then come up above that t. Now, from here, I can do an oval right there. For number 18, let's start our cross stroke from the right side and then loop or curve back over. Let's do a simple loop there and that right there. All right, I'm going to continue on just because there's a lot more that we could do. For 21, let's take this end point and just continue to extend it. For 22, let's look back at number 18 and where that endpoint is, create a point and then tail out, is very minimal looking. For 23, let's try something a little bit different. Let's create ovals before we crossover. In 24, let's do that basic shape and then do a series of connecting ovals and for 25, let's do what we did in 23, but then add a small loop here at the end. Let's see these last 10 in the word to with the brush pen. Well, I hope you had a lot of fun creating these flourishes at the cross stroke. Remember that it's not just the letter t that you can create these flourishes at, you can do it on the capital T, capital F, and even the cross points in the capital letters A and H. These cross strokes can also be used as a standalone flourish just to fill in more space within your composition. Remember that with the cross stroke, it doesn't really matter which side you start at first. One of the sides will feel more natural than the other and for some of these flourishes, it might make more sense to start from the left or the right. It just takes a little bit of practice and for you to be more self-aware. Now it's time for you to practice. Create some more flourishes for the cross stroke and really stretch your creativity and try different things. Make sure to upload it to your project and I can't wait to see them. I'll see you in the next video. 14. Apex: [MUSIC]. Hey everyone, welcome to the final place where you could add a flourish which is at the Apex. The apex is found at the top of pointed capital letters, such as A, H, M, N, U, V, W, and Y, and possibly other letters depending on how you personally write them. They could potentially be also used on lower-case letters if they have an apex. But more often than not, they are found at capital letters. The basic shape is basically a short upstroke and then a down stroke and a short upstroke. From here, the flourish would come up and around and so on. Let's look at 25 different ways to create a flourish here. As we've been doing, I'm going to take our basic shape and then create a really small variation as a basis for a couple other flourishes. For the first one, let's create this basic shape. Then from here at the apex, I'm going to curve counterclockwise and do a C curve like so. For the second one, create that basic shape again. Then this time at the apex, I'm going to come around and do a big C curve and then cross or intersect both lines. This time, I'm going to create some space between my upstroke and my down stroke. We're going to do the same movement as number two, but then create that point, the little scallop right there, and then exit out. For four, I'll come all the way around and then intersect to make a loop. Finally for number five, I'll come around. But then do a small-scale up here, and then intersect. That's one way to look at it, let's look at this in action. To see this in action, I'm going to use the capital letter A. Our basic shape looks like an A, but it has a longer upstroke, and it looks like that. Then for me the apex is going to be right up there. Let's do these flourishes on the letter A. For some of these flourishes, it's convenient because the ones that we just did, it's going to help us cross and make this cross stroke. So for the first one, we have the letter A like that, and I'm going to go ahead and cross it because this first flourish is not going to cross the A for us, and then just simply come up and around. Now the second flourish, it is going to cross the A for us. I'm going to come up and come around. The third flourish also is going to cross for us. But do the scale up in the middle and then come out. All right, that looks great. Let's look at some more flourishes. For the next two, I'm going to go ahead and create the basic shape and seven. But I'm going to give a quick caveat because remember one of our rules in flourishing about how we shouldn't intersect three lines at any given point. Well, in these flourishes, I'm going to break that rule, but I'm going to break it only because I'm not technically intersecting at a flourish line. You can take it with a grain of salt. You can do these flourishes or not. I've seen it in action and it doesn't look terrible. What I mean by that is for the sixth one, instead of going clockwise, this time we're going to curve to the right. We're going to come up and then we're going to do a loop, but we're going to touch that apex right there. Technically at this point, there aren't just three lines, there are actually four lines intersecting. So it's up to you whether you like this flourish or not. Number seven is just very similar, but just curve back like that. If you don't like these, that's totally okay. We will see it in action on the letter A and you'll see that it's not as bad as it sounds or looks. Again, try it, but if you really hate it, no need to use it. Okay, for eight, let's try a different basic shape. We're going to curve to the right again and then do a C curve just like that, and then nine and 10 will just be variations on that. We'll come up, we'll intersect. I'm running out of room. We're going to come up and then intersect, and technically I don't want that to be touching the apex. I'm just going to just fix that up a little bit so it should come up a little higher, then like that. Ideally the loop will be larger, but I just ran out of room here. Okay, let's go ahead and see these in action. All right, so as I mentioned, the six and seven, we are going to be writing letters that have the apex and the flourish touching. So again, if you're not a fan no worries. Doesn't look half as bad. It just looks like it's wearing a hat. All right, number eight. I come to the right like that. All right, so those look good, let's keep going. For the next five, let's continue adding flourishes from this variation in number 8. From here, let's do that loop that we have a number 10, but then continue our line and create another C curve there. For 12, let's do something similar to number 7, but instead of touching the apex, let's cross at a higher point in the loop so that we don't break that rule. For this one, let's do what we did in 12, but then bring this down so that we cross the A. Again, cross high, and then cross the A. For 14, let's keep that tail going so that it intersects this loop over here, continues on and that intersects this line over here. Again, loop high, come down low, cross the A, cross the loops, and then finish there. That one is fun. Let's do one more, number 15. Sorry, it's on another line, but these are some big flourishes, I need to make sure I have enough room. For this one, we're going to do that same movement, going to the right, crossing to the left, then we're going do a loop that heads upward. Let's go see these on the letter A. All right, 10 more to go. Let's do just a few more variations from the basic shape that we created in number 8. For number 16, let's continue what we did in number 15. To do that same, come up, but then come back down to create another oval there. For 17, let's do what we did in 16, but then make this oval just a little bit wider so that we can bring this down to cross the A, or if we wanted to cross the A, but even still, you could. Like that. For 18, let's try another shape. For this one, let's just curve clockwise and do a narrow C curve. From that basic shape, let's just exit out. For this one, let's do the loop, but then we're going to cross over above the apex and do an S curve. Let's look at these five on the letter A. Let's do the final five. For number 21, let's expand on number 20 and do multiple loops. We'll do 1, 2, and then we'll across all of them above the apex to meet that S curve. For the last four, we'll do one more basic shape and for this one, we're going to basically cross these two lines from right to left. From the apex, we're going to do a wide C curve and then crossover. For 23, do that same motion, but then come around and intersect. For 24, do that same thing, but do the scallop and then S curve out. Then lastly, for number 25, we will do big curve that goes around, and then we'll do a loop here and then exit out. Be careful not to intersect too many lines at this point. Let's put these final five together on the letter A. Great job finishing all these flourishes at the apex. We created some basic shapes at numbers 1, 6, 8, 18, and 22. We experimented with creating narrow ovals and wide ovals, and varying our C and S curves. It was convenient that the apex stroke can be found on the capital A, and sometimes these flourishes can help with the cross stroke. Flourishes are really cool because sometimes they can be more than just flourishes. Keep experimenting and see how you can use them in diverse ways. In the next video, we're going to look at some simple words and phrases, and learn how to incorporate these flourishes that we've learned strategically. I'll see you in the next video. 15. Flourishes & Names: Hey everyone, we're going to start putting into practice the flourishes that we've learned and we're going to practice using first names. A while ago, I asked in my Instagram stories for people to submit names for me to write with flourishes and I received several dozen requests. I couldn't write them all and I felt really bad, but I was able to write a lot of them and so these are just some of the names that I wrote. I have a couple of more pages and layers of names but it was just really fun because it really pushed my creativity. It really challenged me to think outside the box. It really helped me to look beyond and so that's what we're going to do in this video. We're going to take some of these names and practice doing flourishes on them and I'm going to show you just what my thought process is. It might not look pretty the first time, but we'll work through it and so you can just get a sense of how I think through the flourishes, how I make several revisions, and how I end up with the final product. Here we go. For this demonstration, I'm going to be using my iPad and the procreate app. If you don't have the iPad, no worries, you can still use just a regular pencil and a different colored pen or a marker to do this exercise. I'm just using the iPad because it's a little bit more convenient just for demonstration purposes but it does not mean that you have to have this for this lesson. We'll do a couple of names as demonstration. The first name that will do is Maya. When it comes time for me to write place cards and do invitations and envelope calligraphy, I have my default flourishes, but sometimes I want to try new ones and experiment. In that case, I start out by writing the name like normal. Now at this point, this is when I would experiment with a different colored pen or markers or use tracing paper or I would write the name multiple times so that I could try using different flourishes but with the iPad, it's really easy you can just create a new layer and I'm going to make this Maya just a little bit lighter and I'm going to use a red color to practice my flourishes. If you're using a pencil and paper, you can still use your pencil, you can use a different colored pen etc. At this point, I'm just going to talk you through what I'm seeing and what kind of flourishes I might want to go for. In the name Maya, there are a couple of areas that we could potentially add flourishes. We have the apex here, we have a descender, we have an exit stroke and then we have an entrance stroke. Now just because we have these four locations, it doesn't mean that we have to add flourishes in all of them. In fact, I don't think I'm going to, what I'm thinking of doing is maybe I'm going to take my apex and do a little bit here, but then bring it over to the left side and make it really heavy and big over here and then I'm going to take my descender and then curve over to the right and do something in this corner. The way that I'm going to balance my flourish is by doing something in this area and then in this corner. Now with flourishes, you want some balance. If you only had a flourish in this section, it might still look okay, you might just have to write it out and see for yourself but in most cases, you should probably have a flourish to balance the opposite end so this corner over here. That means I don't necessarily have to have a flourish at the exit or the entrance stroke. I might add one, just a small c curve or a small scale up just to balance it out but we'll have to see when we get there. Let me just delete these and let's just try sketching a couple of different flourishes. I'm going to start with the apex. I'm going to keep my flourish simple for now because I can always make it more complicated later and then now I could take my descender stroke and then come around that way. Now I'm looking at this and over here I have three smaller, like medium-size ovals over here. Over here, I have one large one and smaller one. Now it doesn't mean that I have to match the number of ovals, but just because of how large this is, it seems a little overwhelming. I'm going to try a different flourish. No, I don't like that either. That one's not as bad, but I don't want it to go out too far. I think I like this one a little bit better. I'm just trying to look at it and see. Now that I have my two corners sort of filled in with these simple flourishes, now I can take a look at my entrance and my exit stroke and decide, do I want to add a flourish there or not or maybe I could just add a simple c curve. In that case, maybe I can extend my a, maybe i can extend that exit stroke and then intersect there or I can maybe come up like that. I'm not in love with that, so I'm going to delete it, just like this one. Now if I wanted to intersect this loop and this c curve, then maybe I want to bring down this loop even further down. Maybe I want to come down all the way here and swing high like that, so that's an option. Now that I did something here on the exit stroke, I can consider doing something here on the entrance stroke. In this case maybe I can extend this further and do something like that. I don't know if you can see that. I'll do it a little darker. Something simple like that. Yeah, I'm kind of liking this. You can always take this also intersect here, but I'm not going to do that or you can take this and do a scallop here just to make it more enclosed, but I'm not going to do that either. Let's take this and I'm going to create one more layer. Now if you're using pencil and sketch paper, you can either place another tracing paper on top or just sketch out the word again. For me, I'm going to create a new layer and then make this red lines, bring down the opacity and I'm back to using black ink. Now I'm going to start writing but I'm going to incorporate the flourishes. For the entrance stroke I'm going to do that last and now at this point I'm going to do my apex flourish first, like so and then bring this down. Now for the y that we are going to swing low and then do this flourish over here and then I'm going to finish up the entrance stroke over here. It looks a little messy because we've got all these layers. I'm just going to turn them off and now you can see the finished word. This name looks a lot more balanced. We have the flourish kind of up on the top, but heavy in this top left corner and then we have another flourish here in the bottom right corner to balance it out and then we did consider adding flourishes at the entrance and the exit strokes and I think we did a good job of just adding, just enough. It wasn't too much, but it does add just a little bit more detail. Let's look at the next name. The next name that we'll look at is Oliver. Again, I write the name like normal. Then from here I'm going to use another layer, bring this opacity down, and use a red color to practice our flourishes. Now in this class I didn't really cover capital letters and flourishes because that's a whole another topic and I would love to do a class on that later, but for now, we will do some basic flourishes here on the letter O. We have an a ascender and then this exit stroke. This R could also be, or this downstroke here could also be another flourish. Instead of using the exit stroke we could use this downstroke as the flourish. In order to demonstrate some flourishes for the letter O, I'm just going to use this space down here to do that. I'll use black ink to do that so you guys can see that clearly. Depending on how you write your O, there are a couple of different flourishes that you could do. You could do just multiple loops, you can also do something like this where you do the scallop design, you can also do something like this where you use the S curve to loop around. Now this one I kind of like because from here I can extend this into the ascender curve for the l. That does mean that maybe I shouldn't make this first loop as wide. If I do that again, no I don't like that, something like that. Maybe if I push the flourish over to the left a little bit and then kept this one a little bit tighter so that that l can fit, I like this better. We'll do something like that. Let's go back up to our red color. Let's add this flourish up here. I'm going to go ahead and erase these red lines here so they're not as distracting. For this flourish it looks like we're going to go down, up, around keep it nice and tight, and then loop around for the l. Now that we've done that, I guess we don't really have to worry about doing a flourish here at the l then. So then if we're only doing a concentrated flourish right here on this letter, then we should probably just do a smaller concentrated flourish right here. That makes me think that I want to use this downstroke as my flourish rather than the exit stroke. In that case I'm just going to keep it really simple bring it down, do a ribbon like that or you can do something just a little bit more complicated, just to balance out all these individual ovals that we've got going over here in this O. I like the way that this turned out. I'm going to go ahead and use that next layer and bring this opacity down, use a black ink color, make sure I'm in the right layer, and then complete our name. That is our completed name. What do you guys think? Remember that flourishes don't always have to be over the top. Just a couple of simple loops like this just really add a lot of interests to the name, a lot of visual appeal but you can still read it very clearly. In the next video, we'll look at some simple phrases and use flourishes to compose them. I'll see you there. 16. Flourishes on a short phrase: Hey everyone. In this video we're going to write the phrase, forever and always, and use flourishes to create a nice, cohesive composition. Now again, remember we don't have to go over the top. We don't have to add a flourish at every single location, but it's really about using it so that it will enhance the words themselves. So let's go ahead and write out the words normally. As before, I'm going to use a different layer and use the red ink and bring this opacity down just a bit. From here, there are so many places that we could potentially add flourishes. We have an imaginary entrance stroke here. We have an ascender stroke in the F. We also have a descender like stroke here too. This downstroke here in the middle of the word could be used. The same thing with this part in the R. The ampersand can also have flourishes. We could add something here, something here. We have an ascender here, a descender here, and then this exit stroke as well. You could also have an entrance stroke flourish too. So there are almost a dozen places that you could potentially add flourishes. It is not realistic to add a flourish at every single one of those. This is what I am seeing. I really like when you have a composition like this, that you can use flourishes to connect letters, especially when they're on different levels. For example, you could use this R and this downstroke. Do a little flourish in this blank area and then connect to the L here. If I have a small flourish here in the middle, just visually speaking, I want something large up here and then large down here. If that's the case, then it makes me think, maybe I will do a flourish here at this ascender. Definitely a flourish here and connect to this L. Then do a flourish here with this Y. Then all these other ones, I might consider adding maybe after I concentrate on these three main locations. If I'm going to connect this downstroke to the L, I want to keep my flourishes small, especially if they're loops, just because I don't want them competing with the ascender loop here. If I come down and do something like that, these loops are smaller than this ascender loop. It's not that hard to read and it fits snugly in this section. I could make this loop just a little smaller so it's not so close to the ampersand or I can just move the ampersand to the left a little bit. But right now, I like the way that this looks, so I'm going to keep it. Let's focus here on this Y. There's a lot that you could do with this. I'm going to first exaggerate the length of this and maybe come to the right, nice and wide, and then come to the left and do something like that. Now you could add more loops if you wanted to. Do something more like that. You could even go up, not like that. Something more like that. Again, there's a lot of possibilities but I'm just going to keep it simple and just do one continuous stroke like that. I have a huge flourish down here. I'm going to try to balance it out with a huge flourish up here. That means, I have edit this ascender loops shape. If I make it just a little shorter, like that, I could do something small there, come over, create a big loop, and do something like that. If that's a bit much, I could just do one less oval and then intersect like that. I don't really like that tail. I don't know why I did that. I like this just because I have these large ovals here and then these swing out to the right. I like how the first letter has this flourish all the way to the right. Then second to the last letter has a flourish all the way to the left. I like how this all balances out. Yeah, I'm just taking a look at it and seeing if I need to add a flourish anywhere else. I could take this R, then maybe just do something simple like that, or even just a small ribbon, the same thing as this guy. I don't have to do that at all. Maybe I just make a little heart-shaped flourish. Maybe for the S, I can just keep it as it is. Don't need to add anything fancy. Now, this ampersand is looking a little lonely but I don't think it really matters. I really like the way that this looks. I'm going to go ahead and do the final layer, bring this opacity down and see how it looks. Here we go. I just need to finish off with this flourish. Well, what do you guys think? I really like it? I think when you start with simpler flourishes, it really helps. Because when we first looked at our words, we looked at all the possible locations that you could add a flourish. Then we strategically chose three place, the one here with this downstroke on the art to connect to the L. Then we wanted to balance that middle part with a large flourish at the top and a large flourish here at the bottom. Then we considered adding flourishes at other locations but it didn't really seem that necessary. But we did add a small one here on this R just to add that heart shape that goes with this theme of love and being together forever, always. Well, I hope that was really helpful as I walked you through my thought process of how to add flourishes, whether it was in names or a phrase like this. I hope you can feel confident enough to write place cards and envelope calligraphy, greeting cards, etc. Now it's time to wrap up and talk about your project. I'll see you in the last video. 17. Your Project and Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Hey everyone and congrats. Can you believe that you created almost a 180 individual flourishes? That's amazing, and you probably wrote a few dozen more through your practices. Let's just take a moment and celebrate that. Now let's talk about your project. It's pretty open-ended, you can post the flourishes that we did together, or you can post the flourishes that you created on your own or post some words that you incorporated the flourishes into, whatever you'd like to share, and it can be on any medium, it could be pencil, brush, pens or even digital. Some final thoughts before you go. For those of you who took my watercolor class, you're very familiar with this intro. Number one, remember that it takes time and to celebrate the small victories. Learning anything new takes time, just like how it took a while for you to get comfortable with calligraphy, develop that muscle memory, the same is true for flourishes. When you don't know what to practice, always go back to the drills, you can never go wrong. Keep doing them until they feel natural to you, and then remember to celebrate the small victories when you finish a page of practicing flourishes, or when you finally figure out what your default flourish is, or when you write someone's name on a postcard, and it looks amazing. That's when you need to take a break and celebrate. You can do a little dance, tell your friend, share it on Instagram, just make sure to celebrate it, and motivate yourself to keep going. My second tip is to make it your own. Even though we practice hundreds of flourishes together, I always emphasize the importance of exploring on your own. I highly recommend you download those worksheets where you have space to create your own flourishes. Modern calligraphy is all about your style and the last thing that you want to do is have to rely on others to show you how to create those flourishes. That's why I created this class, I wanted to set the foundation, a strong foundation, and give you all the tools that you need. So from there, you can stand firm, run wild, and explore all the flourishes that you could possibly make and call them your own. Maybe you can even name it after yourself, 'The Audrey flourish,' I like that. The final tip is, keep it simple. Coco Chanel once said this, ''Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.'' She was talking about taking off an accessory, like a belt or earrings or a headband but in this case, for flourishes, it's also true after you plan out your flourishes, but before you finalize it, take a good hard look at it one more time, and see if there's one thing you could take out. Maybe it's just a small curve or a loop, or maybe a flourish just doesn't belong. Try taking it out and see if the composition improves. Remember sometimes less is better. Well, that's everything from me, you are on your way to flourishing confidently and I'm so glad to be a part of this journey with you. You can show your work on Instagram or on Facebook and tag me @thingsunseeingdesigns, and use the hashtag #calligraphywithtud. I love to share my students and their work. I'd also appreciate a review of this class and write about something new that you learned. Finally, if you know of someone who is struggling with their flourishes, make sure to share this class with them. Until next time, happy writing. Bye