Penmanship Lesson No. 1

 For anyone interesting in improving their penmanship, there will be a new series of posts with suggestions. 

Step one:

Find a pen, pencil or marker that you love to write with and paper that feels good. I like lined notebook paper and a pencil or ballpoint. You do not need anything fancy.

Do not write in notebooks. You need loose sheets of paper and you need a stack of 6 sheets so that you have a nice cushion. Do not attempt to write nicely on one sheet of paper on a hard surface. It's a very unpleasant feeling.

Choose a slant that is comfortable for you. If you write with no slant or a back slant, stick with that.

Start with these letters: i t n m u h l

Put these letters together to make words or combinations of letters that are not words. The goal is to fill a page with consistent shapes. Do not put any loops on the h and the l. Do not make the stems too tall. The stems are called ascenders.

The photo shows a sample of random words and combinations of the letters. Start by writing one line and then repeat it right below and see if you can improve each time you write it. If you have patience, a full page would be nice. If you get restless, switch to the word minimum. 

If your strokes and spacing are inconsistent, try doing a solid row of ininimimininimim and see if you can get a very consistent *picket fence.* Then add the u and keep going. And finally add the h and l.

I just eyeballed the x-height on my sample. The x-height is how tall the small letters are - the ones with no ascenders. If you are not able to keep the height of the letters consistent, print out guide sheets with the height you need or use graph paper.

An essential part of pretty penmanship is to establish a rhythm. The video shows that the strokes are rather jerky. There is a bit of speed on the downstroke, followed by a pause, and then the upstrokes have a little speed and another pause. Eventually, this rhythm will even out and be imperceptible. But, it's a good exercise for developing consistency.

Go as slow as necessary to hit the lines and no go over. Gradually speed up, but only if you are hitting the guidelines precisely.

To the person on The Flourish Forum who inspired this series and who is hoping to improve their penmanship over the course of a few weeks, this is entirely possible. Ideally, you will spend 20-30 minutes per day on this drill. We will add the other letters a few at a time. We could add letters every 4 or 5 days, assuming you do the daily practice.

After I posted this, I tried watching the video. I was fine at the size it is in the post. When I clicked on full screen, it got all jumpy and garbled. I might have to switch videos to Vimeo -- but that will take time. Hopefully you can see the *jerky* rhythm in the video.