The Basic Calligraphy Strokes Demonstrated | The Happy Ever Crafter

hey I'm Becca with the happy ever crafter and today I'm going to show you something that so many people miss when they're trying to learn calligraphy your basic strokes [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] basic strokes are kind of the foundation to in your entire calligraphy alphabet so you learn each of these strokes and then when you put them together they turn into an alphabet and that will make more sense later but for today we're gonna go through each basic stroke and I'm gonna show you how to do each one stay tuned to the end of the video because I'm going to give you a resource that you can go and get totally free which has an entire workbook I'm gonna be using in this video where you can get all of the basic strokes and a full workbook to practice each one along with some videos where I go more in depth with all of the basic strokes and you can learn each one really really well so let's jump in for this demonstration I'm going to show you using Rodya grid pad paper which is just a really nice smooth paper for brush pens and a tombow dual tip brush pen both of these things I'll link to in the notes below I'm also gonna have my show me air drills workbook here for reference for each of the basic strokes and at the end of the video I'm gonna show you exactly where you can get this but basically it breaks down every single stroke that we're about to go through and it gives you practice pages for each one so stay tuned to the end for that the first strokes I want to talk to you about are your upstroke and your down stroke so this will be a combination first your upstroke will be the lightest pressure that you're going to use and then your down stroke will be the heaviest pressure that you're going to use so starting with your upstroke all you want to do is pick kind of a number of squares that you want to use as your size and all you're gonna do is start at the bottom and you're gonna have a light line gently curving towards the top so the key with this one is to just go nice and slow keep us a consistent speed the whole way and really just get a feel for how light you can go on that pen before it gets shaky you want to find a nice balance between being too light or being too hard on the page your line should be nice and thin but also consistent and not shaky so you can see some of these spots where I was shaky on my pen and that's just a matter of warming up a little bit more what I don't want to see is just a flick you want it to be nice and consist from the bottom to the top every time and have the exact same pressure every time you do that so that's your upstroke the next one is your down stroke so now instead of pressing light on the page you're gonna press hard so just start with pressing hard and having a straight line and don't be afraid to press nice and hard on your pen they're meant to be pressed on these are brush pens and they're flexible so they work when you press nice and hard on them same thing with these ones you want to be consistent you're not flicking it's one consistent motion and when you've gotten the hang of that down stroke I want you to try a little bit of a tougher one where you're starting at the top and a light stroke and as you move down you're adding pressure and then you're letting off again at the bottom so this one can be a little bit tricky but it's a great way to practice transitioning from thin to thick and that noise that my pen is making is totally normal see how nice and slow I'm going so if you're going too fast you're not going to have time to do those transitions nicely so that's two kinds of down stroke and then at the end when you're feeling comfortable with all of those you can do a combination of both so you'd go light up and then hard down light up hard down light up hard down so just go ahead and fill a page a page or two really with this kind of stroke and then we're going to move on to the next one next up is called the overturn stroke so your overturn stroke is done by starting at the bottom in the light up stroke that you learned in the past one but now your curving it over into a thick down stroke and so what you're doing with this one is you want to try and keep these lines parallel to each other so as opposed to going light up and then hard down and see how now these lines are on different planes so you want to start light up and around 12 o'clock you start adding pressure into your down stroke and making sure that these two lines stay parallel to each other the other issue I don't want to see is light up hard down and then this pretty little flick at the bottom you don't want to do this because this is how you're going to connect to your next letter so make sure you're just ending it straight at the bottom so one more time light up hard down so moving on to the opposite of your overturn stroke we're now looking at the under turn stroke so instead of starting at the bottom and moving up your Marting at the top and moving down it's the same thing heavy pressure letting off and coming back into your light upstroke so same rules apply where these lines should be parallel to each other I don't want to see you doing this kind of shape and if you write really straight up and down it's totally fine to do that or if you write really sideways it's totally fine to do that the only thing is you want to make sure that these are parallel the other thing to keep in mind with this stroke in particular is letting off of your pressure nice and early so see if I don't let off my pressure and I come back up you get sort of what they call a soggy bottom here where it's all pretty heavy so you want to actually be starting to let off your pressure nice and early on this one right about now and as you come back up over here we'll be nice and thin so you want to start letting off about here and as you come down it gradually gets more thin the next one is called a compound curve and this one can be a little bit tricky so now you're combining kind of both of the under turn and over turn stroke into all-in-one so what you're doing is you're starting at the bottom and your light up stroke and then you're transitioning back down and then you're transitioning back up so now all three of these lines should be parallel to each other so you don't want to be going up and then out and then up and having these all on different angles you want to actually kind of turn back towards that same angle and force yourself to stay all on one consistent angle so same thing with this one you don't want to be doing this little flick at the end you want to make sure that ends right here and you also don't want to go light up stop heavy down stop light up stop and have this be really sharp you want to do a nice slow transition so keep that speed consistent the whole way and those angles on the same direction next up is the oval and the oval can be really tough so right off the bat what I see most students do is start at the top and your heavy down stroke and then as you come back up there's a problem so see what happens here now if you start it at the top those two lines don't meet up nicely so what you actually need to do with the oval is start off to the side a little bit like I've shown in the book here so you're gonna actually start in an up stroke and then as you come back down and they meet up they're both nice and light here so this one takes a little bit of practice often I'll see students having trouble with that connection there or they'll be concentrating so hard on the pressures that as they come back up they actually sort of missed the mark here so take a couple minutes and practice the ovals because they can be pretty tricky and you'll also want to make sure that you're not having that soggy bottom issue the bottom of the oval again where you forget to let off the pressure so I see this happen a lot a lot a lot and it's a really hard habit to break so try and make sure that you're letting off your pressure nice and early right off the bat the stroke is called the ACE ending loop so at this point you might be starting to see where this might come into play and I'm not going to tell you because you'll start to see that when we build letters but for now this is called an ace ending loop and so this one confuses people a little bit because now you're actually starting in the middle so here you're going to start in the middle with this loop on the top and then as you come back down you're going to add the pressure so what I see happen a lot with this one is people think they should start at the bottom but if you start at the bottom you'd be pressing hard and going up which is wrong right so you actually need to start in the middle so the middle and then down into your down stroke so what I also don't want to see is this little tail sticking out you don't want to have that there you want to make sure you're ending it right at the stem and that you're a sending loops are nice and consistent so try and keep them all going on the same angle as you work at them consistency is key with calligraphy and the last stroke I'm going to talk about is the descending loop so the descending loop is obviously the opposite of the ace ending loop and now you're actually starting with your down stroke and as you come back up your light stroke so same thing I don't want to see the little tail getting added at the end as pretty as that looks you don't want to do that so really nice steady speed and it ends at the stem so hopefully that demo was helpful lastly I just want to fill you in on where you can get a copy of this book so you can play along with what I was doing in the video this is called the show-me or drills challenge so if you go to show me or drills com you'll be able to sign up and so this only opens a couple times a year and every student that signs up for that session is all doing this challenge together and holding each other accountable for actually doing these drills and learning them properly so you may go right now and it might be open or it might be just a waiting list for the next session but I strongly suggest that you sign up and get started with these before you try and do any other calligraphy it's just the best way to start and I know this from experience because I didn't do it that way so anyway show me your drills calm and in the meantime you can just be practicing from what you learned in the video and I'll see you next week [Music]

Channel: The Happy Ever Crafter

Views: 564,404

Keywords: the basic calligraphy strokes, calligraphy strokes, basic calligraphy, beginner calligraphy, hand lettering, handwriting, brush script, better hand writing, hand lettering 101, how to hand letter, how to calligraphy, calligraphy for beginners, how to, crafts, lettering, learn brush, pieces calligraphy, the happy ever crafter, calligraphy lessons, calligraphy classes

Id: hpofit9lYNk

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2017