Astenorello
If you are thinking about learning calligraphy, my advice is to start from the basic strokes. Mastering them means knowing the basis to write properly the letters for scripts like Gothic, Uncial or Italic. In this post I’ll talk about their importance and explain my tutorial video with some advice.
How to Start Calligraphy as a Beginner (Step-by-Step)
The Importance of Basic Strokes
Basic calligraphy strokes are very important in learning, especially at the beginning. In fact, they are the foundation of all the alphabets and scripts you’re going to study. They are essential to understand the construction of letters and line consistency and contrast. And the repetition of these exercises trains your hand’s muscle memory and teaches you the right pen pressure and angle. They make you slow down and focus on each trait you’re doing preventing rush and learning at the right pace. Skipping them can lead to frustration, inconsistency, irregular spacing and misaligned letterforms.
I know from experience that as a beginner, everybody wants to write directly with their favorite script. I did that too at first, but then I immediately realized I lacked something. Luckily during my research on the web, I found the Azahara Letras tutorial about basic strokes. And it saved my time, my practice sessions and even my interest in calligraphy.
Basic Calligraphy Strokes Exercises
Preparation Tips
The first thing to do is draw guidelines to have a reference point for your exercises. Leave a border of 1,5-2 cm from the sheet margin and trace a straight line from right to left with a pencil and a ruler. Depending on the nib size you’re using, count two pen nibs and draw another line to mark the ascending height. Then create a central section with a height of five pen nibs. And finally do the last part for the descending with the same ascending height and then repeat from the start to fill the page. This is important to understand and be conscious of the height of strokes in the exercises.
You can watch my video tutorial to draw guidelines by yourself in the article: The Importance of Guidelines – FREE CALLIGRAPHY SHEETS. If you can’t draw guidelines, you can download my free basic strokes worksheet at the end of the article.
After that, it is really important to learn the inclination angle of the pen. Generally it goes from 30 to 45 degrees, depending on the calligraphy style. You can use a protractor to check the right angle, draw it on paper and learn how to keep the pen nib. I personally prefer the angle pen of 45°, because I feel it’s more comfortable and easier to find and keep. In fact, I simply draw a vertical line at the beginning of my guideline and put the pen nib right in the middle of the angle.
Basic Strokes Exercises
The main basic strokes are five: diamond, lozenge, down stroke, horizontal stroke and half oval, excluding their variants. I suggest starting by the diamond stroke because it’s the simplest to do. So put the nib near the up line in the central section and then trace the diamond. Do the same movements while writing the diamonds near the down line. But keep in mind that this will be a little more difficult because you won’t have a base to start with and the lowest diamond’s angle must be placed perfectly on the down line. Anyway, always remember to take your time while you’re doing these exercises and not to rush.
The next stroke we are going to practice is the lozenge that is longer and slightly more oblique than the diamond. The right edge and the left one of the lozenge should be aligned enough to create an imaginary horizontal line between them. Also write a lozenge variant moving the pen upwards creating a slight curve and ending with a tail. Then do the opposite by starting the tail and moving downwards.
Write horizontal strokes in two different sizes; the first ones should be shorter, while the second traits will be a little wider than the previous. And try to add tails in different directions to the horizontal strokes.
Now do some down strokes in different heights: 3, 4, 5 and 7 nibs. Write down slowly and try to make each stroke as straight as possible. Then write all the down strokes you practiced until now, but with tails in different directions and also in oblique.
Finally the last basic calligraphy strokes are the half ovals. Do a half oval starting from the upper line and ending the stroke below the middle of the central section as if you were writing a sort of oblique “c”. Then repeat this exercise backwards, with the belly of the half oval projected upwards. And the last exercise is writing a “o” using both of the half ovals practiced before. To begin the “o”, do a small sign and start from there to write the first stroke.
How to Choose the Best Calligraphy Tools for Beginners
Common Mistakes
Of course, the first mistake I have to talk about is not studying basic strokes. If you don’t practice them before learning any calligraphy styles, you’ll face a lot of difficulties. Because you will lack those calligraphy bases that you need to really understand letter composition.
Thinking guidelines are useless is another big mistake I frequently see among beginners. Instead, they are fundamental to learn letters’ structure and proportions properly.
Also, writing too fast and using the wrong pressure can ruin your practice session. So as a beginner you have to be conscious of what is the right pace in calligraphy. And you have to remember that pressing too much to the right or the left will hurt you and it can break your tools too.
The last mistake regards the use of wrong tools and this point often seems to be underrated. Because good materials can make a big difference in your calligraphy practice and consequently in your progress.
How much practice
At the very beginning, I don’t feel it’s right to talk about practice sessions in terms of minutes or hours. Because what really matters in basic strokes practice is not time, it’s constance. These exercises are not just a simple practice, but the starting point of your learning journey. So you should take your time, especially during the first practice session, and focus on the traits you’re doing. Just keep practising until you can make the strokes in proportion, straight and good enough.
FREE WORKSHEET
To make things easier, I made a worksheet for your basic strokes practice session. This was designed on Parallel Pens’ measures. You can download it, print it and start studying calligraphy.