So this is how I first ever started with calligraphy!

Did you know you can get that elegant calligraphy look with just a simple pen? If you know this trick you can use any pen to write calligraphy style, and you can write on any surface! Plus, this is a perfect first step towards real calligraphy with a nib pen because it teaches you where the heavy downstrokes are, so where to put pressure on your pen when working with a nib pen.

Start by writing your word in a cursive joint writing style. Make sure to give the letters enough ‘breathing space’, don’t write your letters too close together!

Next, determine where your downstrokes are. So where did you go downwards with your pen while writing the word? Give these downstrokes a double line so that an open thick line forms. Make sure the second line follows the same curve as the first downstroke so that it looks natural. Make all the thick lines about the same width!

Now, just fill in the open thick lines with your pen. And that’s it really!

In the video I used a Micron pen size 01. Micron pens are my favourite fineliners because they come in lots of (really thin!) sizes, they don’t bleed, write very smooth and they dry very fast. But you can try this with any pen really!

I hope you enjoyed this one. If you haven’t signed up for the tutorials in your mailbox yet then you can do so below. Take care and stay safe!

Lots of love,

This is a very simple trick. Just lay down a wet swatch of a quite saturated colour. Then rinse your brush, put clean water on your brush (use two separate glasses) and lay a swatch of just water underneath. Let the two meet in the middle and watch the magic happen!

You can add some more pigment if you feel like it! Also notice how at the end of the video I picked up some wet puddles on the coral swatch with a dry brush. If you leave very wet puddles of pigment, these will dry up with hard dark lines around them, so try to notice which spots are too wet still and pick up the excess water with your dry brush.

These are the supplies I used today:

• Winsor & newton professional grade watercolour (Scarlet lake)
• Size 16 synthetic kolinsky brush
• Cold pressed watercolour paper

I hope you enjoyed this one. If you haven’t signed up for the tutorials in your mailbox yet then you can do so below. Take care and stay safe!

Lots of love,

I’m a big believer in positivity. If you can’t change certain situations or the things that happen to you then try to look at those situations in a positive way and you will automatically get more positivity in your life. Or like writer Wayne Dyer used to say: ‘If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change’. 

Now some days that’s easier said than done though! The past week alone was a rollercoaster of fear, hope, anxiety, peacefulness and everything in between. So to keep that positivity coming I decided to list my silver linings of this corona crisis.

– Time to learn new skills, read, make art and decorate my new apartment
– Community: there’s a growing sense of community and taking care of each other these past few weeks
– Looong video calls with friends. Somehow I feel like there’s deeper conversation and connection going on in a one-on-one video call than there is in a real life conversation. Or maybe it’s the current situation that creates that deeper sense of connection.
– The joy of anticipation! So many things to look forward to after we all come out of our ‘caves’. 

So those were mine, I’d love for you to share your silver linings in the comments on this blog or on Instagram.

*Insert bridge* to today’s creative tutorial: I used the words ‘Silver Linings’ for a little Modern Calligraphy & flourishing tutorial. If you’ve joined one of my Modern Calligraphy workshops before then you might be at the point where you’re ready to get a bit more fancy with your calligraphy. If so, then this one is for you!

In short: flourishing is the embellishment of letters with loops underneath and above. Flourishing can make your calligraphy really impressive and it can also be used as a way to balance an artwork out. Did you put a word a bit too far to the left on your paper? Balance it out with some nice flourishing on the right!

There’s a few rules to keep in mind when you’re flourishing:

• Base all your loops on and oval shape. Basically you should be able to imagine an oval in the middle of all your loops, be it horizontal, vertical or diagonal. So rather than making your loops very circular, stretch them a little so they have more of an oval shape, but don’t make them too long and thin! There should always be enough ‘air’ in your loops.
• Never let two thick lines cross, it should either be two thin lines or a thick and a thin line that cross each other
• Make the angle at which one line crosses the other about 90 degrees. Now this isn’t always possible of course, but try not to make the angle a lot smaller than this because this would mean your lines are very close to each other and the result will look too cramped.
• Pencils are your friends when flourishing! Lay out the words and flourishes first so you can make sure the flourishes are nice and balanced. As you can see in the video I laid the words and flourishes out in pencil first too.

These are the supplies I used today:

• Nikko G nib
• HP laser print paper
• Straight nib holder or if you’re right handed use an oblique nib holder
• Black sumi ink
  
  Here’s a downloadable traceable sheet if you want to practice tracing the words!

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care and sign up for the daily tutorials below if you haven’t done so yet!

Lots of love,

For day 5 we’re watercolouring again. I’m going to show you how to paint a monstera leaf!

Today was such a lovely day, the first official day of spring with the sun out in it’s full glory. The ducks were quacking in the canal outside my house and I was sat at my desk in front of the window enjoying the sunshine.

So I wanted to paint something ‘nature-y’ today. To remind ourselves that even though the world seems on pause right now, everything is still flowing and growing around us and we can still enjoy it, be it from behind a window or in our own gardens.

These are the supplies I used today:

• Winsor & newton professional grade watercolour (Sap green & Mars black)
• Size 6 synthetic kolinsky brush
• Cold pressed watercolour paper

The links above link to Van der Linde, which is one of my favourite creative heavens in Amsterdam and they also deliver!

So I explain everything in the video below, but these are the most important things to remember:
– Use separate cups of water for ‘warm’ and ‘cold’ colours
– The first layer is a really light one without a lot of pigment, but don’t make it too wet because you will see puddles and harsh lines once the water dries
– Mop up excess water with a dry brush, keep a paper towel ready to dry your brush
– Wait for the first layer to dry before adding the darker segments of the leaf
– Make the outside lines dark, then fill in the middle with just a dip of water. Again, mop up excess water with a dry brush

I hope you enjoyed this one. If you haven’t signed up for the tutorials in your mailbox yet then you can do so below. Take care!

Lots of love,

For day 3 we’re brush lettering!

I received an email from a business coach I follow this week, in which she shared the following text that really resonated with me.

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

~Kitty O’Meara

I like these words, because it makes us look at the current corona crisis differently. While this is no doubt a devastating situation with many losses in multiple ways, it’s also a healing one. There’s so much we can learn if we just slow down and take the time. If we stay in, read books, make art and really think about what we want. And there’s so many new business ideas and innovative new ways of connecting that arise because of this! While the actual earth is healing too. There’s fish in the clear canals of Venice, and air pollution went down by 30% in China which will prevent thousands of deaths. As scary as it is, maybe this is a much needed pause that we all need, to heal and grow and be stronger together in the end.

Anyway, that’s why we’re brush lettering the words ‘Slow down’ today. Please find the supplies and instructions below.

• Ecoline brush pen
• HP laser print paper
• And here’s a practice sheet you can print so you can trace the words

So far my thoughts for today. I hope you enjoyed this one and if you haven’t signed up for the tutorials in your mailbox yet then you can do so below. Take care!

Lots of love,