Flourish - Minuscules w, x, y - Calligraphy Demo (PART 1)

0:14 hello good afternoon welcome welcome hi there hello I am also having lessons so today we are going to be doing I'm gonna go to demonstrating on the lower cases of flourishing for W X Y Z so just a few alphabets and then if there's enough time I'm gonna try writing a few words yeah you also have in calligraphy

1:01 workshop with your students that's great so it is 8:30 p.m. in Hong Kong if you are not from Hong Kong or not based here tomorrow is a bank holiday and Friday as well so we're gonna have a long weekend like 4 days off which is very nice now as I said that we are gonna do the demonstration and if you're brand new to the study room I call this a column a cart study room and I have these practice sheets that you can download at my online work on my sorry on my online shop the website is this one shop column a cart calm and you can click on the

1:47 sidebar which sets copy sheet and paper that's the category so you should be able to find them now before I start I also want to mention quickly that we have just finished the copy sheets for the classic style for capitals from A to Z so these are all mova engrosses script so I practiced a Ingrosso script so this is some samples I'm gonna do calligraphy demonstration in May for these okay and we also have the lower cases now if you want to go ahead and start practicing they are already today we're just launched today it's on the

2:34 website so you can go back to the link sorry one more time is the shop callow my name my cart calm and you can click on the sidebar copy sheet and you should be able to see all of them there are many options now okay I'm gonna kick start today I'm using a micro sells pen holder a very simple pen holder very comfortable to hold with I'm using a leonardo EF principle nib and also the same I've been always using wanna ink for demonstration and one little tips for you guys so if you're using your ink and if the ink starting to run low what you can do is you can grab a big like blue tack let me try to find it I get it

3:24 right behind me oh this is huge okay so usually you can blue tack you can I believe you can buy in most cities now it's like a sticky thing I tend to stick it on my pen rest like that and I will slant it at an angle okay now because the butai help to stick the ink so it's created an angle and it's a lot easier for me to dip the ink I can just slide it in and then get the ink like this okay so this is really helpful especially if you're a starts to run low just a little tip plus if you write on the airplane which I do sometimes well not recently because we can't fly but I used to practice on the long-haul flight

4:10 if I go back to London I do that and I stick a massive like gigantic or bigger than this blue tag on the table and I will write the and calligraphy for real usually the person sitting next to you get really amazed and start asking you what you're doing and then in a way you kind of like start a nice conversation okay so today we're gonna do w so let's look at the basic W first so I'm gonna zoom in a little bit okay looking at the W basically it's form with two under turn so first of all you have an entrance stroke you go in and and then you come down by pressing and

5:00 lift come up okay and then one more time down lift go up relax now there's a tiny little dot to what you do is you can press and come out thinking about the first oval add a bit of shade I'm up and out like that okay so sorry we were talking about a basic one which I forgot now the basic one will be I'll do one more time just bear with me two seconds just fixing the light maybe that's a

5:47 little bit better now we will do entrance stroke to the center of your alphabet okay so we want to hit about the middle part here then come down lift up lift down lift up and then you can press like what I do press and come out just here and then you can exit like that this is the basic okay so we will see when you are exiting then let's @w please make sure that it's an oval form okay so the other one is just a lovely big flourish now I'm sure you are aware

6:41 that this is all parallel to the slant all right and you want to make sure this container itself it's the left hand side and right hand side is exactly the same space okay the next one you just do the same lifts come up lift them up press you can come up relax make the little shade here okay just like that one more time entrance joke press up

7:31 press up press come up just like that oops sorry okay now we I know that we have circle out all the ovals before but since some of you may be like new to this so I want to point out to you that when you're exiting okay so there is an oval here there you come out and it leads to another oval here so

8:17 this is where you can find the ovals now also in within the W itself it has the oval shape which lies inside here and here okay you lead-in notice this stroke it's also part of an oval so these ovals are everywhere and it's very very very cool in a way right I think it's amazing especially if you start finding all these ovals and able to see them what also it's important when you do flourish when lines overlap make sure that they

9:04 are intersect what we call perpendicularly or you can say at a 90 degree angle okay so it's almost like a cross and the last thing is when they are crossing you want to make sure it's what we what I say is no shade on a shade meaning that they intersect you can have a thin line on a thin line or hair line sorry hair line I write down on the hair line it's okay

9:50 so HL is hairline hairline on a shade is okay to a shade means the down stroke like the thick line now what is not okay I put a cross it's a shade on a shade I used to teach this maybe a couple years ago I say no thick on thick so it doesn't sounds very elegant because I didn't use to call it a shade I used no thick on thick but you get the meaning now what it really means it's so for example here okay I'll come back to here

10:36 now and I'm coming down notice this crossbar this is a light light line right at hairline if I have a heavy shade and I'm coming here now I'm moving on a downward movement but I'm not adding shade I'm just lightly go out of it because you don't want is a shade with a shade okay so we don't want this okay it's okay and there's okay so hopefully that makes

11:21 sense it's just because it doesn't look too nice it's quite heavy especially when two thick lines are overlapping each other all righty now next one we will do the letter W hi guys thanks for joining it's an entrance truck lift come up lift come up press press a little come up okay almost like a hot shape now you can apply this if you've been following

12:08 you'll remember I said that the AEIOU m and n probably all works with all these exiting flourish with all sometimes maybe not you kind of have to give it a try so if I do an A I would just bring this lower okay if I do an E as well and one of the observations you want to

12:58 keep this space around the same spacing parallel spacing okay so what it means it's this line here with this line here you see they're parallel spacing same here okay parallel well I call it a train track like a train track again it's something I make up string tracks because on a train they will always be parallel they have to go in many directions right so for for example anything oops sorry

13:46 it get a little bit narrow here but the idea is like this okay it's like a train track it looks a little bit like a snick you know when you want when we were kids we play the letter and snick boardgame snake and ladder but game reminds me of that okay now moving on and we're gonna do this one and you have entrance stroke hit about the middle of your alphabet I might have done a little bit too high but you want to hit here come down lift

14:34 come up lift come down up and down make it into a rhythm okay now one big stroke we're gonna come out make sure you have enough space to maneuver so we will have coming and press like that again intersection it's 90 degree there's no thick on thick or shade on shade as thin lines on the nine that's fine okay you want to try to do gradation or

15:23 thickness so what it means is from here you want a thin edge pressure and back to thin okay so really talks to your index finger if you're holding your pen with a thumb on top I assume out a little bit like that it could be a problem because when you're adding pressure you use a larger muscles here to add pressure and by adding pressure with such a large muscles is not precise it's not accurate enough and you want to hold a pen this is a modern grip there is a traditional grip which I'm not going to talk about today but the modern grip will be holding the pen with your third finger on the base index

16:09 finger on top and your thumb underneath across and slightly above the index finger notice this is about you can use my finger one finger up it allows you to move this way and when you're holding please add the pressure with your fingertip now a lot of the girls or some of my students have quite long lovely fingernails but just be careful because if you have very long nails and makes it hard for you to touch the top part of the this part with your flesh okay we want to touch it with here not with your nails okay otherwise it's mixed sound and also it's not precise okay so that's

16:56 really important I think also to really control a lovely gradation or second thin lines require a lot of thinking and be mindful when you're pressing what's your index finger okay now I'm gonna move up I'm gonna do this double you know same thing I won't and talking for a while so lift and then come down up down up okay I press and I left and prepare to be Oh going to big big curve okay and I touch up here just like that

17:43 now this whole curve we talked about it it's the line of universal beauty it contains an oval you can see the implied oval right here this is the part where you notice that it is currently honest lunch oh sorry just yeah it's close enough okay so that's your line of universal beauty okay our just right sorry I just write a cursive

18:30 or you can call beauty line okay or sometimes I call s s-curve it's easier for people to remember it's like a letter s all right next one this one you have assumed in a little bit okay this one you have the same structure okay then you go up gradation of pressure so I slowed down a bit bring it to your left gradation of

19:18 pressure and move out now I've dragged a line too long sorry I should just stop right here I'm just moving my head to check the camera while I was doing that I do all the time now you can think about using other alphabets as well you can apply this on and I think you can kind of get away with an OL you have an entrance rock yeah well what okay okay now obviously there is a big

20:04 oval when you leaving right you see there's a lovely big oval here and now I want to talk about in an oval if this is the inclined oval meaning it's at an angle right now you want it to dissect it we talked about this before but just in case some of you are new so you have an oval you have to access ok the axes are the line that kind of cut the oval into half okay so axis axis2 find the axis of the

20:50 oval I think this definitely requires training and one of my favorite activity is take out maybe of a traditional book for example the great one is the tembeling book which I can grab it for you later so Tamblyn bow has tons of flourishing capitals in Spencerian style ornamental hem and shape style anyway understanding that oval it's amazing and I have it here since we're talking this is a championship that just took take a look tons of ovals so what you can do is you

21:37 can look at these color balls because don't I won't suggest like a modern calligraphy because sometimes maybe more than calligraphy may not be so I'm sorry to say but a little bit less kind of trustworthy because of the sauce now this is from the past it was written it was by tumbling now if we look at this oval and you can think about how you can either dissect it that way this is slightly different orientation already okay so that just how you've study and train your eyes by looking at resources like this so this is Tam bling

22:22 I also sell in the shop ok tamb ly n my favorite one of my favorite books for sure this is how mr. trembling look like a little bit serious isn't it ok now coming back it's alright drag it out somewhere else but looking back here swimming in we find axes right now once you have fine access you want to add a cross and meaning that you want to find a 90-degree and dissect it into four parts now so technically this part of the oval equals to this part of the oval right

23:10 and so on and so forth you have this and this now what I want to show you is this this dot here which is shown about here and here after dissecting them it's called we did that last time and I forgot it's called apex a PE X I'm not quite sure what it means but it's an apex now when you find the apex the great thing is it teach you how to create the shade so when we coming all the way to this line right and the

23:58 shade actually goes like this this is can you see the widest part is about here okay this area and it grows because the time the NEB should technically be opening both edge but sorry both what do you call it like the both tines the tip should be your nib should be parallel and it moving I'm time tend to rotate a little bit by doing a manipulation because your nib is going this way right and you're moving along and you want to manipulate by

24:46 angling angling your nip at this so it opens mover the nib opens much nicer that way so it's a very slow manipulation you come here rotate a little bit both open and then you cut down the pressure back to a thin line okay so that's how you determine where the shade is of course with the exemplar it's so much easier to copy but once you out of your copy sheets own meaning you have to write your own then this helps you to determine now obviously this side as well if you have the apex here for whatever reason that's an alphabet that requires shading you can see this is

25:33 your widest part sorry this is just have my logo but I think you can still see okay so the nib technically just open and with a widest part right in this this dotted area and then it closed back into a hairline okay when I was taught this I tell you who showed me this it's Mike bought em RMG wat on Instagram and he is amazing at flourishing and I learned this at one of the IMF conference sadly this year's been canceled because of the virus but I was just like very it's it's like a really useful you know theory useful

26:21 information now I'm gonna move on to the next page sorry guys double X we're gonna do letter X alright I'll bring out the X copy sheet now so I'm gonna sing back in if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask me I haven't been checking the messages at all but I'm gonna quickly go through and see if there's any questions so hi everyone just going through I'm sorry okay hi can you check can you share questions yes I'll have a check on the

27:09 question box thank you I saw it just now there you go let me click on to the question box I believe you'll come out what do you was so sorry the question is what do with the URL in the km a new set up oh if you want to join my newsletter because I have updates on all the workshop in Hong Kong and when the shop offers you can go to my website the quickest way is you go to my shop here which is shop dr. Kalam a cart calm and there should be a poem like it should come out with the automatic box for you to sign up and if you struggle to sign up and you can

27:54 simply just send me a DM I'm G DM I will add you on C with your email address and I can add you on my mailing list thank you cool so okay I'm gonna continue thanks for your interest I appreciate it because we I just finished working on the newsletter and we've got tons of workshops coming in May and June in person workshop as well which is great now letter X so let's look at the basic X first and a letter X the basic form there are many what ways to write it and one of the method it's like this so you start from the baseline or you can start slightly higher a thin hair line going up a pressure

28:42 coming out like a reverse let us see see for catch now then this side you do the same you can keep it thin or at a tiny bit of shade and exit okay now you don't want to press too hard here because if you press too hard the ink will explode okay I'll write one more time first and then the second you can add tiny bit of shade and come up so that's an X sometimes in old exemplar you will find the eggs have the dot here and here

29:28 I think this is not done very nicely I will rewrite it so this is how I would do it and press okay now let's try with the flourishing sames a tiny bit of shade you can lift here automatically I will move down my hand a

30:14 little bit and we will be going up press and cross perpendicularly and come out when you're coming out your hand can continue moving without the nib touching the paper because you want the movement to be like ongoing it is almost like I guess if you have seen people dancing expecially swing dancing when we do this turning you know the we call we call like I don't know how to describe properly but when a couple were dancing and you like to turn if I want to stop usually kind of stop suddenly right you keep moving on a way even even though you're supposed to stop it's like a

31:00 gradual stop so I feel that the same when you're moving you want to keep going into an oval format the foam which should be let's see here you will see here okay so your hand is trying to like keep going but we just lifted the nib now the next one all this are quite similar to what you have been practicing the whole idea is to reinforce your muscle memory now because I was hesitant and I make a very awkward

31:46 curve here you see this is slightly and endler so I can come back here and I would touch up by adding a little shade so it's a method it's like putting makeup on your alphabet okay now let's try I'm gonna shift the camera for a bit sorry the light source does it help a bit better yeah okay I'm at the studio right now and the light is different at nighttime and where am i I'm right here okay so I can

32:32 see now we will do oh sorry I'm off screen okay now of course you can add the dot if you want to but I think it's not necessary and to be very very honest it's very rarely that you write letter X I would say personally it's not an alphabet that we

33:18 often used maybe apex ap years okay now I'm gonna do the next this one it's on repeat simple air pressure or an up relax I mean down slowly add pressure make sure you add tiny bit of pressure going up and add and reduce you want to have thick to thin always gradation of the Canton now I remember teaching students and then I've seen students doing something like this

34:09 so maybe the shade at the end it's quite heavy okay usually ending like that maybe okay if you have something like this what I suggest you can do is do a touch-up a retouch now check out your nib see if it has tons of ink if there's ink very simple you bring can you see the ink no okay here now let me zoom out a little bit I will reduce the ink by sliding it on the edge here meaning I don't have a lot of ink because when I retouch I don't want to have too much ink on the lip then what I do is I will

34:54 come back to the same position I will bring my nip not starting from here but on the line so that when I reach this it looks a little bit more seamless okay so compress and thinning as light as possible I don't know if you saw the detail because I didn't seem in this is a lot sharper right so you can touch up or retouch by adding that hairline back now obviously because wanna ink has the different transparency when it dried out so when you're retouching with a water ink sometimes you can see because the different tones of colors

35:41 after it dried up right however if you stop use something like a Sumi ink which is a black if you're using black Sumi it's a lot thicker ink and when you do the touch-up it's not as obvious okay now moving on the next one is I'm gonna go a little bit faster now sorry light as light as possible move press here and come up okay one more time

36:32 up relax press and up go up relax add a little bit of pressure come down relax and move and add the pressure here okay the dip was doing this sometimes when I'm here I'm meant to play a little bit wrote a tiny a little bit too this way so the nib opens up even easier without scratching too much okay now next one this X is slightly different so let me show you the basic that's your X you can start from here

37:24 like that okay um quite a lot of ink here so you can okay let me cross that I'm a write a bit bigger sorry color good my dog someone must be coming you can sorry I what I want to show you I was this trap I okay let's start again what you want to show you is you have a heavier base on the bottom heavier top on on the top this is what I want to

38:11 show you okay so oh what's that off-screen okay hopefully you get the idea so you have the first of all let me check okay first over you press after you cross past the mid midway press like that stuff it unsmooth but you should move it out like that okay now let's do the flourishing of this where am i okay so press

38:57 press fishy and then within like one more time okay your hands keep moving even though it's been lifted if it's not thin enough you can come back retouch and add a drop of a hairline towards the end okay now the last one is same concept so you want to add pressure at the Midway about here come up and pressure about like an e

39:47 kind of like a log is e up relax down a pressure here bring it up bring it over like that oh wow sorry I was kind of off-screen now because the camera it's a little bit high maybe that's better Hey No relax

40:34 bring it over press oops and out okay like that sorry a little bit wonky hmm and when you have done this we come up to here you notice that all the crossing you try to keep like a cross this is some little bit off but if I bring it in that way it will make it more perpendicular and again no shade on shade they're all hairline crossing each other headline on

41:21 hairline it's okay we talked about it alright now moving on to is why and see and it should be relatively easy okay just checking all my popcorn er zoom out a little bit okay a little why so that this why now I wanted to mention something about letter Y so to write a basic letter Y there is

42:08 two method first okay you have a compound curve followed by a descender look at J right like that now you can also try this way which looks exactly like an H when you turn it upside down because when you turn it upside down can you see

42:58 they look like H especially this one okay now this is just a classic style meaning this strip of older flourishing and that is also one way you can do is you can use a soft s curve so s curve here instead of a full pressure down stroke and you know taper at the end so you want to do an S curve here like that now personally we're flourishing I think that this it's a lot more elegant this S curve or the

43:44 universe the line of Universal Beauty are just right s curve it's my preference preferred style and I prefer to enter with an overturn or you can call this a compound curve together alright so because it's just more curved and more curved this makes it more romantic more like girly so you can see my first flourish basically it's an overtime and then an s-curve you add pressure make a big dramatic and notice that the s-curve it's one

44:36 second one this is more steep in a way they form infinity sign right here number eight okay all right one more time how we doing with time sixteen plus now I learned that Instagram now cannot let me save the story for 24 hours but I think it goes directly onto an IG TV I think so but this time I make sure I don't I save it before the closed the one hour window I think it's one hour right yeah I think

45:22 is one hour because Suzanne Cunningham was saying that it wasn't one hour I wasn't sure anyways okay no next one over turn left a scarf okay notice the distance here distance is legal my pen train-track

46:14 okay throughout meaning this line it's parallel to this line you can see now right you want the perpendicular entrance you want to perpendicular intersection okay you want to avoid any shade on no shade on shade which is not happening here because this crossing is a little hair line on a hair line alright hey you can apply this to all your descender you know you can do a J I'm sorry

47:00 you can do it J like that you can do country ah sorry it just shifted the page I was gonna cover up let's do it again sorry I shouldn't never rush it's better all right now moving on hopefully we can cover this before I

47:48 change now why we do come back up and ask her it's the same but this time I'm bringing a bit higher and then swing it out with an S curve like that one more time lift them down lift from up lift S curve when you're crossing here try to be light so you don't pull the ink the pudding out okay see you

48:35 someone said gotta go now why this is a simple version just make sure you can visually kind of see this oval going on a bit wonky here it's going back you can make that too you can add that to make it more you should I bring it higher okay

49:23 the tissue fiber here's a tissue sometimes when you write and then there's a paper fiber which is I don't know if you can see it here but I I can and I just use the tissue and remove it you can dip into the water and clean again now right this lift come down lift come down ask her we bring it all the way over and do that like a little pee we've learned this

50:15 before if you're doing a descender you can apply to a J you make this little bit martyr okay a little bit more gradation of thick and thin lines by touching up okay so that's a J you can do G last one here is I'm bringing around and press and cut

51:02 down the pressure picked up okay I'm just wondering one thing if I turn it upside down with this S&H so you can kind of do that could be a flourish right so you can also use it like that for

51:49 flourishing for letter H is y and H is just an upside down image okay now um we have one more page which is Z I think the best base that I can so I'm trying to wrap it over I think the best is what I can avoid it because I think in a few minutes in me close down this and I would try to save it and if you want to stick around please just come back to the chat room and I'll quickly scan through and see if there's any questions I think Instagram messengers that repeat

52:36 tricky to read messages especially show you when people joined in so if you have any questions about Nev egg whatever you know I'll try my best to answer you and let me know where you are in the world I'm just wondering because I see a lot of new names okay so I haven't been any questions so I'm gonna lock out cuz what I would do is I will come back and do thee and then maybe write a few words and flourishing style okay so I'll see you very soon thank you he thanks and