Calligraphy for Beginners - Learn How to Do Calligraphy

Transcription

Calligraphy for Beginners
How To Learn Calligraphy At Home in 5 Easy Steps, Even If You Are
A Beginner!
Copyright © 2015 Your Calligraphy Tutor
All Rights Reserved
Feel free to email, tweet, blog, and pass this ebook around the web to anyone you think
would find this useful... but please don’t alter any of its contents when you do. Thanks!
www.howtodocalligraphy.com
Copyright © 2015 Your Calligraphy Tutor. All Rights Reserved
2
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4
Step #1: Gather the Supplies You Need ................................................................................................ 7
1.
Writing Tools .............................................................................................................................. 8
Markers............................................................................................................................................... 9
Calligraphy Pens ............................................................................................................................... 11
Step #2: Learn How to Hold the Pen ................................................................................................... 16
Step #3: Getting the Letters Right........................................................................................................ 20
The l” Family ..................................................................................................................................... 21
The “n” Family .................................................................................................................................. 22
The “o” Family .................................................................................................................................. 24
The “v” Family .................................................................................................................................. 24
The “x” Family .................................................................................................................................. 25
Step #4: Practising with Your Pen ........................................................................................................ 26
Step #5: Correcting Your Errors & Perfecting Your Craft..................................................................... 29
Now It’s Your Turn To Do It! ................................................................................................................. 32
[BONUS] Don’t Do These 7 Things If You Want to Learn Calligraphy! .............................................. 34
1. You have a “I cannot learn calligraphy because…” mentality .................................................... 35
2. You’ve just skipped the ‘boring’ basics ....................................................................................... 37
3. Not identifying errors and rectifying them early ........................................................................ 38
4. You write calligraphy like you’re writing normally ..................................................................... 40
5. You aren’t holding the pen properly ........................................................................................... 41
6. You aren’t practising writing in pencil first ................................................................................. 44
7. You don’t know the “6 Calligraphy Letter Families” concept ..................................................... 45
Now You Know, Avoid Them! .......................................................................................................... 46
3
Introduction
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The Italic script is a semi-cursive, sloped style of calligraphy that was
developed during the Renaissance in Italy, which explains its name. It
is one of the most popular styles used in contemporary Western
calligraphy, and is often a script that most beginners and
calligraphers start out with.
Lots of people admire the beauty and versatility of Italic calligraphy.
Its letters are lean, dynamically stylish, and extremely versatile and
can be styled in a variety of ways.
Today, hand-written Italic alphabets remain extremely popular for
quotations, wedding invitations, and art calligraphy. These are just a
few of my doodles which demonstrate the beauty and versatility of
Italic calligraphy:
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Now that you know how versatile and beautiful Italic calligraphy is,
you might be thinking that it must be really difficult to learn Italic
calligraphy… right? Wrong! In fact, it is one of the SIMPLEST hands
you can ever learn, and you can easily pick it if you are willing to put
in the time to practise!
You could very well be writing expressing that quote you’ve always
wanted to in calligraphy, or wedding invitations (or pretty much
anything else!) within 30 days of learning Italic calligraphy!
In this eBook, I will outline the 5 steps that you can follow, step-bystep, to produce the kind of calligraphy that you have always
desired! This proven system has been meticulously formulated
through my personal experience as well as the experience of others’
and I am confident that it will help you too.
Lots of people admire the beauty of Italic calligraphy, and now, you
too can find out how to learn Italic calligraphy in a series of five
simple steps.
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Step #1:
Gather the Supplies You Need
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The first step to even start learning calligraphy is to get all the
required supplies. This chapter will lay out the very few things that
you need to get before you started:
1. Writing Tools
The best writing tool for a beginner to who is learning calligraphy
is a calligraphy pen, and you should start off with one that either
takes cartridges or is pre-loaded with ink, such as a calligraphy
marker. Using a dip pen might be something you want to try later
on, but to learn the basics, it is best to start off simple. You will
need a variety of nib sizes to create a professional effect and for
greater variation in line thickness. The good news is that you do
not need fancy, expensive pens and tools to start learning how to
do calligraphy!
There are really a couple of types of pens that you can use for
calligraphy, but all you need to know is that there are two kinds of
writing tools that you can start out with: the marker and the
calligraphy pen (includes fountain pen, dip pen, etc.).
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Markers
A Water-based Zig Calligraphy Marker
Markers are a great choice when time is a concern but quality
isn’t. They are wonderful for practising your strokes and also
perfect for small tasks that don’t require a high level of
intricacy, such as writing a casual note to a friend or co-worker
or posting a reminder to yourself on a Post-it note. They are
also mess-free, and you can carry them around with you
everywhere. They have these advantages:
 They are fuss-free and mess-free. I just buy them, use them
till they have run out of ink, then throw them away and buy
a new one again. They are inexpensive, too.
 They are good for practising the right strokes. Markers are a
cheap and easy way to practise your strokes and
fundamentals before you start using a calligraphy pen.
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However, there are also drawbacks to using markers:
 You can’t do nice, sharp calligraphy with a marker. The
writing tip is simply not fine enough to make the sharp edges
and fine hairlines that a calligraphy pen will give you. You
might be able to still make thicks and thins of the letters
with a marker, but it will not be as crisp and as desirable as
letters produced with a pen.
 Markers are not suitable for larger tasks. For example, you
wouldn’t want to letter a certificate or a heartfelt gift to a
friend.
 Markers tend to dry out quickly, and you might only be able
to use them only for a short period of time.
 Tip blunts: Even with really careful use, the pressure that
you put on the nib of the marker causes it to deteriorate and
blunt after repeated usage, and it will be unable to retain its
sharpness.
 Markers might encourage bad pen-holding habits. This is
because markers will write no matter what angle you hold
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them at. On the other hand, a calligraphy pen (dip
pen/fountain pen) will not.
Calligraphy Pens
There are a few types of calligraphy pens, mainly cartridgeloaded ones and dip pens. However, so as to keep things simple
and not complicate things unnecessarily, the pens that we
require and refer to here are generally pens with a broadedged nib.
A broad-edged nib allows us to create the effect that we want in Italic Calligraphy
The broad-edged nib of a pen creates the variations in
thickness of the letter strokes and gives it life. There are many
advantages of using a calligraphy pen to do calligraphy:
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 They provide the crisp, sharp strokes that you want. You
want your calligraphy to be crisp and beautiful, and a
calligraphy pen helps you to create sharp edges and fine
hairlines.
 They can be easily carried around. Unless you have a dip
pen, this means that you can do calligraphy anytime,
anywhere! How wonderful is that?
There are practically no disadvantages that I can think of to
using calligraphy pens. One could be that if you are using a dip
pen and not a cartridge-loaded one, you will have to bring your
ink bottles wherever you go. There was one instance where a
student brought her ink bottle and didn’t screw the lid on
tightly. You could imagine the mess she found when she
opened her handbag! However, if you are using a cartridgeloaded pen, it’s unlikely that this would happen to you.
In conclusion, the advantages overwhelm the disadvantages of
using a calligraphy pen.
*Recommended Pen: The Pilot Parallel Pen. Beginners will love
this pen because the ink flow is wonderful, they’re really nice to
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use, and are really inexpensive. They come in a variety of nib
widths and are also cartridge-loaded, which means they are
mess-free, portable, and easy to use.
2. Paper
You will also need something to work from, so ensure you have
practice sheets to trace and copy, as this will also help you to
have something to check your work against to see where you
may need to improve. Ensure that you have a good supply of
paper, preferably thicker than normal to prevent ink from
leaking onto the area you are working on. It would be
preferable for the paper to be smoother (example of rough
paper would be for example sketch book paper), but you can
still practise calligraphy and do calligraphy on rough paper. It
won’t matter much.
3. Practice Grids
You will also need to learn how to draw practice grids, which
act as guides for the height and size of your letters so that you
can practise writing uniform letters. Practice grids are easy to
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prepare, but you have to be careful of the ways that you can
prepare them. There are some methods that are not suitable
for preparing practice grids, as they lead to inconsistent spacing
between lines.
Practice grids consist of 4 main lines - the ascender line (a),
waist line (w), base line (b) and the descender line (d). These
four lines are separated by a space equivalent to 5 widths of
the calligraphy nib that you are using. For example, if you are
using a pen with a nib width of 1mm, the distance between
your waist line and base line would be
5 x 1 mm = 5 mm.
Example of a practice grid, which consists of the 4 main lines, separated by 5 nib widths
You should always remember to prepare your own grids and
lines and practise writing your letters on them to ensure that
your letters are consistent in height and size.
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Additional tools that you should have when you are first starting out:
1. Pencils. You’ll need a few good-quality pencils.
2. Eraser. Get a white eraser that erases well but doesn’t cause
abrasions to the paper. I particularly like Staedtler erasers.
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Step #2:
Learn How to Hold the Pen
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Once you have the right tools to start working out how to learn
calligraphy, you can start practising how to hold your calligraphy pen
correctly.
How to Grip the Pen (or any other writing tool)
You should grip the pen in a relaxed manner, let it rest on the sides
of your middle finger, secure it with your thumb, and create pressure
with the index finger. Let the rest of your fingers relax and curl
naturally.
Do not grip it too tightly because this will interfere with the
smoothness of your words and calligraphy and might also cause
writer’s cramp.
Getting the Pen Angle Right
You should ensure that it is always held with the nibs pointing away
from your body, upwards and slightly to the left. The nib has to be at
a 45-degree angle towards the right. If you want to create a thick
line, you will need to use the wider part of the pen; do the opposite
to create a thinner line.
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Figure 1: at a 45-degree angle, the thicks and thins appear magically as you write.
If you want to know if you are holding your pen at the correct angle,
draw a horizontal line 45 degrees to your right. If you’re holding your
pen at the correct angle, you would be creating the thinnest line
possible with the pen.
Figure 2: Hold your pen such that your nib is at a 35-45 degree angle
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In calligraphy, it is extremely important that you hold your pen
firmly in this 45-degree angle. It is this angle of the pen which gives
you the key characteristic of the letterforms – it makes sure that the
strokes that should be thick are thick, and the strokes that should be
thin are thin.
It might not seem natural to you at first, but after a while, you’ll get
used to it and it’ll become second nature whenever you hold a
calligraphy pen in your hands!
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Step #3:
Getting the Letters Right
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The next step on the list is to begin to form letters following a
template as a guide.
There are six basic letter families: l, n, u, o, v, and x.
The l” Family
The letters in this family are: i, l, j, f, and t.
The main characteristic of the letters in the “l” family is the
downward stroke.
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The “n” Family
The letters in this family are: n, m, r, h, b, k, and p.
The main characteristic of the letters in the n family is the pull-down,
bounce-over stroke.
**Notice that the “n” shape consists of two vertical lines connected
by a branch that extends out midway from the first vertical.
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The “u” Family
The letters in this family are: u, y, a, g, q, and d.
The main characteristic of the letters in the u family is the pull-down,
swing-under, and pull-down stroke.
Notice that the “u” shape is a vertical inversion of the letter “n” –
just turn “n” upside down and you get a “u”!
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The “o” Family
The letters in this family are: o, c, and e.
The main characteristic is their oval shape.
The “v” Family
The letters in this family are: v and w.
The important thing about getting these letters right is to ensure that
the diagonals of these letters are straight, not curved.
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The “x” Family
The letters in this family are: x, s, and z.
Some additional tips for you to note:
1. Practise first with a pencil (get the strokes right first).
2. Each letter has its own order of strokes and a certain shape and
way that you should write it.
It is absolutely important that you follow the correct order of
strokes. Following the diagrams above or having someone to guide
and help you along the way or is the best and fastest way to get it
right and to create the most professional finish.
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Step #4:
Practising with Your Pen
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You should form the letters just how you have practised forming
them stroke by stroke. You can copy the strokes and letter shapes as
illustrated in the pictures and diagrams in Step #3 above.
However, before you start practising, note these three important
things first:
1. Get the thicks and thins of each letter right.
To do so, always pay attention to the way you are holding the pen.
It should be held at a 45-degree angle, as previously taught in step
two. You can also try to practise how to turn the nib slightly to
create thinner and thicker lines to form the letters. It may seem
complicated at first, but over time, it will seem like second nature.
2. Don’t stop in between letters, as this could ruin the effect
and/or cause the ink to run.
Be sure not to touch where you have written until the ink has
dried to avoid smudging.
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3. Take control through the amount of pressure you apply.
To complete the look, you not only have to take control of the
angle you hold the calligraphy pen in; you can also take control
through the amount of pressure you apply. You have to apply an
even pressure to the nib to ensure that the strokes look full,
complete and even. Also, reducing the pressure to as light a touch
as possible to create the professional thinner lines on the tail of
letters.
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Step #5:
Correcting Your Errors & Perfecting
Your Craft
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There are many types of errors that you can make in calligraphy, and
it is very important that you are able to identify them, or at least
have someone there to help you to identify them so that you can
advance quickly in your practice.
Many beginners waste a lot of time practising the wrong things
unknowingly. As much as calligraphy is a really simple art, beginners
still make mistakes, and it is very important that these mistakes are
rectified early before you start “perfecting your imperfections”.
Here are just a few of the many common mistakes beginners make:
1. Overly rounded letters
These letters are too fat and rounded and are too wide for Italic
text.
Letters on the left are too round. They should be narrower like the ones on the right.
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Solution: Keep the letters more compact; keep them narrower.
When you practise your letters, compare them to the letters
shown in Step #3 and make sure that your letters are not overly
rounded.
2. Overly rounded arches
The arches are too rounded and not sharp-looking enough.
Archs are too rounded (like a bridge); they should inch towards the top then drop
Solution: Branches should be nicely branched 45 degrees to the
vertical, joining the vertical stroke at the top.
With proper practice and by identifying your errors as you
practise, you will be able to master calligraphy in no time!
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Now It’s Your Turn To Do It!
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I have given you the five basic steps that you can take, and now that
you know the five steps, you will be able to learn calligraphy in the
comfort of your own home. All it takes from here is to practise italic
calligraphy the right way and before you know it, you will be able to
write beautiful calligraphy anytime, anywhere, and for any occasion.
Now it’s your turn to do it!
To Your Success,
Henry
www.howtodocalligraphy.com
P.S. If you have any questions or comments regarding this eBook,
feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] and
I’ll reply you once I get to it!
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[BONUS]
Don’t Do These 7 Things If You
Want to Learn Calligraphy!
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What’s scarier than making a mistake?
Easy: Making a mistake that you don’t know about.
Here are the 7 things that you are probably doing, but are
unknowingly holding you back from really relishing the fun and joy of
doing real calligraphy.
Avoid doing these 7 things when you're learning calligraphy (or if you
want to learn calligraphy), and you’ll find yourself turning your
scribbles into calligraphy in no time.
1. You have a “I cannot learn calligraphy because…” mentality
One of the biggest mistakes that you could ever make if you want to
learn calligraphy is to believe some excuse that you've made
up yourself. Some of the common excuses I've heard are:
I cannot learn calligraphy because…

I have no artistic talent

My handwriting is atrocious, hideous, and messy

I have no background in calligraphy

And so on…
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One of the biggest mistakes is to automatically adopt an “I can never
do calligraphy” mind set. And when you do so, it's gonna be
unnecessarily tough trying to learn calligraphy.
What you should do instead:
Just learn it anyway!
As long as you're able to write, you will be able to do calligraphy.
Once you follow a step-by-step method of learning calligraphy,
starting from the basics first then progressively moving to the harder
parts, you're going to see your self-confidence grow with every little
success that you achieve. You're going to see "I can" instead of "I
can't" and sooner or later, you're gonna prove yourself right!
I used to believe these so-called 'reasons' myself too and realised
how much they held me back. But as I learnt step-by-step, I found
myself growing more and more confident. Not surprisingly, I
found myself learning faster than before! Letting go of these excuses
is your first step to discovering the amazing feeling of doing
calligraphy!
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It has been proven time and time again that anyone is able to learn
calligraphy as long as they are able to write so.. Just grab your pen
and start learning!
2. You’ve just skipped the ‘boring’ basics
The excitement of having just started out learning calligraphy is
great, but NEVER skip the basics! Skipping the basics is a big mistake
because the basics are what you need to know before you can start
doing calligraphy properly.
I remember being really excited about learning calligraphy and
immediately started trying to do calligraphy the moment I got hold
of a calligraphy pen.
I was expecting beautiful, elegant calligraphy to just appear once I
started writing… well, after all that’s what happens in those YouTube
tutorials and demonstrations, right? It turned out just the opposite -my letters turned out lopsided, ugly and disjointed.
Many beginners who skip the basics and go straight to writing
calligraphy waste a lot of time making unnecessary errors and
mistakes. Much worse, some get so frustrated they eventually just
give up.
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Well you'll eventually have to return to the basics anyway, so why
don’t you just save your time and start from the basics? If you want
to learn calligraphy, you've gotta learn the basics. They're absolutely
important, no matter how boring and uninteresting you think they
are.
Be patient! Being able to produce beautiful calligraphy is worth the
time and the effort learning the basics and once you do, the wait will
be so much shorter.
If you don’t have your own method and want to learn a proven and
easy step-by-step method for learning calligraphy without having to
fork out some money for a some course, just download my eBook at
the sidebar – it’s chockfull of actionable tips and information.. and
it’s free!
3. Not identifying errors and rectifying them early
Errors are common and you're bound to make them in your journey
as you learn calligraphy.
38
But when you don't identifying errors early, continue to make them
unknowingly and don’t know how to make them right... then the
problem surfaces. And when you practise these errors diligently
again and again, you're gonna 'perfect’ them, which isn't really what
you want!
Moreover, if you constantly make errors but have no idea how to
correct them, it is easy to get so frustrated you'd want to pull your
hair out. Your patience wears thin and you start losing your belief in
yourself. After a while giving up on learning calligraphy just seems
to become the easiest thing to do.
Well the good news is, this is easily avoidable and it need not be a
long and unnecessarily frustrating process for you if you want to
learn calligraphy.
Get your model examples, and constantly refer back to them. Just
like that, you'll be quick to identify where you went wrong and it's
easier to figure out how to make it right. Sometimes figuring that
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out will be a process of trial and error but with a little bit of
persistence, you will definitely get there.
Alternatively, you can have someone experienced point it out to you
(perhaps through forums or a step-by-step course). This gives you a
shortcut to learning calligraphy, without all the frustrating trials and
errors. Being able to instantly identify your error and make changes
is going to save you lots of time, and also going to help you enjoy the
process of learning calligraphy tremendously.
Either way, the bottom line is as long as you are able to identify the
mistakes that you are making as you go, you'll find yourself
doing stunning calligraphy in no time.
4. You write calligraphy like you’re writing normally
Another big common mistake that beginners make is that they write
calligraphy way too quickly. Some write their letters as though they
were writing regularly. This is where your bad habits from
handwriting will reveal themselves and spoil the beauty of the
calligraphy letterforms. More often than not, this leads to letters
40
looking sloppy, haphazard and far from desired.
What to do instead:
Slow down! It is not a race to see who can write the fastest. Take
your time in writing out every single letter and in making sure that
every stroke is steady and precise.
How you can do this is by concentrating intently on every stroke.
Strive to produce the sharpest, cleanest stroke and aim to produce
letters that are uniform. As you become more meticulous and aware
of how you’re writing, you will realise that you will be doing much
better calligraphy than before.
5. You aren’t holding the pen properly
When the edges of strokes turn out jagged and uneven, instead of a
nice, smooth, thick line, it’s a sign you’re not holding your pen
properly.
41
It can take time getting used to the broad pen nib of the calligraphy
pen which can be honestly be quite difficult to write with compared
to a regular pen.
The nib should always be in full contact with the surface of the paper
The reason why your strokes don’t turn out clean but jagged and
broken is because the nib of your pen isn’t flat against the surface of
the paper at all times when you are making the stroke.
To ensure that you are writing with the nib in full contact with the
paper at all times, hold it this way: let the pen rest on the side of
your middle finger, with the thumb securing it. The index finger then
rests on top of the pen, gently pressing the pen flat against the
paper. Practise this with exercises like these:
42
Some pen exercises that you can do
Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see your strokes come out nice
and clean!
Just a reminder too: the pen has to be held such that the nib is 35 –
45 degrees to the horizontal! This is one of the most important
things to remember if you ever want to learn calligraphy!
Hold your pen such that your nib is at a 35-45 degree angle
43
6. You aren’t practising writing in pencil first
You try writing your letters with a calligraphy pen and they look a
little out of shape -- a little droopy, maybe too rounded, or perhaps
looking too narrow.
That’s a sign that you haven’t practised enough to get the shape of
the letterform right.
Practising with a calligraphy pen for quite some time might help you
improve, but it’d be much faster to learn calligraphy if you were to
trace and copy with a pencil.
One simple, effective practice technique is to simply copy the form of
the letters and practise them again and again! Always stick to the
order of strokes as instructed and practise until your letters look like
what they’re supposed to be.
Once you are able to consistently reproduce identical-looking letters,
then you’re ready to proceed to use your calligraphy pen.
44
7. You don’t know the “6 Calligraphy Letter Families” concept
Is every letter is really totally different from all the others? Are the
letterforms of all the 26 alphabets totally different?
If your answer is yes, then it's most likely that you'd also be thinking
that calligraphy is really difficult because "it’s so difficult to
remember how each letter should be written!" Learning each letter
then becomes a hassle and a real trouble to figure out.
Well luckily for you, you can’t be further from the truth.
Get my free eBook here and read it NOW. Seriously it's gonna
help tons.
An entire chapter has been dedicated to explaining the 6 families and
how you can use this concept to learn and do calligraphy so
much more easily!
In calligraphy, all the letters can be classified by their structure into 6
main families. So, letters in the same family share the same
‘skeleton’ and once you know how to form that skeleton, forming
the other letters in that family becomes effortless.
45
"u" and "a" are part of the same family - the "u" shape family
For example, a “u” and “a” share the same skeleton (which is a “u”
shape). So, to form an “a”, it is just the skeleton with an added cap at
the top.
Pretty easy right? Now if you want to learn more, get my eBook
"Calligraphy for Beginners: How to Learn Calligraphy In 5 Easy Steps"
for absolutely free, read it, and learn the letters step-by-step. You'll
learn calligraphy step-by-step, right from the start.
Now You Know, Avoid Them!
Now that you know the 7 things to NOT do, avoid them! You'll be
able to learn calligraphy so much more quickly and effortlessly, and
you're gonna have a ball of a time while doing it.
46

Calligraphy for Beginners - Learn How to Do Calligraphy

Transcription

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