The letter “x” thoroughly kicked my butt
This letter took me two days to learn. I had about 20 practice sheets but in the video, I only showed five. When I was organizing all my letter practice sheets up to this point including the letter “x”. My mother had come back from walking the dogs. I have two female dogs (Shuge and Talanji, who we all “The Girls”). They saw all that paper and went for it. They started playing with my practice sheets.
They were grabbing the paper with their mouths and shaking it. They loved the sound of tracing paper and started rolling in it. Then they had a game of tug of war. I’m trying to get my practice sheets from them. They think we are playing a game and kept holding onto the paper in their mouth ever tighter.
All I could do was laugh. Some practice sheets I had to get rid of and others I was able to save. I lost all the practice sheets for the letter “x”. I started anew and continued learning and writing the letter “x”. It’s extremely, extremely challenging because this letter doesn’t look like any other letter on top of the strokes used to make this letter.
Going up with the light stroke into the rounded curve and into the downstroke stumped me. Doing the downstroke, I was able to get the downstroke and back up into the rounded turn into the light stroke, I hit another snag. I went back and watched my instructor, Becca’s video again. I watched the video twenty tow times. I slowed it down to frame by frame. I saw exactly what I was going wrong.
I realized the main stroke that kind of looks like an exaggerated compound curve. This was the starting point for me.
When doing the upstroke and going into the rounded curve down into the downstroke, I started the downstroke too early. The downstroke begins just after I turn into the downstroke at the beginning of the curve, not waiting to do the curve into the downstroke. (I’ve uploaded a brief video so you can see).
When it came to that second curve into the light stroke, I was going too fast. I couldn’t control the pressure and transition from the heavy downstroke into the light upstroke.
The first four sheets were learning sheets. I used those sheets to practice along with Becca. We slowly but surely my x’s started coming together. Now I can confidently write the letter “x”. I’m editing a video right now. It goes into detail about the challenges of this letter, how I conquered it and the common problems myself and my classmates were having with it as well. It’s an in-depth look at literally, one of the hardest letters to write in calligraphy, and that is not an exaggeration.
I will leave you with this. Remember, a breakthrough doesn't mean the struggle was wasted. It means every shaky stroke, wrong turn, and practice sheet was teaching your hand how to finally get there. Sometimes calligraphy makes you work for the win. You practice, adjust, mess it up, try again—and then suddenly your hand understands. That's what perseverance looks like on paper.