How to Do Flourishing in Calligraphy/Lettering
You have just finished practicing your awesome calligraphy but you want to add another touch to make it your own and unique. Well, you’re in the right place. Right now I am going to teach you how to add flourishes into your calligraphy.
When I barely started off doing lettering I had no idea what flourishes were. Don’t worry I will teach you everything that you need to know about adding flourishes into your lettering illustrations.
Flourishes are a quick and easy way to make your lettering unique. You can simply add a little decorative crossbar to your letter T and it will be considered a flourish.
That was just a quick way that explains how to add flourishes and what they are. Don’t worry I am going to be going more in-depth.
I am going to be giving you a brief summary of what you are going to be learning about today:
- What is Flourishing in Lettering
- Different Types of Flourishes
- Basic Concepts
- How to Practice Flourishing
- Practice Sheets
What is Flourishing in Lettering/Calligraphy
You have read everything in the above but still don’t understand what is flourishing in lettering. Well, I am just going to be giving you a simple answer.
Flourishing in lettering is when you add extra decorations to letters, words, or phrases to enhance your lettering. While at the same time still able to read what the word or phrase says.
The key points when taking in the definition are that these are just decorative designs that are combined with your lettering to make it unique and your own personal style.
Let me show you an example of a quote poster that I did the other day with flourishing.
As you can teel above you can see I am using these decorative lines around my letters to give it a final touch. That is called flourishing.
Different Types of Flourishes
There is a whole range of different types of flourishes that you add to your lettering illustrations. But here is just the base of what you are going to need when starting to add flourishing in your lettering.
Keep in mind you can always make your own designs of flourishes this is just a base to help you get started.
Let’s get started…
All the definitions that I have here are things that I created myself to make it easier for you.
First, there are letter flourishes. These are just flourishing that you use in one letter. I find these useful if you are doing initials instead of actual words or phrases.
Here are some examples below:
After that, we have flourishes at the end or beginning of the word. I find that these are the most simple way of adding flourishing into your words.
In the picture below you can see how I brought a downstroke lower, to then create a flourish at the end of the word.
Then in the second word, I brought the upstroke up even further to create a flourish at the beginning of the word.
Here is an example:
Now let us look at another type of flourish. You could add flourishes in the crossbar of a letter. A crossbar is just the line that goes through a letter like with upper case H and lowercase T.
Here are just some examples:
Now I am going to move on to a different type of flourish. This a flourish that you could put in the middle of your word. This is recommended to be a flourish below your word.
The last type of flourish that you could do is during your ascending loops and descending loops. If you don’t know what these are, they are just strokes that you use in your letters.
Here is a picture of a descending loop and an ascending loop.
So here are a few ideas of what you can do with your ascending loops and descending loops.
Ok, these were just to give you some simple ideas of what you can do in your own lettering. If you already have found your own style of lettering great. Try to incorporate some flourishes to fit your style.
Of course, you can always come up with new flourishes.
Basic Concepts of Flourishing
Now let us move on the base of flourishing. It is your own personal design of course but there are always basic key concepts that you have to work with to be able to achieve something.
The first thing I want to talk about in this section is that you never want your flourishes to distract the person seeing your illustration from reading the actual word.
You should be able to read the word with your flourishes. Right now I am just going to give you some tips to be able to do that.
FIRST
When starting out I recommend doing your flourishes even thinner than your actual words.
You want to do this because when creating flourishes it might be difficult using a flexible tool (like a brush pen or dip pen). You won’t have to worry about it if your flourishes don’t have any line variation.
Over time you can start to incorporate line variation into your flourishes once you have gotten the hang of it.
SECOND
Once you do start adding line variation to your flourishes there is one main rule that you are going to want to look out for.
A thick flourish should never cross another thick flourish. Instead, it should either be a thick flourish crosses a thin flourish, or a thin flourish crosses a thin flourish.
Let me show you what I mean.
The red flourish you can see that thick lines are crossing other thick lines, which is something that you do not want. While with the green flourish you can see that it is all around a thin stroke.
THIRD
Draw your guidelines so that your flourishes are going to be balanced. You probably never thought of it but I recommend that you have a balanced illustration with flourishes.
What I mean is you need to have the same amount of flourishes on one side as you have on the other.
It would help if you drew some guidelines with your x-height. Here are some guidelines that I use:
Once you put in your guidelines you want to make sure like I said above that everything is going to be balanced.
For example, if you put a flourish in the right bottom corner of your phrase. I would recommend putting another flourish in your top left corning of your phrase.
This would make sure that everything is balanced.
Let me show you what I mean.
How To Practice Flourishes
Right now I am just going to be able to explain to you what you need to know when it comes to practicing flourishes.
The very first thing that I would recommend practicing is the flourishes themselves.
Instead of starting off using a dip pen or brush pen just use a regular pencil. Starting off with a pencil can help you gain the muscle memory to later apply them with your actual pen.
At the end of the article, I am going to leave links to free flourishing practice sheets from other calligraphers, to help you out.
I also recommend writing out all of your letters in a pencil first and then trace it with your calligraphy utensil.
Again it will help you make fewer slip-ups, especially if you barely starting out adding flourishing to your calligraphy.
Free Practice Sheets For Flourishing
- https://www.twoeasels.com/blog/free-flourish-practice-sheets ( From Two Easels)
- https://www.kellysugarcrafts.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Basic-Flourish-Worksheets-KellySugarCrafts.pdf ( This are practice Sheets from Kelly Sugar Crafts She also Made another flourishing tutorial )
- https://bydawnnicole.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/FlourishingWorksheets-DawnNicoleDesigns.pdf ( Practice Sheets from Dawn Nicole)
- https://www.letteringwithlesley.com/product/flourishing-worksheet/ Practice Sheets From Lettering with Lesly
Conclusion
Hopefully, you now understand what is flourishing in calligraphy and how you can add flourishes to your lettering illustrations.
Remember all of the things that I have shown you above you don’t have to copy exactly. That is just the base for you to work with to be able to come up with your own unique style of lettering.
Remember you don’t even need to add flourishing into our letters to make them beautiful. It just depends on what style you’re going for.
Flourishing isn’t really something everyone really likes in their lettering but of course, if you want to add flourishes into your lettering go ahead.
If you have any questions, comment!!!
