The rest, including that stubborn s
Okay. Sixteen lessons in, and today we're cleaning up the alphabet. We've done the oval letters, the looped letters, the tricky middle group. What's left is a handful of leftovers that don't share a family: v, w, x, y, z, p, f, and yes, s. They don't build on each other the way the last few groups did, so we're just going to go one at a time.
I'll be honest, this is a mixed-bag lesson. Some of these are easy. Some of them are going to take you longer than you think they should. That's normal.
V and w
Start with v. It's two strokes, a downstroke and an upstroke, meeting at a point at the bottom. Same shape you already know from the compound curve, just narrower and pointed instead of rounded. Don't round the bottom of it by accident — that turns it into a u. Keep the point sharp.
W is just two v's pushed together. Same rules. The middle point where the two v's meet should come up almost as high as the outer points, not sag down low. If it sags, it looks like two separate check marks instead of one letter, and your eye reads it wrong even if you can't say why.
X
X is two strokes that cross. First stroke goes down-left to down-right, a thin diagonal, no pressure, just a light line. Second stroke crosses it with your actual downstroke — thin going down, pressure in the middle where the pen naturally slows, thin again coming out. The crossing point should sit right in the middle of the letter, not up near the top. Low crossing points make it look like it's falling over.
Y
Y starts like v, then keeps going into a descending loop below the baseline, same loop you learned back in lesson twelve. The two strokes meet at a point, and then that point drops straight down into the loop. People rush this one and let the top point drift too far right before they start the loop, so the whole letter leans. Keep that top part narrow.
Z
Z is mostly straight lines, which feels like a relief after all these curves, honestly. Thin line across the top, thin diagonal down, thin line across the bottom. No pressure changes on any of it — z doesn't really have a downstroke in the traditional sense, it's basically drawn, not written with a pressure switch. I like z. It's the one letter in this lesson that doesn't argue with you.
P and f
P: downstroke with pressure, same as always, then a small loop or bump at the top that curves right and comes back to meet the stem. Keep the bump small. Beginners make it too big and it turns into a b with an identity crisis.
F is p's cousin but taller — it's got an ascender, crosses the midline, and usually gets a small crossbar. I'd rather you keep the crossbar simple for now. Fancy crossbars are a flourish problem, and flourishing is not a today problem.
S. The stubborn one.
Okay. Real quick, because it'll save you frustration — s is not two curves stacked on top of each other the way it looks like it should be. It's one continuous stroke that changes direction and changes pressure at the same time, in the middle of the letter, and that's exactly why it fights people.
Top curve: thin, curving down and to the left. Middle: this is where the pressure needs to ease in, right as the direction is also changing. Two things happening at once. Bottom curve: thin again, curving back out.
Here's the thing. I had a friend sit down at my kitchen table and get a decent s in about ninety seconds. Ninety seconds. It took me two weeks. I was thrilled for her and also, if I'm being fully honest, a little annoyed. So if this one takes you a while, that's not a sign you're bad at this. It might just be a two-week letter for you like it was for me. Slow down on it more than feels necessary. That's the only advice that actually worked for me.
A note on drying, since we're doing a lot of letters with loops and crossings today: if you're using a brush pen with wetter ink, give each letter a few seconds before your hand or the paper moves over it. I still remember stacking wedding envelopes too soon and finding half of them smudged later. Not fun to discover after the fact.
A small thing worth doing
When you finally get one of these letters to look right — and you will — stop and actually look at it before you move on. I did this with my first good oval, months ago. Took a picture of it like I would've with a camera setting, then realized there was nothing to write down except the pen and the paper. So I wrote those down instead. Point is, notice when it clicks. Don't just plow forward to the next letter.
Before next time: pick your worst letter from today's group — for a lot of people it'll be s, but maybe it's x or y for you — and do two full lines of just that one letter. Not the whole alphabet. Just the one that's fighting you.