The oval, which is harder than it looks
Okay. Eleven lessons in, and today we're doing the oval, which sounds like it should be easy because it's basically just a circle. It is not basically just a circle. I want to get that out of the way now so you don't feel behind when it fights you.
The oval is the letter "o" without the letter part yet. It's also hiding inside a, d, g, q — a whole bunch of your lowercase letters have an oval as their skeleton. So this is worth the fuss.
Why it's harder than a circle
A circle, pressure doesn't change. Same weight all the way around, that's what makes it a circle.
An oval, for calligraphy purposes, is a circle that got pressure added to it. Thick on the left downstroke, thin on the right upstroke, and it has to transition smoothly at the top and bottom or it looks like two mismatched crescent moons taped together. That's the part that gets people. Not the shape. The switch.
And the thing is, your hand wants to make it symmetrical the boring way — same pressure everywhere — because that's what circles have trained it to do your whole life. You're fighting twenty-some years of circle habit in about twenty minutes. Be patient with that.
The actual steps
- Start at about 10 o'clock, going down. Not straight up top like a clock face — a little to the left of center. That's your entry point.
- Curve down and to the left, applying pressure as you go. This is your fat side. Downstroke, so pressure's on.
- Bottom of the oval, around 6 o'clock, start easing pressure off as you curve back up the right side.
- Come up the right side light. Upstroke, so almost no pressure. This is the thin side.
- Close it back up near where you started, at the top, and let the two ends just about meet without overlapping too much.
Go slow. I know I say that every lesson, but I mean it doubly here, because the transition points — top and bottom — are exactly where beginners speed up out of nervousness, and that's exactly where you need the most control. Slow down on purpose, right at the part that scares you a little. That's usually the tell that it's the important part.
A quick caution
Don't try to draw the oval as one smooth fast gesture like you would in regular handwriting. That's the instinct and it's the wrong one here. Two slower, deliberate curves that meet, not one quick loop. If your hand's cramping, you're gripping too hard — shake it out, that's normal, not a sign you're doing it wrong.
My opinion on this one
Tracing worksheets, past the first day, I think are overrated. I know some of you have printed practice sheets with dotted ovals on them and you're tracing away happily. Trace it twice if you want to see the shape. Then put it away and draw it freehand. Tracing trains your eye. It doesn't train your hand, and your hand is the thing that has to learn this, not your eye. You'll get stuck copying dots instead of building the actual muscle memory, and I'd rather you make a wobbly freehand oval than a perfect traced one, because only one of those is teaching you anything.
About getting it wrong, confidently
Here's a small story. I was watching a calligraphy video a while back, alone in my kitchen, working on ovals myself, and the woman on the screen said the stroke direction backwards — told people to go up the left side with pressure, which is just wrong, that's a downstroke side. And I said, out loud, to no one, "no — no, that's backwards." Really committed to it. My son Wyatt walked in from the other room and said, "who are you talking to?" Nobody. I was talking to nobody. But I stand by the correction.
I tell you that because it's easy to watch something confidently presented and assume it must be right. It doesn't mean don't trust me either — it means once you know the actual rule, thick down thin up, you'll start catching things that are off, even from people who are supposed to know. That's a good sign, actually. That means it's starting to live in your hand and not just in your notes.
What a good one looks like
You'll know it when the fat side and thin side actually look like they belong to the same shape. Not two different letters stuck together. Balanced isn't the same as perfect — mine still lean a little wonky some days, especially if I'm tired, my slant drifts on me and I just live with it. Balanced means the pressure story is right: down thick, up thin, smooth switch at the top and bottom.
Before next time
Draw a row of ovals, slow, at least two full lines of them, and don't judge the first six. Somewhere around oval fifteen or twenty you'll feel the switch happen without thinking about it, and that's the one to remember.