The ascending and descending loops
Okay. Twelve lessons in, and today we're doing loops. Ascenders going up, descenders going down, the parts of letters that stick out above and below the main body. Think of the tall part of an "l" or the tail on a "g." That's what we're building today.
This is the last basic stroke before we start putting actual letters together, so I want you paying attention to your hands, not just the ink.
What a loop actually is
An ascending loop starts down at the baseline, swings up above where your letters usually sit, and loops back down through itself before continuing into the next stroke. A descending loop is the same idea, just underneath everything, hanging down below the baseline.
And the thing is, people see a loop and think it's a fancy shape you draw. It's not. It's the same pressure rule you've been practicing this whole time, just stretched out longer. Thick on the down, thin on the up. That rule doesn't take a break because the stroke got taller.
So: light pressure going up into the loop. You barely touch the paper on that part. Then as you come back down and around, you press in gradually, not all at once, and you're back to thick by the time you're heading toward the baseline again.
Steps to practice at home
- Draw your guidelines first. Three lines: a baseline, a line above it where your letters normally sit (the x-height, if you want the real term), and then room above and below for the loops themselves. Don't skip this. Loops without guidelines turn into spaghetti fast.
- Start with the ascender. From the baseline, pull straight up with light pressure, no wobble, past your x-height line, up into the loop space. At the top, curve it back down and to the left, crossing back over your own upstroke.
- Add pressure on the way down. This is where beginners rush. You're coming back down through the loop and back toward the baseline, and that's your downstroke, so it should be getting heavier the whole way, not just at the very end.
- Do the descender the same way, just flipped. Down from the x-height line with pressure, dip below the baseline, loop it back up with a light touch, cross back over.
- Isolate them. Don't try to write a whole word yet. Just do columns of ascending loops down one side of the page, columns of descending loops down the other. Ten of each, slow.
I'd rather see you do ten loops in five minutes than fifty in two. Slow down on purpose here especially, because the loop is the one stroke where nervous, fast hands really show themselves — the crossing point gets sloppy, or you skip the pressure change entirely and it just looks like a shaky circle.
A confession about the pen for this one
So, real quick, because it'll save you some frustration. Loops are one of the strokes where a stiffer, nicer pen actually starts to matter a little.
Wyatt got me a set of nice pens for my birthday a while back, the kind I'd been reading about for months, and I was almost scared to use them. Left them in the box for a good month. Which, looking back, is a little silly. Then I finally opened them up to practice loops specifically, because my cheap pen kept splaying out on the upstroke of the loop and I couldn't get the fine line I wanted at the top. And oh my heck, what a difference. The nicer nib held its shape through the curve in a way the four-dollar pen just couldn't.
I still think you start with the cheap pen, always. You will ruin one, better it's the cheap one. But once you're past the ruining-pens stage and you're working on something like loops where control at the top of the curve really matters, that's a reasonable place to let yourself upgrade a little. Just don't be like me and let it sit in a drawer out of nerves. Scuff the caps. Use the thing.
Where this goes wrong
The most common problem I see at the tables is the crossing point. Where the upstroke and downstroke cross each other inside the loop, people either cross too high, which makes the loop look pinched and small, or they don't cross at all and it just becomes a wide open curve, which isn't a loop, it's more of a hook.
Aim for the crossing point to happen right around your x-height line, not way up in the loop and not way down at the baseline. That's the detail that makes a loop read as a loop instead of a shape that's almost one.
And don't panic if your first several columns look inconsistent. Some will lean more than others, some crossings will land in different spots. That's normal at this stage. You're building the muscle memory, same as always.
Before next time: keep doing your columns of loops, both directions, and notice if your pressure change is happening gradually through the curve or all at once near the bottom. That's the thing to watch for.