common mistakes that beginner brush letterers make. If you've just started

your calligraphy journey, I hope that you find these tips helpful and hopefully it

saves you some frustration. Let me know in the comments below if you have any

questions or if you need help troubleshooting any other issues. Before

we head to the paper please be sure to like and subscribe for more calligraphy

tips as well as creative entrepreneur tips. Now let's head to our paper. Okay

guys so the first mistake I commonly see is having paper at the wrong angle. So

this paper is right in front of me. Typically with calligraphy to get that

55 degree slant that you want, you would actually have lines across your paper at

that 55 degree slant and in order to more easily hit those slant lines, you

should also turn your paper counter clockwise. So just a heads up I am

right-handed. My experience with teaching lefties has been that they could hit

that 55 degree slant turning the paper like a right-handed person would. They

might also have it more drastically turned. If you're a lefty you have to

just experiment with the paper. I personally don't care how the paper is

positioned for a lefty as long as they are hitting those strokes and everything

looks consistent. So for a right-handed person, a good reference point to have

the tip of the paper pointing towards your body.

Having the paper at this angle helps you with your hand positioning actually.

So you never want to be like crunched up like this as you're doing your strokes.

You want to make sure that your hand is relaxed and you're not hooked over in

order to just get the proper angle. I mean why you do that to yourself when

you could just move the paper. The second common mistake that I see is how people

hold their pens. So you know when we're writing normally we typically write up

and down like this. I'm writing with the pen tip just straight up and down. With

calligraphy, you can see that my forearm is planted and my brush pen is cradled

in between my forefinger and thumb but the pen itself is actually angled past

my right shoulder. So I can do my proper down strokes this way. I can do my

compound curves this way. I can do my ovals this

way. That's a bad oval but you get my point. There's no need for you to keep

changing the angles of your pen once you're locked in like this. It's more the

forearm that's moving and not your fingers. You don't want calligraphy to be

all from your fingers. It should be more of a fluid motion from your shoulder and

your forearm. Make sure you're not like this

and you're holding it like this. You're pretty locked in like this. Just try not

to have a death grip although I had one let's be real, so I had to adjust and

learn my own hand pressure as I continued my practice. And the third

thing that I see happen is people continue to use frayed pens even when

they shouldn't be used anymore. So I'm gonna try and show you guys an example

here.

I feel like a beauty blogger. Okay so the pink tip is frayed very slightly while

the blue tip is not. If you continue to use those frayed pens you're not gonna

get smooth lines. Let's see if I can show you the difference here. So there's

my frayed overturn and here's my smooth one. So you can see in my pink overturn

that there's this little fraying happening with the lines right here. And

right here there's kind of like an extra hair line that's happening because the

pen is frayed. Even though my stroke here isn't as smooth as I would like, you can

see there are no hairlines anywhere versus here and here. So that's how you

can tell that your pen is fraying. I frequently have people in my workshops

mentioning that they don't know when it's fraying so really you have to

look at the pen. Look at the tip itself and you'll be able to tell in person

what a smooth tip looks like versus one that is fraying and you'll also be

able to tell when you are writing. I actually wouldn't throw this guy out. You

can still use him. If this is a Tombow, this is a Tombow, you

can still use the other side for writing. You can also still just apply ink

somewhere and then pick it up with one of the Tombow blending brushes or a

water brush pen so you can still use it. I just might not use it for a regular

practice anymore. There you go guys. Hopefully reviewing these common

mistakes helps you in your calligraphy journey and remember to keep practicing.

That's how you're going to continue to see improvement in your calligraphy.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next

video.