Calligraphy Tutorial - Beginners: Tips & Tricks

Hello and welcome to this calligraphy tutorial. When handlettring, there is some basic calligraphy knowledge and theory needed to be able to write in this font. This type of handlettering has been very popular all over Instagram and Pinterest, which can be useful when writing cards, titles, for bullet journaling, or just as another skill you learn. At the end of this instructable, I can assure you, that you will be able to start learning and practicing the calligraphy font style, once you gave obtained a good understanding as well as some tips and tricks.

Step 1: Step 1: Materials & Supplies

Materials:

paper/journal
calligraphy brush pen
other pens you can use: crayola markers, highlighters, water brush pens, pencils, pens
ruler

In calligraphy, there is a variety of different pens that you can use, to achieve this font style. However, the Tombow dual brush pens are the easiest to use for beginners. You can also use highlighters, Crayola markers and water brush pens, which are other less expensive pens, that you most likely already have at home!

Step 2: Step 2: Calligraphy Theory

Calligraphy theory includes various exercises to develop your skills, give you a clear idea of the physical appearance of the letters and help you get the hang of hand lettering to develop your understanding of calligraphy theory. A very helpful exercise is to draw a wavy line. Make sure you use less pressure on the up-strokes, making the line thin, and more pressure on your downstrokes, making the line thicker. This will help your muscle memory understand when to use the right amount of pressure, to create this effect. Another helpful tip is to hold your pen diagonally when writing, similar to when writing with your pen/pencil.

Step 3: Step 3: Calligraphy Basics

To create this calligraphy guide, draw four diagonal lines. You might recognize this guide as it is probably very similar to the one that helped you learn how to shape letters in first grade. This has the same concept, just that you have to include your knowledge from the previous step, the idea of up and down strokes, as well as muscle memory and pressure. The top column, between the first two lines, is called the ascender, the middle is the allied x-height and the bottom is called the descender. Remember to use less pressure on your upstrokes and more on your downstrokes. Make sure to hit all of the letters to their correct lines in between the different columns, to create an even and clean letter. This will also help you give an idea of the size of the letters. Examples of ascender letters are ‘t’, ‘l’, x-height letters are ‘a’, ‘c’, ‘e’, ‘i’, and descenders are ‘j’, ‘g’, ‘f’.

Step 4: Step 4: Calligraphy Alphabet

Now it is finally time to practice your calligraphy alphabet! Write the whole alphabet using your new hand lettering skill, calligraphy, once you are comfortable with the previous exercises, and know when to use different amounts of pressure. Practicing the alphabet is very important as you will understand how to write the letters without using a guide, making you become more confident in hand-lettering. When trying to learn calligraphy, practice makes perfect! You just have to practice and practice, and you will slowly get the hang of it. Trust the process. For me, it took a few days to perfect my calligraphy, as I kept repeating the different exercises until I found my style. For others, it can take weeks or even months, or a shorter amount of time. Just remember to not get frustrated, because every mistake you make, you will learn from and develop your skills and knowledge! Keep on track, as we are close to the final product!

Step 5: Step 5: Stylistic Preference

This section introduces the different styles that you can write the letters in. Once you have perfected writing the alphabet and are strongly confident in writing letters, you can finally start to experiment and explore different styles to find your own. You are now at an intermediate stage of learning calligraphy. There are different ways to write letters such as ‘s’, ‘t’, ‘m’, ‘y’, ‘a’, ‘h’, ‘j’ and more. Some letters can be written leaned more to the side, others straight or even curved. In the second image, you can see that you can also include your stylistic preference when actually concluding all your skills together to write a word. Therefore, once you have practiced all the different exercises, it is time to start writing words in titles, using calligraphy. Do this by writing the letters our separately, and connecting them in the end. Keep in mind to use the up and down pressure stroke technique constantly, to achieve this typical calligraphy look. However, you do also need to start writing all the words together, therefore, if you are already able to write in cursive, this can be another very useful skill as it will help you write in calligraphy. This type of hand lettering is the extended, more challenging version of cursive, as the letters are thicker at different areas, though it includes the same concept.

Step 6: Step 6: Different Pens, Different Skills

There are different techniques when using different pens. For example, if you don't yet have professional calligraphy or water brush pen, you can use that pencil that is laying on your desk, or that pen and highlighter in your drawer. Using this new technique you can basically "fake" the look of calligraphy, just by using different pens but the same idea. When using highlighters, Crayola markers, and water brush pens is always important to make sure your upstrokes are thin, and downstrokes are thick. This is different when writing in a pen. To create this effect, you will need to create traces on your downstroke areas of the letter. Then fill out that area to create an illusion of calligraphy - thin upstrokes & thick downstokes.

Step 7: The Final Product

The final step is to connect all these different exercises and to start using them on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully, this calligraphy tutorial was helpful for you to either learn or develop your hand-lettering skills and getting to know the basics behind calligraphy theory. Now you can create gift cards, letters and even write titles in this new font, which not only looks very aesthetically pleasing but also interesting and neat. Enjoy!