Make Your Own Italic Hand Guide Sheet | Tips for Italic Calligraphy Beginners

Hi everyone, this is Vivian. Welcome back to my channel. Today I'm going to show you how to teach yourself italic calligraphy. So italic calligraphy looks like this. It's written with broad-edge pens such as this one. It's a very basic and classic style in calligraphy. It's very beginner-friendly and because it's not super fancy and doesn't have any extravagant flourishes and bells and whistles, but once you start practice italic calligraphy, it really gives a solid understanding of typography and letter form. So in the previous video, I already showed you different types of broad-edge pens and also how to prepare your nibs. So if you need information on that, you can watch those videos. The link will be in the description below. In this video, I'm going to just quickly show you the pen that I'm going to be using and also the ink I'll be using and also types of paper that I recommend and then also how to construct your own guide sheet. So the first way I'm going to show you is manually draw a guide sheet and then the second way is how to use Illustrator to make your own guide sheet. In the next video, I'm going to show you just how to construct these letter forms. So for this video, I'm going to be using Browse tip and this one is number two or two millimeter. So for Browse, two millimeter just means the width of the nib is two millimeter wide. So there's three millimeters and there's four millimeters and so on. So the higher the number, the wider the broad-edge. That's only for Browse. Every brand of nib, they number them differently. For instance, this one is Mitchell. It's actually the opposite. The higher the number, the smaller the nib. So just be aware of that when you are shopping for nibs. For ink, I most of the time use Eternal ink just because it's economical and also it's very dark. It has a really nice consistency that it flows through the nibs but it's not too watery. So it doesn't bleed and it doesn't just ooze out the nib uncontrollably. So I really like the consistency of it. Also, it's not waterproof. So that means I can easily wash it off my hand because I very often get ink on my hand. But I know there are many different types of inks. So definitely do some experiment with whatever ink you have because with these nibs, you can try anything and just make sure you clean it afterward. And if you have a really big bottle of ink, you can also transfer them into a smaller container. Just make sure that the opening is big enough so it's easier to access to. Or you can get these really small bottles. They are very small but they're also very shallow. You won't, you know, accidentally get your pen holder dirty anyway. And they hold just the right amount of ink if you're running an experiment. I also like to have some masking tape around. I can tape down the paper that I'm practicing so it doesn't move around my desk. Also, I can use it as a fence for my ink. So in case if I knock it over, it will not completely spill everywhere. And at the same time, it can be a pen rest. So it's, you know, quite multifunctional. And you can also, I have this tin can cover. So that also works. So whatever you have to give your ink a little extra boundary, that would be nice. And additionally, you want to also have some paper towel because just in case we spill or ink get on our hands, you know, whatever. Now let's talk about paper. I like to use some sort of translucent paper. This one is vellum paper. It's very smooth and it's sturdy. And it also absorbs the ink quite well. And layout bound is similar. It's also a little translucent. Marker layout is also translucent. So just make sure when you're buying paper, it does say something about regarding translucency. You can also use these Rhodia pads. They are really smooth and nice paper. And they come with different styles. This one I have is plain and they also have dark grid as well as ruled because I like to draw my own gaishi. So I prefer the plain one. They are also a little bit translucent. So this is also a nice paper to write. It looks like regular paper, but it's actually a much better quality than your average everyday paper. It absorbs ink really well and it's also very smooth. So that's something if you want, you can also use this. One more thing. If your writing service is very hard, like what I have here is a glass top desk. So what I did is I just taped four sheets of paper together and I'll put this underneath my writing. So just get some paper. You're not writing directly on a very tough surface and that will help your nib to have a little more flexibility as you write. And I have another sheet of extra paper. So if I'm going to write on this paper vellum, this will be my writing service. And on top of that, I will have another sheet of paper just to guard my hand on both ends because I might have grease or, you know, ink on my hand and I don't want it to get my paper dirty. And also your hand does have some sort of moisture and grease and if you get that onto your writing service, later on you might have trouble writing in that area where there's some sort of residue. So just be mindful that you're not putting on lotions right before you start writing. Make sure your hand is really clean and dry. So next I'm going to show you how to make your own guide sheet. So a guide sheet is pretty much just a sheet of paper with a lot of horizontal lines and these lines will help you to create consistent letter size. And the space between these lines depend on the size of your nib. So for italic calligraphy, the beauty is that you can really change different proportion of your size and your pen angle to create different variations of the same styles of writing. And we're going to do a typical 5 nib width for the X height and then I'm to do 3 nib width ascenders. And I just made these little marks by drawing a square, a checker mark on my paper. So that's my basic unit of measurement. And for X height, I want to have 5 nib width. So that, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that will be my X height. That means I should write a letter A will be in this size. So that will be the height of my basic lowercase letter without ascender. And I'm going to do a 3 ascender height. So an H, something like this. And then something with a descender will be. So we want to create a sheet that has all these lines. So the first thing I'll do is to create a border. I'm going to mark off a half inch border. So half inch here. And I just lightly draw a line to mark off that half inch. And you want to use a pencil with a medium lead hardness. Definitely not too soft because you don't want it to be smudged everywhere. So now that I have the top 3 sides, I'm going to use the pen, the nib that I'm going to write and create those checker mark measurements. So essentially we're going to recreate this same thing on the top, the first row. So I'm going to do 5 nib width for X height, and I'm going to do 3 nib width and 3 nib width for ascender, descender. And I'm going to have 2 nib width for line spacing. So that will be 5, 3, 3, 2. So that will be 13. So I'm going to make 13 little boxes. Okay, so I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. And I'm just going to carefully mark where the 3, that's ascender height, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, that's base, now descender and baseline. So this one will be my baseline. And now I'm going to take another sheet of paper, any scrap paper, just to make the same mark on this sheet of paper. So I have 3, 5, 3, 2. And then the next row will start. So I'm just going to move down my scrap paper and then make the same mark here. And make sure I do the baseline, just make it a little longer so I know that's the baseline. And then do the same thing on the other side. And now I'm just going to draw the lines across this page. And I'm going to make the baseline darker so I can easily tell which one is baseline. So next we need to draw some diagonal lines as our slant guidelines. So I have an adjustable triangle here. You can also use a protractor or however other ways you measure angles. Typically italics are written in 5 to 7 degrees slant. That means the vertical line to the baseline and to the my stem, this angle is about 5 to 7. So we just need a couple slanted lines to remind us about the slant. And I already made my adjustable triangle into 5 degrees. So you get the idea. You can make as many as you want or you know as few as you need. So the cool thing about making this guide sheet is you really just need to do it once because I'm not writing on this paper. I'm going to put another sheet on top of it and then use this as a guideline underneath. So I can always have a clean guide sheet. And the cool thing is that if next time I want to try a different size of nib, I just need to make a photocopy of this and enlarge it until I match this width, this nib width. So this might look like a lot of work but you really just need to do it once. And I'm also going to show you how to do this in Illustrator. If you have Illustrator, this will be even more easier to do in Illustrator. So let's go to my computer. So now we're inside of Adobe Illustrator. I just created a file with the same artboard size as the paper size that I'll be using, which is 8.5 by 11. So you'll do the same or you can do a different size according to what size of paper you're using. I'm going to do the exact same guide sheet as I just showed manually. So it'll be the same x-height, ascender, descender, and line spacing. And I'm using the Browse 2mm nibs. So I just need to multiply the number of nibs by 2mm. So these are the spacing that I'll be using. So if you're using different nibs, just make sure that you measure the width of the nibs and then do your math accordingly. So I also like to just write out the little note on the top. So even later on when I print this guide sheet out, I will know right away what size of pen is this for. And since my measurement is in millimeter, I also just want to make sure that my file property is in millimeter. So if you're doing in inches, make sure you switch it to inches here. And the first thing I'm going to do is draw a flat, a straight line, a horizontal line. I'll just do a line by holding down the shift key so I get a complete zero degree line. And I'll just make it into a default one point black line. What we're going to do is to switch our cursor into selection tool. Once I have this line selected, I'll do right click and then I'll go to transform, move. You can access the same panel just by doing enter or return on your keyboard. And the first line we want to duplicate is the 6mm line. So horizontally it'd be zero and vertically will be 6mm. And instead of just hitting OK, I am actually going to click on this copy. So now I have this line that's exactly 6mm below the first line. And I'll just repeat the same process, but this time I'll just do the 10mm and then copy. And then I'll do the same thing for the next one. It'll be 6mm and copy. So now I have these four lines. And I don't need to do the spacing because actually the line below the space is this line. So I don't need to actually draw another line. I'm just going to keep that in mind that there is a two nibs width. We just need to remember to add the 4mm when we're duplicating the whole four lines. So now I'm going to make sure the baseline is somewhat different. I'm going to make it red so when I print it out I can quickly tell this one is baseline. And I'll just make the center-decenter boundary line into half point. I'm going to select all four lines and then do right click and group. So now they are grouped together and I'm going to go to effect and distort and transform. Then transform. And here I'm going to do just select vertically and I'll do this number 26mm. That's including this 4mm. So I'll do 26mm and you can see a preview. I have the preview enabled so you will see where it's going. But instead of just moving it, transform means like moving it actually. We're actually we're going to do copy. So I'm just going to increase the number of copies until I fill the paper. So six seems like a perfect number to fill up the page. And then I hit okay and then there we go. We have all the horizontal lines and I also like to just center this line. So now I'm going back to using the line tool and I'm going to draw the five degrees slant and I want it to be just a lighter color like a mid-tone gray. And I'm drawing another straight line holding down the shift key. Then I'm going to use the angle degree in the property window. I'm just going to use the down arrow on my keyboard to decrease it to 85. So that's five degrees. So now I know this line is a five degrees slant and I'm just going to use the same transform tool. Under effect, distort, transform and transform. And this time I'm going to clone it horizontally. So you can decide what spacing you want. You can have a very dense spacing if you prefer. I think maybe like a good 10 millimeter is good. And then I just increase the number of copies until until I fill the whole page. Okay so for me it's 25 copies. So now we just made this really nicely grafted guide sheet. I hope you find this video helpful and if you do, don't forget to hit the like button. And in the next video, I'm going to show you how to write a lowercase in italic style. So if you're interested in that, don't forget to subscribe to this channel and hit the notification bell so you'll get notified when that video comes out. I'll see you next time. Bye!