العربية

Naskh practice sheets

Learn Naskh step by step: the 40-lesson path →

Watch the lesson films, in English and Arabic: level 1 is free →

Naskh is where most calligraphers begin, because it is the hand every Arabic reader already knows: printed books and most of the Quran pages people read imitate it. Below is the whole alphabet in Naskh, each letter in the four shapes it takes — standing alone, opening a word, inside a word and closing it — set in Amiri, a typeface drawn after the Naskh of the Bulaq press. Six letters never join to the letter after them, so they have only two shapes. Every letter opens in Mashq Studio as a trace: the letter is set faintly in Naskh, you write over it with a reed nib cut to the Naskh pen angle, using a mouse, a finger or an Apple Pencil, and the studio measures how much of the letter you covered. The printable sheet gives you the model row and rows to trace over by hand, at A4, with a baseline for each row. Practise one letter at a time, in all its forms, before joining any.

Sentences from the master pieces

Once the letters hold, write whole sentences. These are the complete lines of our calligrapher's Thuluth master pieces, shortest first, set here in the Amiri typeface.

Trace opens each letter in Naskh with a reed nib cut to its pen angle, measured from the letters themselves: thick and thin come from the direction you pull, with a mouse, a finger or an Apple Pencil. There are no numbered strokes; the studio measures how much of the true letter you covered. · Naskh phrases to try · the history of Naskh · for teachers

Practice sheets in the other scripts: Thuluth · Ruq'ah · Diwani · Farsi (Nastaliq)

Naskh calligraphy art for sale