Lowercase Calligraphy Breakdown

by Krystal Whitten September 30, 2019 2 Comments

Do you want to know a secret? Calligraphy isn’t as hard as it looks. Truly! I believe anyone can learn calligraphy with some effort and patience, regardless of their normal handwriting. That’s because calligraphy is done with a series of basic strokes. And if you can do those strokes, you can do calligraphy.

Over the summer of 2019 I shared this secret of how to break down the lowercase letters into strokes in a series called The Lowercase Calligraphy Breakdown. I’m sharing it here as a blog post so you can find all the letters in one place. 

Here's an example of the separate strokes and how they go together to make the letter 'a'.

Breaking it down by strokes makes it easier to learn and less daunting. This tutorial goes letter by letter, because that's the best way to learn. Practice one letter at a time – and be sure to download my free worksheets of this exercise to learn step by step with me.

Below are the individual strokes you will need to learn to form the letters.

They are:

• upstrokes,
• downstrokes,
• ovals,
• entrance strokes,
• underturns,
• overturns, compound
• curves,
• ascending loops, and
• descending loops.

Once you've practiced these individual strokes, you're ready to go.

 

 

Now let's start at the very beginning. For each letter below, you'll find the breakdown of the strokes followed by a visual example. Try each letter with me! 

 

Here are some things to remember:

• Script can be done with the beautiful thicks and thins or as a single line, which is called "monoline." Try it first as a monoline if that's easier for you. You can even try it in pencil first. 

• There are many ways to do calligraphic letters. Get the basic form down first, and then you can get creative and change it up.

 

Suggested Tools:

• Blackwing Pearl pencil
• Fudenosuke calligraphy pen 
• If you enjoyed this tutorial, you'd probably like my book Faith and Lettering: An Inspirational Guide to Creative Lettering and Journaling, available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Christian Book. 
• For extra practice and an intentional way to pray/memorize scripture, look at The Lettering Prayer Journal®, a creative way to connect with God.  

Thanks for reading!
With love and lettering,

*Amazon Affiliate links are used in this post.

 

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