What are the calligraphy basic strokes?
They’re the most important thing you need to know to learn calligraphy.
The absolute backbone of your alphabet.
The one thing that if you miss, you’re gonna frustrate yourself like crazy trying to learn.
The most important thing to practice.
THE ONE THING YOU SHOULD NOT SKIP IF YOU WANT TO LEARN CALLIGRAPHY.
First Things First…
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Supplies Used
- Rhodia Paper
- Tombow Dual Brush Pen
- Free Course
Rather watch than read? Check out the super quick video by clicking the video below!
What you need to know…
The “basic strokes” are the calligraphy hill I will die on as an instructor.
Mostly because I am one of the people who tried to learn calligraphy without the basic strokes at first, and I was SOOOOOOOOOOO frustrated! I was artsy. I had “nice handwriting”. I had the right pens.
But guess what?
Turns out none of that really matters, if you’re not learning the RIGHT THING.
The right thing?
The basic strokes.
A quick note…
Before I jump in just a note here… in my free course, I show you how to do each of the basic strokes slowly and with detail on each one. (They do have some “rules” to follow.)
For right now, I just wanna show them all to you and give you the breakdown of what they are.
So these are the basic strokes. They just look like little squiggles. Upstroke, downstroke, overturn, underturn, compound curve, oval, ascending loop, descending loop.
Now why are these so important?? I remember when I learned them I thought they were kinda just like, warmup strokes to teach you how to use brush pens.
BUT THEN I REALIZED.
These are the strokes that turn into letters. Your entire alphabet is built of these. And that’s why your handwriting has nothing to do with it.
Take the upstroke, the oval, and the under turn… Stick them together, and now you have the letter a.
Take the upstroke, the ascending loop, and the compound curve… Stick them together, and now you have the letter h.
And THAT’s how you make letters in calligraphy. It has NOTHING to do with your handwriting, or copying someone else’s calligraphy style until you think you can do it solo.
Not all letters are quite as simple – there’s a bit more to it than all that.
But the important thing is that you DO learn these basic strokes, or as I like to call them, drills, INSIDE AND OUT before you ever start writing letters.
That’s a wrap!
If this is something you wanna learn, I have a full free 90-minute online course you can take where we get much deeper into all of it, and set you up on the right foot.
You can find it at showmeyourdrills.com and get started right away 🙂
Hope all of this is helpful!
And finally, your dad joke…
What number always wins first place?
Number won.
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