Lessons for life, from a Bear of very little brain.

So here, as promised in this post, is the completed extract from 'In which Eeyore finds the Wolery and Owl moves into it' as written by Me:

(Apologies for the dodgy image quality - this is a scan, but I'm still working on the best way of sharing images of my work. Hopefully it's better when you view the larger images).

This is my favourite ever Winnie-the-Pooh excerpt, and I thought it would be a nice way of starting off practising longer pieces. Instead of rambling interminably about the various aspects of what I've written I thought I'd try and keep it succinct in the following way:

Good Things

• Relatively consistent looking throughout the three-and-a-bit pages
• Only one spelling mistake (that I've noticed) - sorry Eeyore!
• There were no 'second attempts' at any of these pages - it's all as written the first time round.

Less-good Things 

• I made a spelling mistake
• The baseline is a bit wobbly and inconsistent
• I'm having trouble keeping the 'h' downstrokes straight - mostly I need to come fruther back round with the ascender loop
• I need to take far more care with the baseline parts of the letters h and n to make sure that they have even depth (this is partly why the lines are a bit wobbly)

Next time I will:

• Choose a shorter passage!
• TAKE MY TIME over each letter and word
• Use darker guidelines or draw light pencil lines on the paper
• Relax and warm up properly - it can be so tempting just to launch straight into it and only hit your stride some lines later
• Take more care sqauring-off  and re-touching letters. NB this should be done with a finer nib

This piece was done using my Brause 361 nib and Higgins Eternal ink on Winsor & Newton Smooth Surface Cartridge Paper. This paper has a nice off-white colour and is just about smooth enough for pointed pen work, as long as you're relaxed about it. It's quite thick though, hence my difficulty in seeing the guidelines!

I learnt so much doing this piece; the main one being SLOW DOWN. It's so easy to think you can write faster just because you can write joined up, but it's a recipe for disaster. I recently saw the following in a Copperplate newsletter: Rules for Copperplate writing:
                                     Rule One - WRITE SLOWLY
                                     Rule Two - See Rule One

This pretty much sums it up I think! That being said, it is important to try and find the balance between 'slow' and 'flow', which I think comes from being relaxed both mentally and physically. So next time I'll be doing my best to slow down and relax, and also keep in mind the technical issues I want to correct without it stressing me out. If anyone has any further pointers for me to add to my list - just shout!

Pangramania

Who would have thought that the dizzy heights of being able to do joined-up writing would cause so much excitement? It's almost like being back at primary school - rushing downstairs every 5 minutes to show anyone who'll stand still for long enough my latest sentence, pointing out the bits I'm particularly proud of (and the bits that went wrong).

As you've probably guessed by now, I've progressed from the slightly mind-numbing exercises linking every conceivable combination of letters together, to practising whole words and sentences :-) This is soooo much more interesting, and also brings to light any inconsistencies between letter forms. It's all very well being able to reproduce the same letter shape again and again, but if it doesn't match other, similar letters then it's all going to look a bit weird. Anyhow, enough of me wittering, here are some pictures:

So, half-way through the morning my practice page looked a bit like this...

 

(with a closer look at the alphabet - all the letters this time, and even in the right order!)

...and after a small amount of tea I had a full page of joined-up-ness :-)








I am really pleased with the progress I've been making, and it's lovely to be able to produce a whole page of relatively consistent looking writing. Of course there are still tons of things to work on - that's never going to change - but working hard at something like this, where consistency is key, really appeals to my inner perfectionist.

The sentences I've been using for practise are pangrams (sentences that use every letter of the alphabet at least once) and they're usually complete nonsense, or at least quite wacky, but they do allow you to work on all your letter forms in a single sentence. My favourite so far is "seven wildly panting fruit flies gazed anxiously at the juicy bouncing kumquat". If you have any favourites let me know and I'll write them out and post them next time.

Brause 361

 Having got a solid grasp of the basics I've started experimenting with different nibs and letter forms. The page above was written with a Brause 361 nib (Higgins Eternal ink) which I got on really well with; it felt quite robust after the EF Principal but held the ink nicely and was quite forgiving, and was definitely less scratchy. I also gave a Gillot 303 a whirl, which was definitely *not* forgiving, but beautifully springy and delicate - one to go back to once I've done a bit more work I think.

 Left is an alternative 'f' that I've been playing with (sorry for the out-of-focus picture) with a slightly more stylish descender than the one I initially learnt. Plenty more variations to play around with, along with some attractive ways of combining double letters and maybe then I'll be ready for the capitals, which looks to be a whole new ball game!



Finally (and I promise I'll be quiet after this), my cherry tree is in flower. AND I've found the macro setting on the camera :-D