We all wish we can improve our calligraphy faster, here I am going to share with you 10 efficient ways to get the most out of your practice time!
We all start learning calligraphy by learning the basic strokes and the alphabet. Often time after that, many people are at a loss as to how to keep on improving their calligraphy. We have all been there, you start looking up on social media to find an interesting phrase to write. Or perhaps you try to come up with a clever quote yourself. But I don’t know about you, sometimes I just want to practice for the sake of practice. Since I am a very technical person, I try to discover patterns to systemize whatever that is I am learning. So I’ve put together a list of things to write when I am practicing calligraphy.
Writing names
Practice writing names is super practical. There is no better way to show off your calligraphy skill than writing a beautiful name for a friend. The easiest way is to write out your friends’ and family’s names. Better yet, practice popular first names and common last names. Simply do a search on the internet for “popular name” and “common surnames” and start writing. So the next time you are asked to letter an envelope or gift tags you’ll be well prepared. Whether it’s for a wedding or the upcoming holidays, you are future-proofed.
Pangrams
A pangram is a sentence that uses all 26 letters in the alphabet. A common one would be “A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. In writing pangrams, we get to write those less common letters such as the “q”, “x”, and “z”. We also get to practice word spacing and line spacing. Here are some example of pangrams:
• Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft
• Jim Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
• Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz
• Five quacking zephyrs jolt my wax bed
• The five boxing wizards jump quickly
Lowercase combination
This is a sure way to practice every possible letter combination. Here is how you do it: starting with aa, ab, ac, ad, ae, so on and so forth until az. Then with ba, bb, bc, bd, be, until bz. Then with ca, cb, cc, cd, ce, so on and so forth, you get the idea.
Uppercase and lowercase combination
Similar to the previous one, but this time with a capital letter. So you would have Aa, Ab, Ac, Ad, Ae… Az. And then with Ba, Bb, Bc, Bd, Be… Bz. This is also the time to challenge yourself with variations of capital letters!
Common words
Do a quick search on the internet for “the most common words in English” (or whatever language you prefer). And since these words are so common, why not practice them and come up with different ways to flourish them. The next time you see these words in a quote you’ll know exactly what to do!
Prefix
Prefixes are the letters at the beginning of words. Examples are com-, con-, de-, dis-, en-, im-, in-, inter-, intro-, etc. More than half of the words we write contain prefix, so why not practice them. And while we write these prefixes, we can practice how to do “forward” flourish!
Suffix
Opposit to the prefix, suffix are the letters at the end of words. Similarly, we can practice how to add flourishes to these suffixes. Examples are -al, -ance, -dom, -ist, – ity, -ness, -sion, -ish, -ful, -ive, -ly, etc. Getting used to writing the prefixes and suffixes will help you improve your calligraphy a lot by half of a word at a time.
Double letters
Double letters can be tricky, so I purposefully practice double letters because they usually trip me up. Some examples are funny, merry, following, happy, success, and keeping.
I have compiled everything into a handy list for you! Click on the image to get the PDF download.
