10 Free Online Calligraphy Classes For Beginners

Take a journey through the basic marks and styles that will make you fall in love with handwritten art

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then calligraphy must be worth millions—this discipline combines the power of the written word with the visual appeal of shape and color.

In short, calligraphy is the practice of writing letters with attention to how the strokes or elements that form the letters are created. Speed, direction, and sequence can all impact how the finished letter looks. Calligraphy is always done by hand, usually with pens, markers, or brushes, although nowadays you’ll find plenty of artists using a tablet to create digitized calligraphy too. Generally, the movements used to form letters are so fluid that there’s no room to make corrections. Each letter will be unique, and each crafted intuitively.

Ready to put pen to paper? Below, we’ve opened up ten amazing calligraphy classes from Domestika teachers for a limited time.

Begin with the basics: learning the materials and skills you'll need for some simple fonts. Then, explore calligraphic styles and traditions from around the world. Finally, discover some of the ways calligraphy can be used, such as logo design.

Click on the red title to watch the class video. These classes will be available for free until January 31. If you wish to take the class after this date, you can sign up for the teacher’s full course.

The basics of calligraphy

The classes here demonstrate some basic fonts you can use for the Latin alphabet. The Italic style, for example, is a classic style that involves slanted letters, and a distinctive lozenge shape to the curves and circles (as in the letters a, d, etc). You'll find modifications of it everywhere, from old books to contemporary wedding invitations. Watch these classes to discover methods of holding your pen, the ideal angles to aim for, and some other classic fonts you can start off with.

Free Class: Let's start with the pencil

If you’re not used to using a calligraphy pen, why not get started with a tool you are more familiar with? In this lesson, calligraphy artist and founder of Bilbao Calligraphy, Bego Viñuela (@caligrafiabilbao), demonstrates the Latin written alphabet using pencils.

Grouping together letters with similar shapes, she shows the continuous movement that calligraphers use to draw smooth letters. This is a great first look at ductus (the order of strokes) and the overall appearance of an Italic script.

Free Class: Guidelines and ergonomics

Or, perhaps you’ve bought a lovely fountain pen, and you’re terrified of it… Bego can set your mind at peace here, too.

In this class, learn to set up your pen correctly for your grip style (oblique or straight). She also lists the materials you’ll need to make a confident start with this careful art: paper, guidelines, guard sheets, ink and writing material, the pen holder and nib, and cotton rags to clean the pen.

Free Class: Morphology of the letter

For a decorative illustration, like an Ex Libris (the bookplate you see inside the front of some books), you might want to learn a traditional Renaissance calligraphy style.

Ricardo Rousselot Schmidt (@rousselot) is a calligrapher and designer, who here shares a template demonstrating the stroke orders for letters of this style, including capitals which involve more strokes. He also shows how controlled flicks of the hand can create "ornaments", or small additions to the letters which give a grander and more refined appearance.

Free Class: Basic calligraphic styles

Lucia Nolasco (@lunol_), designer and lettering specialist, takes the next step by sharing three popular styles you’ll see in contemporary calligraphy. She gives examples of the script, sans serif, and font serif, each having their own implied message and tone.

Lucia explains that when it comes to learning, repeating letters over and over may not be the best way to go. It’s better to learn the rules of each shape, because then you can build any letter in the future, and also learn how to "break" the rules.

Discover great calligraphy lineages...

Though many of us nowadays engage with calligraphy through Instagram and other online visual mediums, the discipline stretches back thousands of years. Cultures all over the world have used calligraphy to record sacred texts, report important historical events, decorate significant places, and explore aesthetics. Here are just some of the enchanting lineages you may want to explore, which unite tradition with creativity.

Free Class: Styles and Techniques for Shodo

Japanese calligraphy, known as Shodo, is rich in its history and form. In many cases, a single character can represent an entire concept, making it akin to a painting. Rie Takeda (@rietakeda) combines the calligraphy art form with mindfulness, and guides you to discover the essence of Shodo.

In this lesson, Rie presents the essential three styles of Shodo, and their characteristics and history. From Block to Semi-cursive to Cursive styles, you’ll see the progress from clear and uniform, to more fluid, rounded shapes with more energetic flow.

Free Class: Basic shapes for Kufic script

Kufic is a style of Arabic calligraphy that was born during the Islamic Golden Age. It emphasizes beauty in its composition, blending harmony of proportion and consistency of form. Though the style of Kufic script has faded over the last thousand years, Lebanese artist Joumana Medlej (@majnouna) keeps the practice alive, teaching the artistic techniques behind this lost art.

In this class, discover the basic shapes that can be used to form letters later. Joumana demonstrates how to draw the shaft, tooth, oblique, box, circle, and tails.

Free Class: How to use a reed pen for Maghrebi script

Artist and calligrapher Maaida Noor (@maaidanoor) uses calligraphy to fulfill her need to create aesthetically beautiful artwork. In her course, Maaida takes you step-by-step through the process of creating the Arabic alphabets using the Maghrebi script. Learn about the rich history and significance behind Arabic calligraphy, before using a traditional reed pen and dot system to form words and sentences on the page.

In this class, you’ll learn how to understand and start writing with an angled reed pen. Maaida demonstrates the rhombic dot or nukta, and shows how the pen angle changes the nature of the stroke.

Free Class: Simple structure for characters in Chinese calligraphy

Thomas Lam (@thomaslam) is a Chinese calligraphy artist and teacher based in London. For fifteen years he has shared his artworks online and run workshops in Hong Kong and the UK. He developed a learning system for teaching all Chinese cultural and calligraphy lovers to master and to enjoy the experience of working with a brush and ink.

In this class, Thomas uses a grid to show symmetry between the strokes of a character, leading to good balance and a pleasing aesthetic.

Next steps

If you have tried your hand at calligraphy before, or are wondering what else it can be used for, check out the below courses, which explore calligraphy in the formats of graffiti, logos, and more.

Free Class: Construction of the alphabet with a brush pen

Joluvian (@Joluvian) is a graphic designer, calligrapher, typographer, and illustrator. In this class, you'll build off the basic Italic script, and begin to explore the shapes you can make with a brush pen. Using pressure and angle to create a wide variety of line thicknesses, Joluvian demonstrates how to differentiate between letters.

This style can be applied to products such as greeting cards and T-shirts, as well as being popular with brand logos.

Free Class: Calligraphy exercises (with customized guidelines)

TECK24 (@teck24horas) is a Colombian graffiti artist who, with calligraphic and lettering compositions, amplifies bold messages. Here, he encourages you to play outside of the grid-like guidelines used in traditional calligraphy. You can even make your own—drawing waves and other shapes for your letters to follow.

Remember to keep balancing this with the weight of your strokes. He stresses the importance of focus and visualization, seeing the letters in your mind before you write them, because the movement is so fluid it’s easy to lose consistency.

Calligraphy is a broad discipline with many lineages around the world. Whichever you choose to explore, we hope these free classes have helped you get started on your own voyage. Remember to watch them before January 31, to gain your limited-time free access.

If you want to go in-depth and learn more about the world of calligraphy, check out our full list of courses.

You may also like:

- History of Calligraphy: From Sacred Texts to Internet Memes
- 5 Inspirational Books for Lettering Artists
- Lettering Tutorial: How to Create an Idea Sketchbook
- Calligraphy and Lettering for Instagram with Procreate, course by Nubia Navarro
- Watercolor Paint Brush Calligraphy for Beginners, course by Lucia Nolasco