Kana and shodou
Maybe its time to try something simpler, and brush up on our kana. A good sense of proportion is vital, and makes the kana more easily legible. The red guides give hints on rhythm and proportion, so you can give your handwriting some personality.
Was that too easy? Impossible. Lets look at kana again. This is one of a series of introductory lessons on writing "onna-de" or "womens' hand" which is a cursive kana calligraphy. Here is a short lesson on continuous or "running" script.
These continuous cursive skills are important to the layout of calligraphic works. Here is a very interesting diagram of a piece of calligraphy. It is written pairs of columns, the right column shows the calligraphy, and the left column shows the order the radicals were written. You can easily see how complex cursive kanji calligraphy can be!
