Many calligraphers warm up before working, with drawing exercises consisting of simple, repetitive pen strokes.

Cover the lower part of your practice page with a sheet of paper to rest your hand on. You don't want to transfer sweat or oils to your page. Water-based inks and oil don't mix! (Translation: your inks won't stick to the oil-smeared sections of the page.)

Pick up your writing instrument. Draw vertical strokes, keeping the pen nib at 45°, as shown above. Carefully start and stop at the guide line, spacing them equally. Your goal is control of precise placement of the marks.

Do it again, but follow the slanted lines.

Holding the pen angle at 45°, make strokes at 45° to the left (as shown above) and to the right and you'll see the thickest and thinnest lines you can make.

Make clockwise and counter-clockwise curves, stroking downward, and you'll see the distinctive calligraphic thick and thin strokes combined in one line. Now we're getting somewhere!

With these warmup exercises out of the way, you are ready to watch the videos and follow along letter by letter.