How to Connect Your Letters When Writing in Calligraphy

Hi everyone, thanks so much for joining me today. I've gotten a couple of requests and questions on my videos about connecting your letters once you start practicing calligraphy, so I just wanted to go over a couple of things today regarding that. First of all, I'll go ahead and let you know what materials I'm using. I use a Tachikawa straight nib holder, really easy to get a hold of one of these guys on Amazon. I am currently using, let's see if I can get this nib out to show you, I'm currently using a Nikko nib and this one actually has number 357 on it. It's slightly different than the Nikko G, I think a little less flexible, but very very similar in many ways, and then I also have my Sumi ink. It's in this little bottle because it actually comes in this really big container that looks like this, so I just put it in a small one. I get these little dip ink, little ink jars from Michaels basically. So I'm just going to go over some tips today that will hopefully continue to help both left-handed and right-handed calligraphers. Alright, another quick tip I want to talk about is if you're doing calligraphy for the very first time, I just want you to know that on most nibs there is actually a protective layer of, it's not like oil, I'm not quite sure what to call it, but there is a protective layer on the pen to preserve the nibs before they're used, and to get rid of that and make your ink flow a lot better, actually just get a potato and put the nib right into it just like that, and that is actually going to take off the protective layer of oil that your nib has. So if you've had problems with the ink coming off, and I just wipe it off like this, if you've had any problems with the ink dripping off of your nib or not staying on it when you're writing, that could be part of your issue is that you just haven't prepped it yet, so that's just a little tip. Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and get started here. I'm going to go ahead and dip my pen into the ink, get it nice and loaded there, and I'm just going to start by lettering some A's real quick, just nice and easy, and these are going to be lowercase, just like this, so all of these are obviously not touching. Alright, now I'm also going to write out the word happy, but I'm going to write each letter individually without them connected, so I'll do the H first, I'll do the A, I'll do both P's, and the Y. Alright, so we're going to take a quick look at these letters real quick to see what they have in common, so that way I can show you the next step to connecting them. So when we look at these individual letters in the word happy, what I've done with all of my letters is I've essentially made sure that I'm finishing off the end of each one by bringing it back up, so I could have left the H ending down here like you would with your normal handwriting, but I always add an extra little swoop upwards, but because by adding that upward swoop, you're going to be able to connect to the next letter a lot easier, and that might not always be a first instinct for people when writing, but as you continue to practice calligraphy, you're going to get really used to doing that. So instead of ending your letters at the bottom like you would with normal handwriting, make sure to add an upstroke at the end. Okay, so now I'm going to go ahead and write out the word happy completely with the letters connected, and I'll kind of talk you through this. So upstroke, downstroke with pressure, upstroke, downstroke, upstroke, and then you can start your next letter a little bit over. You don't need to keep your pen on the paper the entire time. It's totally okay to pick it up to do the next letter. So I actually start my A over here, up, down, I hit where that other upstroke was, up, and then down again, another upstroke, and then my P actually starts from where I ended the previous letter. So I'll bring the stem down like this. I'm just going to do a straight stem instead of looping it like the one above just to make this a little easier, and then you'll pick up your nib again, touch it down here, downstroke. We'll do our loop upwards so you have another upstroke. Draw the next line for the P, and then once again you'll pick up your nib, touch it back here at the top, another downstroke, another upstroke. So you're setting yourself up every single time for the next letter that's happening by doing that upstroke at the end. Downstroke, upstroke, downstroke. So there you have it, the whole word written out in its entirety. I'm going to go ahead and write out some other words as well just so you can kind of watch my technique a little more closely for when I'm writing my letters. And I just do have to say real quick that since I am left-handed, I am an underwriter, which means I'm approaching my lettering basically from the bottom the entire time. I don't have my hand up like this, otherwise I would be smudging. So that is the technique that I use. All right, I'm going to go ahead and write the word Monday. Once again, lifting my nib, always ending each letter with another upstroke to get ready to connect it to the next letter. And this is very easy to practice too as well with just basic cursive. So if you don't want to use your nib and your ink, you can just get a notebook and work on your cursive and connecting your letters because that's going to help you figure out the natural movement a lot more. All right, I'm going to go ahead and write my name as well. And if you're still working on figuring out how to form your letters, and if you want an exemplar, make sure to check out my Etsy shop. There's a link below in the comments. And I'm currently selling a modern calligraphy uppercase exemplar on there. I'm still working on the lowercase one. But that way you can have a resource for how you want your letters to potentially look, or at least one alphabet anyway. And just have patience with yourself. The active calligraphy is actually very slow. It does not happen very quickly. All right, well, there you have it. That's all for today. Just a simple lesson on how to connect your letters. Let me know if you have any questions. Leave them in the comments below. I have a whole queue for videos that I'm going to be doing based on what you guys suggest. So I always love hearing your feedback. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.