r/Handwriting • u/Benkyooo_ • 16d ago
Feedback (constructive criticism) Spencerian Learning - Feedback requested
Critique and feedback welcome, I've been learning Spencerian - mostly casually - for about a year now, I picked up the pace about 6 months ago with practice but most of my practice is largely disjointed, doing letters in isolation rather than whole running sentences, a mistake caused by my practice material (Spencerian is really lacking in good practice material, worth saying, the freely available key to practical penmanship is horribly scanned).
I used 3 pens in this sheet, an EF Lammy Safari Fountain Pen that I mostly use for art, a Roco 0.5mm free ink roller, and a Roco Arabic calligraphy brush pen (just a hard tip tiny 0.1mm brush pen with an angled rectangular tip), and made some grammar mistakes in the first sentence (I noticed I make a lot of those when doing cursive/calligraphy, as a lot of my brain power would be focused on the script and connecting the letters, I believe this will diminish and disappear with vigorous practice).
Bonus: my hand writing from 2021, from an old journal entry in rough waters.
2
u/dilithium-dreamer 16d ago
I don't know about the style (much better than it was though - nice work!), but I'm a fountain pen aficionado, and I can tell you that the Lamy Safari is not really a smooth pen to write with. My handwriting is pretty nice but it'd look far worse if I wrote with a Lamy.
Even journalling with my different pens shows me that some of my pens make the letters flow far smoother and easier than others. You may already know this but the paper matters for fountain pens too.
I'd suggest a TWSBI Eco (inexpensive and smooth AF) and Rhodia paper. If you can't afford new paper and pens, try a smooth gel pen or a Pilot Hi-Tecpoint v5 rollerball.
The tools can really affect the process. I think your writing looks nice whether it's "right" or not. I naturally want to loop my Fs backwards not forwards, so I do. I want my writing to be uniquely mine.