What is stroke and how can I do it? - Western Calligraphy

So, there are particular ways to do calligraphy stroke.

As previous posts were about the basic tools and introducing the concept of stroke.

In this post, I'll tell you how to do proper stroke and what kinds of stroke can we make.

Stroke with typical calligraphy nibs

Need proper pressure to do stroke

In general, dip pen nibs are good to do stroke because they do have flexible body.

Also, it is able to see how much contain the ink and the flow of ink.

That makes you much easier to understand the process of calligraphy.

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Recommendation for calligraphy stroke

Steno (a.k.a Blue Pumpkin)

Steno nib is very popular nib for starters.

This nib is enough flexible to do soft stroke and hard enough to manage the ink. It also called as 'Blue Pumpkin' because of the body color. 

I also have this nib when I was a starter, and this gives me a lots of joy. This nib also hold enough amount of ink so you don't have to frustrated of lack of ink. 

(Well, I love dipping my dip pens into ink bottle - cause that's COOL! - but it is not fun to deal with lack of ink when you are enjoying your calligraphy. I bet...)

Cito Fein

This nib is 0.3mm and have reasonable flexibility for lettering. I use this nib a lot for my general lettering. In my case, I don't give much variety stroke while I'm using this nib but it will give you comfortable writing condition when you use this nib.

Index (a.k.a Finger Nib)

Index nib, as called as Finger nib, contains a lots of ink in it, and has fine tip so that beginners can use it easily. However, this pen cannot do a stroke - well, slightly but not as much as you want - so this pen is recommended for general writing pen.

Rose Nib

And here comes the Rose nib. 

I've heard about this nib and I have this one, but I still did not get used to this extremely flexible nib. This nib is SO flexible that it is hard to manage the flow of ink but it is worthy to work on with this nib because the stroke with this nib is really great.

And you can practice with basic stroke by understanding how does stroke made.

You can practice these single strokes with dividing into several sections.

Don't have to draw them at in a one stroke, manage your tools with proper pressure.

Basic strokes to start with

With proper pressure and loose of pressure, you can make a great art of Calligraphy.
Heavy stroke and light stroke will give you some idea how can you design your letters.
When you get used to this, you can create your own calligraphy not just following the traditional strokes!



Hope you will have a great day!