Basic Strokes: The Compound Curve

Hi guys, Charisse here from Pieces Calligraphy. In this video, we're going to review the compound curve. The compound curve is another basic stroke that every brush calligrapher should know, and it's another stroke in my basic stroke series, which I'm really excited about because we're getting into more complex basic strokes. And the nice thing about this basic stroke, which you'll see in a bit, is that it's a combination of two strokes that we've already learned. And if you've been following along, you've seen that we started off with the entrance stroke and then we did the underturn stroke and then we did the overturn stroke. And if you missed out on those, I'll provide links to them below or you can visit my blog for those posts and videos. Okay, so let's go over what the compound curve is. If you could see here, it is a combination of, like I said earlier, two strokes we just learned. The overturn stroke, you can see the thin transition into thick, but it doesn't end with full pressure the way we did with the overturn stroke. And instead, it mimics the underturn stroke as it transitions back into a thin line up, just like this. Okay, so I'll explain how to do this and what letters you can find this compound curve in and some practice drills. Okay, so like I said, I have this example here where you start from the baseline. Actually, baseline, thin, do not transition until after you've touched the waistline. And then you transition into a full thick stroke. And then before you hit the baseline, you transition into a thin stroke again and then go back up to the baseline. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and demonstrate. Actually, let's use a different pad here. I'm filling that one up pretty quickly. Okay, so to demonstrate, we're going to pretend this is the waistline and this is my baseline. Thin up and thick and back to thin and back up again. Thin, thick, thin, and back up. So this one's tricky because we're starting to have to be very conscious of when we're doing the transitions. And remember, in order to get this contrast between thin and thick, you're applying different amounts of pressure. So when I go up, thin upstroke, it's light pressure. When I come back down, I'm pressing with more pressure and then I'm lifting back up for light pressure. Okay, and the thing I want to point out is ideally, and I say ideally because even I'm, this is something I'm personally struggling and working with, you want these three parts to be parallel. And see why I said ideally, because this one in the middle here is not too parallel. I think this one might be a little better, but even still it's not, that middle part is not as parallel as I'd like it to be. And it's a good check also to find the slant of your strokes. And we haven't talked about this yet, we will in the future, about finding your own style, basically making tweaks to things I'm teaching you here. So just bear with me as I'm teaching you. Basically, it's a form of copper plate calligraphy, but it's not 100%. So I don't call my calligraphy copper plate, I just call it inspired by copper plate calligraphy, which is in a nutshell, just a type of calligraphy that has a very steep slant just like this. And it follows strict rules, which I basically use to influence my own writing. And we'll talk about that later, just the style of writing and finding your own style. But for now, I'm just going to really try to hammer down these basics as you're building your foundation. Just to practice good form. And just like with anything, you learn the basics, and then you just kind of do your own thing. So that's, those are some examples. And then I want to show you some letters that the compound stroke is used in. And I'll do the full set on my blog, but we'll do a couple letters here. So the letter H, entrance stroke, ascender loop, which we'll talk about soon. And then here, let's do it in a different color, is your compound curve. The letter M, overturned stroke from last week. And then, actually, I'm sorry, testing you. Two overturned strokes, and then the compound curve. I'm seeing how they build letters. And then here, the letter V starts out with a compound curve, and then it has a small little comma dot, which we haven't talked about yet, but it's basically a quick little underturned stroke that sits within this, this thin out stroke. Let's go ahead and do the letter Y. And remember, I'm lifting, well, because I'm changing colors, but you'll notice that I lift up the pen, and instead of pressing back down, I kind of aim my pen to the right of that outside stroke. And this is a descender loop, which we'll talk about also in the future. Okay, and lastly, I'm going to do some quick drills that you could practice. Okay, so essentially, you could just do the compound curve by itself, just do a series of them, and fill a page. And a lot of you on Instagram are posting your photos, and you're doing amazing literally filling pages. Just remember to take breaks. Okay, and then you could also connect them like I did with the, let's do the letter N, overturned stroke, compound curve, overturned stroke, compound curve. See, we're already writing letters in our practice. And then you could also, this one's a fun one, and you can just literally go like this. And the hard part is you, it's hard to get in a motion and forget to lift up your pen, but lift up your pen because you need to make way for more room. So I usually do about two, and then you continue. And the thing to pay attention to is when you're transitioning. See how I try not to reach the full pressure at either the waistline or the baseline? So that's something to pay attention to. Okay, so this was a pretty long video. I hope you enjoyed it, and please let me know below what you think. And if you have any questions, and visit my blog for the full letters that you could use in with the compound curve. And be sure you're subscribed to my channel here, and I'll be back next week with another basic stroke. And during the week, you could check me out on Instagram to see a couple of ways to use the compound curve and keep posting your practice with hashtag pieces underscore basic strokes. I love seeing your practice and you guys are doing amazing. Thanks for watching.