Do you know what's the essential tool to boost your calligraphy practices?

Do you enjoy calligraphy but sometimes find it tedious to mark lines? Discover how to use guidelines to improve your practice and save time.

Marking lines to practice calligraphy is sometimes therapeutic and, other times, the excuse why I don't practice anything at all. If the same thing happens to you, today I want to share with you a trick that I love and can take your calligraphy practice to a whole new level: using guidelines.

What are guidelines?

They are sheets of printed lines, ready for you to place underneath your practice sheet (we usually practice on sheets that are usually a bit transparent). The most exquisite will say that it's cheating, but it doesn't hurt to take a shortcut if it will allow you to pay attention to other details.

Why are guidelines great?

They optimize practice time, save you energy, and allow you to write fluently, imagine this: you are in front of a blank page, excited to start, but sometimes that excitement is diluted in the tedious task of defining the height of your letters, measuring and marking lines, and if you start without lines the matter gets complicated, the letters come out at different heights and the words do not follow a straight line, scandal. Guidelines solve that! They are like having a GPS for your letters, they guide you to focus so that each letter flows precisely and in a straight line.

Guidelines give you the freedom to try or perfect other things, in my "Lettering for slogans" course, we plunged into the adventure of making phrases with a brush, and it is key to have a little help to enjoy the versatility that the tool offers. When practicing calligraphy one has to pay attention to many details, helping us a little to not have to be attentive to everything, allows you to focus more on the shape, weight, and spacing of your letters without being distracted by technical details such as the size of the letters, the axes, and the container.

If you were curious how to use the guidelines with brush, I wait for you in the course to explore all the possibilities and other tools to improve your practices.

Are there any other benefits that make me love using guidelines so much?

Yes, I'm super thematic about this, but how many times have you been frustrated by not achieving consistency in your writing, or having only a short time to practice and not doing it because you didn't have the lines you needed? Guidelines promote that regularity that we often look for, becoming THE perfect tool to polish your skills with the brush or the calligraphic tool you use. Aside from saving practice time by not having to measure and mark lines, guidelines help you to be consistent and train your eye to be more precise in spacing and writing in a straight line.

The plot twist of this article is that by clicking here, you can download for free: guidelines, lots of guidelines! Of everything and for everything, they are in A3 horizontal format and are useful for practice:

Classic lines of lowercase italic letters with a brush
Classic lines to practice uppercase and lowercase italic letters with a brush
Also, guidelines with and also guidelines with only 1 cm and half centimeter lines, with and without axes so that you can practice words of the size you want and accompany you in your calligraphy journey with brush or whatever tool you use.

Once downloaded, simply print them out and you're ready to go.

Thank you for making it this far, and of course, I invite you to join me for the full experience of my course, where I will guide you to explore the basics of calligraphy, from handling brush and ink to creating words with a unique style.

I look forward to seeing you there!