What to practice next, and honest gaps of mine
Okay. Twenty-four lessons in, and this is the last one, so I want to be straight with you about two things: what to actually practice once I'm not standing next to your table anymore, and where I'm still not great at this myself.
Because I think beginner courses have a bad habit of ending like the instructor is done learning too. I'm not. I'm two years in. I have a whole list of stuff that still fights me.
What to practice, in order
Ovals first, still. Not because you need more of them, but because ovals are the fastest way to tell if your hand is tired or your pen is dying or you're pressing wrong again. Five minutes of ovals before anything else you letter. Think of it like scales.
Then full alphabet, lowercase, slow. Not for speed. For catching the letters that still wobble. For most people that's r, or s, or g. For me it's r. Always has been.
Then words, not sentences. Pick one word and write it fifteen, twenty times in a row. This is where something happens that's hard to explain until it happens to you.
I did this with the word "gratitude" a while back, for a Relief Society thing I was lettering. Fifty times, easy, because I needed one clean version out of the pile. And somewhere around the fortieth one, the word stopped looking like a word to me. It was just shapes. Curves and lines that happened to be next to each other. I couldn't read it anymore, not in the normal way you read.
That's the moment your hand actually starts learning it. Not before that. Your brain has to get bored enough to check out and let your hand take over. So if you're doing your one word twenty times and it still looks like a word to you by the end, do it thirty more. I mean that.
Then sentences, on a guideline sheet, every time. I still use one. I said that back in lesson nineteen and I'll say it again now because it's the thing people stop doing once they feel "advanced," and that's exactly when the slant starts drifting on them.
Then whatever you actually want to make. Cards. Signs. Envelopes. The order above is for building the hand. Once it's built, go make the thing you signed up for in the first place.
The opinion I want to leave you with
Cheap pens first, always. I've said this the whole course but it matters most right now, at the end, because this is the point where people want to reward themselves with the nice set. Don't, not yet. Ruin one more cheap pen. You'll learn something from the way it dies — mine frayed straight out because I pressed like a pencil, first week I ever owned one — and it's a four-dollar lesson instead of a forty-dollar one.
My actual gaps
Flourishing. The big loopy swashes people add to capital letters. Mine look forced. I know they look forced. I've read three chapters on it and watched instructors whose flourishes look like they're breathing, and mine still look like I'm trying. I'm not pretending otherwise. If you want to go further than me on this, there are teachers who specialize in just flourish work, and that's a fine next step for you even though it isn't one I've taken yet.
Consistent slant when I'm tired. By the end of a long lettering session my letters go more upright, every time, and I can spot it in the finished piece even when nobody else can. Guideline sheet, every time, like I said. I'm not above needing one.
Lowercase r. I don't know what it is. Every other letter made peace with me eventually. This one still fights.
I tell you this stuff not to be modest about it. I'm telling you because if you hit a wall on your r, or your slant drifts when you're tired, or your flourishes look stiff — that's not a sign you're bad at this. That's a sign you're doing it long enough to notice. Two years in and I've got the same three walls. That's just where the walls are for now.
One caution before you go: keep your pens away from heat and out of a hot car in summer, especially the brush pens, because the ink dries weird or the tip can warp. Simple thing, easy to forget.
Before next time
There isn't a next time, not in this course anyway. So instead: pick one word that means something to you, and write it thirty times this week, slow, on a guideline sheet, and see if it stops looking like a word to you before you're done. If it does, you'll know what I mean about the hand learning it. If it doesn't, do it thirty more.