hi I'm Sarah from sarahtypes.com
I'm going to show you how to get started
with modern calligraphy, what is the difference
between modern or traditional
calligraphy? to me traditional
calligraphy is a practice and skill that
has a specific style like
spencerian that you practice for a long
time and emulat exactly and it's
definitely more formal and you would do
that with the traditional nib and ink
pen whereas this modern calligraphy
I think it's a little bit more free
you're allowed to will infuse your
personality into it
there isn't a set style that you need to
emulate and you can use different tools
you can use a more of a brush pen style
or you can use the nib and ink and I think
it takes a lot less time to practice
this style because you are able to
infuse it with what you think would look
better
generally if it all balances out
it should look good in the end, if you want
to get started this is a great place to
begin
however I strongly urge you to check out
other resources. I have a new blog post
with links to other people's work and
practice sheets that you can try
everybody has a different take on it and
you might learn something new from
someone else but this is kind of how I
learned and this is my take on modern
calligraphy and i think it would be
helpful for someone who is just starting
I'm gonna have a free download you
can practice your strokes and drills
these are the basic strokes that when
you put them all together they create
letters and then i also have sheet you can
buy for lowercase and uppercase and check
out my blog post for more information on
all the tools you can use in this
tutorial I'm going to be using the
tombow pen
however you can also use a nib and ink
pen, i have details on the blog
post so stay tuned
like i said i'm using the tombow pen
specifically this is the fudensosuke
and i'm using the soft
tip brush you want to make sure you're
not holding your pen like this,
gripping it and holding it really tight
want to have a more relaxed hand with
your fingers placed at the end of the pen
and you want to make sure you're using
it on more 45-degree angle not straight
up, you want to
be relaxed and comfortable so that you
have the ability to move your whole arm
and not just your fingers and your wrist
so let's get started I have the strokes
and drills worksheet and this is a free
download you can grab in the
description box below and basically I just
have some strokes, all of these when used
in combination with each other will
create letters so they're great to get a
handle of before you go into the letters
because it's just going to make your
lettering that much easier
I'm gonna grab some tracing paper this
is what i have on hand this way we can
reuse the sheets and also it's a really
nice surface to write on when you have a
brush pen, it keeps the fibers nice
so the first stroke is a
standard downstroke this is where you're
going to apply the most pressure and
just try doing these over and over again
until you get a really nice straight
line the stroke after is your upstroke
this is where you're going to apply the
least amount of pressure you want to be
very light so it turns out very thin now
we're going to use both of these
together you want to have a nice
pressure on the down stroke and just
bring it up on the upstroke nice and light
I'm going to do this again but bringing
the upstroke all the way up make sure
you're taking your time slower you're
going the better the slower you are the
nicer your strokes are going to turn out
and now we're just flipping that and
going up with the light stroke and down
with more pressure
now we're going to move on to the o's
they are a little bit tricky i'm going to
show you some bad examples and some good
examples, the first I drew is not a great
one the second one is better and i'm
going to explain why
ok so I'm going to draw four O's in a row
right now and none of these are going to
be good and I'm going to tell you why
you want to make sure you start a little
bit over to the right at about like one
o'clock and then bring it over and
when you bring it over gradually going into your thick stroke
if you start more on the twelve o'clock mark like this
it's not going to look gradual so it's
going to look a bit choppy and if you
don't let go early enough when you're
going up, you will have some of that thick stroke
coming into the thin on the way back
these are all examples of what it
really shouldn't look like, I'm
starting too late in the game and
bring it up to late or going way too
fast you want to make sure you slow it
way down and take your time
so you can see in this one that i'm
doing now that I'm definitely taking my
time going slower and it's looking
a lot smoother
here's another example where I'm going
real slow makes a big difference
compared to the other ones
ok now we're going back to a
little less difficult stroke and just
practicing going up and down with your
pressure and releasing that pressure so
you have thin strokes and thick strokes
okay in the second page we have some
more strokes some of them are little
more flourishes, the first one is an S
which is kind of difficult like the 'o'
I'm going to show you my first example
which is not going to be great again i
started too late on my downstroke and
then to early on my upstroke so you want
to make sure that you're doing it
gradually, the second one was
also not a great and it starts in
the same places last one so i'm going to
start sooner and then go later you
can see the last one it looks a lot
better
for this stroke it's the same idea
as the O's you want to make sure you're
doing a gradual as you can see in the
first one the second loop is not so
pretty, I take my time and do it the
second time it's looking a lot better
and you'll see in this one I'm going way
too fast and you can see the gradual on
the up the loop is not
nice but the second time I've got it so
it does take some practice the first
time when you start writing even if you
have practice the day before you might
want to warm up and get those strokes in
check
okay the last stroke
they're just your entrance and exit
strokes you can't really see them
because I kind of cut off the camera
angle but they're pretty easy
ok so we're going to start in the
uppercase alphabet now you can grab this
sheet from my etsy shop and i'll leave the
link in the description below for the
upper case I'm just going to kind of
show you it you can just sit back relax
and watch me to the uppercase letters but for the
lower case i'm going to break them down
for you and show you how the strokes work
together to create the
letters and where you going up and
going down etc so just chill
out for this part and then make sure
you're listening for the lowercase so
you can learn how the letters are
actually created
ok it's gonna reuse the same tracing
paper i used for the uppercase and now
i'm going to start the lowercase so in
the first example i'm showing you how i
would write it if I was just writing with a
pen and doing normal script then the
second example i'm showing you it as a
breakdown of the strokes all being put
together so i have my entrance stroke
and then that kind of see shape and then
a Down stroke within a little flip up
that's kind of like your exit stroke so
all of those together will make the a
and you can see in my last example using
all those strokes to create the full
letter so reach these letters i'm going
to try and break down the different
strokes usually there's like two or
three sometimes four that makes the
whole letter and I apologize for the
sunshine and the shadows was a bad time
a day to film
thanks for watching hope you learn
something new we have any questions
leave a comment down below and subscribe
for more tutorials