(lively music)
- [Karin] Hello, iPad letterers,
welcome back to my channel.
Or if you're new here, my name is Karin,
and I'm here to help you get the most out of your iPad,
whether that is with lettering or art
or getting your life organized.
In today's video, I want to show you
how to write neatly on your iPad.
You will learn my best tips and tricks
of how to improve your handwriting
in a surprisingly short period of time.
The skills you develop by practicing on the iPad
are very transferable to pen and paper.
And the beauty of practicing on your iPad
is that you won't be wasting any of it.
I'm also going to give you the tools
to practice your own handwriting in a fun way,
so that you'll be able to impress your friends and family
with your penmanship.
There's nothing better than being able to write
a handwritten note with confidence to show your loved ones
how much you care.
As a hand lettering artist,
everyone expects me to have great handwriting,
but it's not actually true.
Calligraphy and lettering are very different
from handwriting and being good at one
doesn't necessarily mean that you are great
at the other one as well.
Since I've started taking bullet journaling more seriously
at the start of this year, I've noticed
how bad my handwriting got over the years,
and I'm kind of embarrassed about it
because I've always prided myself
on having neat handwriting.
I feel like I've cheated by using fonts for my journals
just to make them look nice.
So now I've decided to do something about it
and practice my handwriting much more deliberately
to see how much I can improve it
and make my journals look beautiful.
I find writing very relaxing.
The only time it stresses me out is if it doesn't look nice.
So let's see what we can do about this.
I'm going to share my five best tips
on how to improve your handwriting.
Let's start with the most important tip
and that is having the right tools.
Other than an iPad, you will need a good stylist pen.
And my favorite by far is the Apple Pencil,
but there's also other options to consider
which I have covered in an entirely separate video,
which I will link in the description box below.
And then I also recommend putting a grip
on your Apple Pencil.
I have a Nimble Grip here
on my first generation Apple Pencil
and I really like the feel and the thickness of it.
But unfortunately, it's not very convenient
for the second generation Apple Pencil
because you have to take it off for charging.
So instead, I have this Silicon Sleeve,
which is very nice too, and it doesn't prevent
the pencil from being charged on the iPad.
You might find it helpful to put a screen protector
on your iPad because it will create a bit of resistance,
which makes it much easier to control your Apple Pencil.
And my favorite screen protector is the Paperlike.
And then you will also need an app
and you have a few options here.
You can just use that notes app that's on your iPad
or you can use Procreate, which is what I'm using here.
But then of course, you can also use
your bullet journaling app.
So if you're using GoodNotes or Zinnia,
these very good options to practice with as well.
And then it's also very important
to have that right posture for writing.
You can see here, I'm actually turning my page around
because I find it more comfortable to write like this.
I also like having the whole hand on the iPad.
So I recommend that you place the canvas
in a position where your whole hand can rest on the iPad.
The iPad has palm rejection
so it doesn't matter if you rest your hand on the iPad,
as you can see here, there's nothing getting written.
And so it makes it much easier
to practice like this as well.
And then I also recommend that you hold
the Apple Pencil towards the front of the pencil
because we'll get much better control over your strokes.
It doesn't matter so much where you sit
or where you have your iPad.
More often than not, I actually sit on the couch
for practicing, and then I have my iPad
on a little iBeani beanbag,
and that's quite comfortable to practice as well.
As with most things, practice is everything.
I very much encourage you to practice daily.
Even if it's just for five minutes,
It's actually very relaxing
and it can really help calm your brain down,
which makes it the perfect winding down activity at night.
You really want to write super slowly,
especially at the start.
One of the reasons why your handwriting
doesn't look as nice as you would like it to be
is because you are writing too fast.
I'm used to typing very fast, so when I take notes by hand,
I expect to be writing at the same speed
and then might later skate all out of whack
and look horrible.
That's also what I mean by being deliberate
about your practice,
go super slowly to start with,
and once you develop their muscle memory in your hand
a little bit better,
you'll notice how you'll be able to write
a little faster after a while.
And then that fifth tip
is to really practice consistent letter shapes.
I very much recommend that you don't connect your letters
because you'll be able to make them look much neater
if you write them separately.
What you really want to watch out for
is that you have that same angle for all your letters.
And then you also want to pay attention to the spacing
between your letters and then also between your words.
And now you might say, well, this all sounds really good,
and it makes sense, but how do I practice this?
And to help you with your practice,
I've made a brand new set of practice sheets.
They consist of seven different files.
The first three files
are for practicing your lowercase letters.
And you'll see here, it's got step one,
step two, step three.
And then there's also three sheets for uppercase letters.
And then there is a final sheet which has numbers
and it also has words.
So for step one of your practice,
I very much recommend that you trace all the letters.
This will really help you learn the shape
of all the letters and also train your muscle memory.
I recommend that you spend 10 to 15 minutes daily
to practice these letters, start with the A, and then the B,
and then go all the way through the whole practice sheet.
You probably wanna do this for about a week
until you feel really, really comfortable with it.
And then step two means
you will practice some of the letters,
but you'll also start practicing freehand.
And you pretty much do the same thing as in step one,
you start tracing the letters and then practice freehand,
and do this for 10 to 15 minutes every day,
probably for about a week.
And then we are carrying on to step three.
And this is where we're going to start practicing
freehand much more.
You see there's only three letters to trace
and then you'll practice freehand all the way through.
So after about three weeks,
you should be quite comfortable
with writing all these letters freehand on your iPad.
And then, of course, we are going to do the same exact thing
with the uppercase alphabet as well.
There is the same three step practice sheets.
The first sheet has all the letters to trace.
The second shoot has half the letters to trace.
And then on the third step
there's only three letters to trace,
and then you will be practicing mostly freehand.
I always think it's really important
to practice numbers as well,
especially if you're writing addresses or birthdays,
it's always handy to know how to write numbers as well.
But then because I didn't want to leave the sheet all empty,
I also added the weekdays and the months here as well,
because if you're using a journal,
it's quite nice to practice the days of the week
and the months as well.
So there is some extra practice here for you as well.
You can get these practice sheets from my website.
I'm gonna leave a link in the description box
below the video.
They also come with a custom
handwriting practice Procreate brush,
which has been set up to work perfectly
with the practice sheets.
And in case you don't have the appropriate app,
the download also comes with JPEG files
that you can import into your favorite journaling app
or even into the notes app.
And then just in case you might like
to practice with pen and paper,
of course you can also print the JPEG files.
I'm actually very looking forward to this challenge.
I'll be practicing every day and I'll be posting my updates
both on Instagram, but also here in the YouTube Stories.
So you can follow along and check my progress.
And I really hope that you're going to join me
in our practice as well.
Let's see if we can really focus on our handwriting
for the month of September,
just in time for the holidays as well,
so that we can write really nice
handwritten cards this time.
I really hope you enjoyed this video.
Give me a thumbs up if you did.
Subscribe to my channel if you haven't already.
And then I'm also going to bloop up
another couple of videos where I'm going to show you
how to practice your lettering on your iPad
so you can keep watching and you can keep learning.
Thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you in my next video.