Dr. ... Qui?

It would appear that I haven't posted for a while - how very remiss of me! I have however been doing some scribbling, with some interesting results.

After the monumental efforts of my last post, and having come to the conclusion that I need to slow down and relax, I decided to have a play around with a different method of writing Copperplate script. To this end I visited the IAMPETH website and watched my way through Dr. Joe Vitolo's series of clips on how to write his particular style of Copperplate (the lessons can be found here). The most obvious difference between Dr. Joe's method and the Winters book that I had been using is that Dr. Joe is far more concerned with the perfect formation of the individual letters than developing a flowing style of handwriting: he lifts the pen and turns the paper round and does all sorts in order to get the most consistent shapes. This is not to say that the resulting script doesn't look seamlessly written, it does and it's really rather lovely, it's just a different approach - and one that emphasizes what works best for you at that. So I've been playing around with the minuscules again, with the following results:

This was my first attempt - I'll probably never get it this good again. Rats.

Poor Brother Jarvis, I seem to be  becoming obsessed with him!

Not too bad for first attempts I think. I also took advantage of the clip that goes through how to adjust the flange on an oblique pen-holder properly - it makes a lot of difference!

 Over the Easter weekend I also took the time to refresh my memory of the Italic script. It's amazing how quickly it drops off if you don't practice regularly, so I think I should probably set aside one or two days a week for this.

The poem is by Brian Patten - one of my favourites.

I really must learn how to spell

Apart from being a bit rusty I found the letter forms came back to me quite quickly, and I've certainly developed a flow that wasn't there before. However, I do find that writing with this pen (a Rotring ArtPen 1.5mm) makes my hand hurt a significant amount. I'm probably gripping too much.









That's all for now folks, next I'm going to have a look at Dr. Joe's take on Capitals (and carry on practising my Italics). Oh, and Calligraphy classes start up again next week - hurrah!

p.s. A prize for anyone who gets the Bill Bailey reference.