Calligraphy Practice Book Pdf
Monica Okane
Molly Suber Thorpe is a hand lettering artist whose focus is on branding and editorial calligraphy work. She teaches Skillshare classes and in-person workshops, and is the bestselling author of two books about calligraphy.
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However, modern calligraphy is a deviation of ancient scripts with no standardized alphabet. It is essentially freehand pointed pen cursive. It is a popular style on Instagram and and other social media because the style is dependent on the writer and therefore every time a word is written it will be different. It is also rather easy to learn as you will see later in this post. You just need a pointed pen, ink and know how to write in cursive. If you have those three, read on to learn how!
If you find the lowercase sheets useful to your learning I have prepared a premium Uppercase Modern Calligraphy workbook with 3 times the styles per letter for 78 unique letters to practice! More details below ?
If you ever dipped too deep, I would suggest tapping off some extra on the side of the inkwell or making mini strokes on a scrap piece of paper to ensure there are no blobs of too much ink. You can tell if you have too much on the nib when you look at the nib sideways and see a round bump of ink near the tip.
Next hold the pen where it feels comfortable, which for me is illustrated in the picture above. It is important to keep in mind that if you are using an oblique holder to angle your hand appropriately for the lettering.
There are two main motions to learn, the upstroke: a light stroke using just the tip (number 1 in the picture below) and the downstroke: a slightly pressured stroke (number 2 below) that lessens as you get closer to the baseline. Most letters are made up of these two strokes, which you will practice with your free practice sheets.
Above is a lowercase modern calligraphy alphabet, there are many variations and different ways to write and flourish a letter so if you like writing a letter a different way, go for it! Try, experiment, practice until you are where you want to be with your calligraphy skills.
It is mainly a Copperplate practice sheet, as there is the 55 degree angle guidelines but can be used as a modern calligraphy practice sheet as well. It allows you to put your high weight paper into your printer and print this easy guide without having to buy it pre-printed.
Hey Jeel! Thank you for your kind words ?
It would be cool to teach people individually but not feasible for me for now.
The closest we can get is me making a full video course, which I hope to make in the future.
Along the lines of making various projects, remember that working with different mediums will challenge you and improve your skills! So, instead of using sumi ink for your next project, try watercolor calligraphy. Work with metallic watercolors to make glittery, golden letters. Embrace paint-like white ink to make a pleasing contrast of white letters on dark paper! There are always new supplies and techniques that you can try to keep surprising yourself.
When you are writing in cursive, you tend to write fast and continuously. When you are doing calligraphy, you have to write slowly. You have to slightly pause or lift your pen after each letter, paying close attention to each stroke as you are making it.
My letters looked NOTHING like the ones on the videos. Instagram videos definitely make calligraphy seem extremely easy. And you know the secret to making those videos look easy? PRACTICE! Now you know.
In this blog post, I go over in detail the different options you have for beginners. To make it easier for you, I will tell you my favorite tools for beginners. The ones you must-have to start, from there, you can decide to expand your pen collection.
This might be the #1 thing people get wrong when starting calligraphy, not mastering the basic calligraphy strokes. The first time I heard about the basic strokes, I was into calligraphy for about five months!
I knew something was missing on my calligraphy to make it look better, but I had no idea what it was. All that to say, I certainly did not start at the beginning with my calligraphy journey.
Once you know the basic calligraphy strokes, the important thing is to practice them. And practice them, a LOT. Continue doing them until you master these basic calligraphy drills because they are what make up each letter.
I go over how to practice the basic strokes extensively as well as how to create every letter of the alphabet and more on my Modern Calligraphy Workbook for beginners. You can get it here:
Lettering refers to any and all writing created by hand, including handwriting, cursive, and calligraphy. The difference is the effort to incorporate design aspects to the overall look of the piece.
Since I was a kid, my hand writing had never been great and my Chinese calligraphy is just beyond rescue. Although I am always admire those who writes beautifully but I never thought to get practicing again.
Until recently I discovered calligraphist Lindsey Bugbee's blog ,her fabulous works had inspired me so much, god I wish I could write like that! So follow by Lindsey's extremely helpful tutorial for beginners, after weeks practice I finally starting to get hold of the writing rhythm a bit.
And here is my first attempt to write some sentences.
It was an untitled poem I found on the internet, author unknown. The image above was a fabulous printmaking work by artist Thomas Sara. I was deeply moved by both of them and I feel somehow they are just perfect to go along with each other. I hope it will keep reminding me the deep connection between life and death, that we should live life without regrets and in the end greeting the death like an old friend.
In the mean time, I have a heavy heart surrounding recent political situations and have been inspired by the lyrics of Hamilton to keep going, keep persisting, keep resisting. Perhaps they will give you the opportunity to practice, have fun, and set some intentions.
Please be patient with yourself as you make the following adjustments and understand that you will need to practice and continue to make the effort. Having discipline here will offer you the freedom to write comfortably for longer periods of time and open the door to other calligraphy for you.
Have the inner wrist and forearm on the table. Just for a second, press the fleshy part of your forearm down into the table. Feel the muscle there? That muscle will govern some movements and turns, keeping the wrist straight and stable.
Calligraphy is written in relation to a set of guidelines, and is one way the letters all relate to one another. Shortly after looking at my practice script this way, I realized the guidelines I was using were incorrect for the script I was working with, and so was the pen I was using.
As some of you may know already, at Written Word we're big proponents of practicing intentionally because it does make progress. Sometimes, it's great to just trace over worksheets to get the muscle memory your hand needs. Meditation for me helps to slow down and open up my mind so that it's not always so tense, especially when life gets busy!
In this video, we're going to be meditating through a Morgan Harper Nichols quote, "Small progress is still progress." Typically, whenever we write a quote, I like to plan it out by using a pencil and then, I trace over it with ink. When it comes to meditation with calligraphy, it's important to be tracing as opposed to creating so that you are not planning in your mind where the nib is supposed to go.
To try to get some regularity in my practice, I decided to start writing all the kanji from every level. A level per week. I recently reset from level 51 to 31 to 1, so I am hopeful I will be able to keep up the pace going forward!
I will be writing mostly 楷書かいしょ. This is the most basic (most legible) style of writing, I think. Important points are whether strokes are written in correct stroke order, and have the correct shape, i.e. like a sweep (はらい) instead of a stop (とめ) at the end.
I have been writing left-handed since I started. Have tried right-handed a handful of times. The biggest problem I think, are the horizontal strokes. You end up pushing the brush across the page, instead of pulling, which makes it harder to gently lift the brush. That is partly why most of my strokes have the same thickness all the way through.
Hey, Lynn, I used exactly the same stuff when I was testing Chinese calligraphy brushes at Jinli Street in Chengdu last month. I couldn't work out how a brush wet with only water could display like ink. Thanks for "un"confusing me. :-)
We're OBSESSED with tracking our calligraphy journey and practice and progress in these beauties from Mr.MG Ward. Interior paper is the most beautiful natural white color and sized for basically every ink out there!
One point to observe is that when observing the pen from its side, the nib should be at a less inclined angle as the body of the holder, as this prevents the nib from snagging on your paper on the upstrokes.
Whilst it is great to refer to these works for reference, it is imperative that you keep on honing your skills and learning the right letterforms before coming up with your own take on flourishes and variations to the alphabet.
These days, calligraphy is seen on everything from wedding invites, to branding and posters, to high-end ads on TV, so much so that it is easy to forget that it all started with the humble act
of putting pen on paper, and watching ink scribble out beautiful letterforms that have graced everything from official documents to intimate love letters.