Basic Strokes: The Oval

Hi guys, Charisse here from Pieces Calligraphy. In this video we're going to review the Oval. The Oval is another basic stroke that every brush calligrapher should know, and this is week five in my basic stroke series. If you've been following along, thank you so much, and if you've been following along on Instagram, I'm so excited to see the progress that you all have been posting. If you want to join in, just post a photo of your progress and use the hashtag pieces underscore basic strokes. I love knowing what your struggles are and how you're doing with the basic strokes so I can better help you with your improvement. Today we're going to talk about the Oval, and I'm going to talk about what it is, how to create it, some letters that it is found in, and how you can practice it. So let's go ahead. Sorry if this feels kind of rushed. I realize there's a lot to go over, but I will review these in my post that goes along with this. So let's see. Okay, so what is the Oval? That shadow is going to bother me. The Oval is essentially what it sounds like, an oval. I did run across the room to turn off the light, so no more shadow. Okay, so the Oval is an enclosed stroke, and it is very tricky because we're going from thin to thick and back to thin again, all in one motion. Okay, so the key that you should know with the Oval is that it is a counterclockwise motion to create the Oval. Okay, I'm going to jump into how to create it because that kind of helps me explain what it is. So if this is my waistline and this is my baseline, I start a little below the waistline with the tip of my pen and I use light pressure and I move toward the left. I'm curving to the left, and then after I've touched the waistline, I gradually go to thick pressure by pressing down more. Okay, and then before I hit the baseline, I transition back to thin, and then I close the loop. I'll do some closer up here. So waistline, baseline, thin, thick, and then we loosen up, thin again. And mine are a little slanted here as my style of writing is copper plate inspired. I advise you practice drawing your Ovals at a slant as well, just to be consistent with how I'm instructing these basic strokes, and then later, once you hammer down these basics, you can develop your own style. Totally up to you. You could write more upright if you want, but for my purposes, we'll be writing at this slant. And let's see, I wanted to explain that, okay, so you start a little below the waistline, and then again, just going through it one more time, I wanted to explain the letters that we go through. And something that I noticed I didn't explain with the entrance stroke in the beginning is that when you have the oval, I'm going to use another color here. When you are doing the oval, your entrance stroke actually, okay, remember we did the entrance stroke from the baseline up to the waistline, right? Well, with the oval, you actually don't need to go all the way to the top. You only need to stop halfway. And you can see here why, because if I were to continue going up, then there would be a gap between my entrance stroke and the way that oval is positioned at this angle. So you really only need to go halfway through this area between the baseline and the waistline, and then you lift up your pen, and then create the oval like so. And the idea, this is tricky to combine these two together, but the idea is that the entrance stroke rests on the outside of that oval. Okay, you don't want to make your entrance stroke and then not move your pen far enough so that you get something like this. Okay, so what that looks like when it's one color is it looks like this. And that gap is not as elegant as if you have more of a space. See that? So there's just little details I wanted to throw in there. You don't have to worry right now about that, but for those of you who want to start connecting your strokes to create letters, that's something I want you to pay attention to. Okay, so waistline, baseline, entrance stroke, and I'm changing colors here for demonstration purposes so you can see the oval. You don't have to change colors, obviously. Oval, and then, ta-da, under turn stroke, letter A. Entrance stroke, oval, and then a variation of the under turn stroke, letter D. Entrance stroke, oval, descending stem loop, letter G. What else do we got? We have the letter O itself, which includes a comma dot, which is this thing right here. It's a little stroke that's like a small under turn within the oval. And last but not least, the letter Q. All right, we're looking colorful here. I love it. If you know me, you know I love colors. And then lastly, I want to go over some ways to practice. Okay, so you can first practice by just doing, okay, just do them over and over. And as I said with other practice drills, do a couple, do a line, and then look back and just notice where your inconsistencies are or where you should work on improving for your next set. And then once you get comfortable with that, you can try connecting them with the entrance stroke. And I'm only doing two right now because you don't want to get too ahead of yourself. So I'm just putting entrance stroke plus the oval. Okay, and then after you, if you want to keep on going, you can actually work on the letter O by adding that comma dot. And we haven't gone over that stroke, so don't worry too much about perfecting that. I'm just introducing this to you for those of you who want to, who are like me and impatient and you just want to get ahead. And what that looks like together in a string, it's really fun. After that first entrance stroke, you're basically doing oval comma dot. And I'm not touching the, I'm actually not touching the top of the waistline with my comma dot for the same reason that the entrance stroke doesn't hit the waistline, because I'm following it with another oval and I don't want to have that gap between that connection. See what I mean? I'm not touching, I'm not bringing it up to the waistline. Okay. And then one last one I wanted to show is an entrance stroke, basically practicing the letter A, your underturn, and then the letter D. I'm just showing these to you as two letters to practice. And two keys I want to point out is, actually just one, making sure that the edge of your underturn stroke is on the outside of this, of the thin part of your oval. See that? What you don't want to do is bring it to, you know, it's just kind of suffocating. You don't want to do this. See how, you don't want to do that either. You want to open that space. So by bringing, after I've completed my loop, lift your pen and imagine instead of just up here, we're bringing it to the right a little bit and aiming just outside of the oval. All right. So that was jam-packed with stuff. I hope that was helpful. Please subscribe to my channel. I would love to have you subscribe and get videos weekly and also head over to my blog, piecescalligraphy.com. I will go over the oval and the steps that you saw in this video in a little more detail and hopefully some photos to better demonstrate these concepts. And let me know in a comment below, I love to hear from you and see how this video helped you, what you want to hear more of or have explained better or just in general, any questions you have. So thanks everyone for watching and also remember to post your photos on Instagram with hashtag pieces underscore basic strokes and I will see you next week.