🪴 Garden Drills to Help Your Calligraphy Skills Bloom

When TPK released Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills: Garden Edition seven years ago, it quickly became a favorite. This month, let’s celebrate these perfect late summer drills with a birthday discount and inspiration. Today, I’m sharing Garden Drills insights, featuring artists’ work, and providing you with a wonderful free printable.

What are Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills?

Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills are not just your typical practice sheets—they’re calligraphy with an artistic flair. Unlike most routine calligraphy drills, every NYACD turns your practice into a mini masterpiece. For example, take a look at the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” drill below. As you create it, you’re perfecting your pressure exertion, figuring out your pace, and learning to rotate your paper when appropriate.

NYACD are cool because you can implement them on projects like mail art or home decor. For example, I repurposed an Itsy Bitsy Spider drill for Halloween mail art. With the help of a few webs, the envelope feels festive and just the right amount of creepy.

About the Garden Edition Drills

You can find the Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills: Garden Edition by clicking here. Note that they are available for a discounted $7.00 through August 31st, 2024. Once you’ve downloaded the drills, print them off on a calligraphy-friendly paper such as 32# laserjet (affiliate link). Next, start filling them out with your favorite pen/nib/ink combination!

The Garden Edition packet starts out with rectangular drills. These drills require simple movements that result in neat little illustrations.

Next comes two pages of square drills. These drills are a little more involved than the rectangular drills, but red and green arrows will walk you through exactly how to create them.

After the square drills, you’ll fill out circular drills. These drills are more difficult than many of the square drills, so they have guidelines for you to follow.

After you finish the smaller drills, you move on to two large drills: a cactus and a spider.

Finally, the Garden Drills packet ends with instructions and practice for drawing a flourished hummingbird. Once you learn how to draw the hummingbird, try using it to add embellishment to an envelope or for making framed art to display in your home!

Procreate Edition

If you prefer to practice your calligraphy on the go, pick up the Garden Calligraphy Drills Procreate worksheet. The worksheet includes the same exercises as its printable counterpart, but the file has been formatted to be suitable for the Procreate app.

Many people find that practicing calligraphy on Procreate translates into stronger pointed pen skills. That’s because the Apple pencil is responsive to pressure and will mimic the thick/thin stroke calligraphy characteristics that we see in real life. So, if Procreate practice sounds like a good option for you, give it a try!

Garden Drills in the Wild

In the years since Garden Drills came on the scene, artists have been using its motifs to embellish quotes and phrases, make mail art, decorate greeting cards, and beautify sketchbook pages. Here are a few neat examples that I found on Instagram:

As you explore Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills: Garden Edition, let inspiration guide you. While TPK calligraphy drills are designed to help you practice, they’re also meant to ignite your imagination!

Free Flourished Bee Tutorial

For thematically relevant, equally delightful practice, try TPK’s free Flourished Bee Calligraphy Tutorial. The flourished bee is a popular motif that goes hand-in-hand with the practice provided in the Garden Drills! My recommendation? Do the Garden Drills first to receive guided practice making loops, flourishes, and rotating your paper. Then, try your hand at making a flourished bee.

Thanks very much for reading TPK, and enjoy cultivating your calligraphy skills with today’s special drills!

Warmly,

*This post contains affiliate links to Amazon