Beginner Deciding Among Scripts

[thephantom]

Hello everyone! I've recently got into improving my handwriting, and I want to try my hand at learning a new script. I've seen talk of Copperplate and Spencerian, and I'm wondering which would be better for a beginner.

 

I'm also wondering what the best tool to use is! Can I just use a fountain pen (I've been experimenting with one for the past few weeks), or do I need to get into dip nib pens? Any help/guidance to alternate resources would be appreciated!

[Randal6393]

Welcome to FPN! We have many phantoms here, love to have another. Since you are in Washington state, why not check out italic? The many years that Lloyd Reynolds taught italic at the Uni make it almost required. Besides, italic requires a stub nib and is, IMHO, easier than Copperplate or Spencerian for a beginner. Once you have the stub nib down and have disciplined yourself to practice and keeping the nib straight, then flex nibs become a bit easier. Of course, that is my experience and your mileage may vary.

 

While I use dip pens for fine writing, I prefer fountain pens for convenience, most writing, and practice. The materials for italic are abundant and easily acquired. You might try the Reynolds videos, look up the scripts on Google, try a manual, etc. A good place to start is the Broad-Edged Pen forum here. The pinned threads at the top are a treasure-trove of information. Also search the threads for information. It is amazing how much information and instruction is available here.

 

Best of luck,

[dms525]

Lloyd Reynolds taught at Reed College, which is in Portland, Oregon. Other than that, I agree with Randal. Italic is relatively easy to learn, if you are willing to devote the necessary time and attention to critical practice. Instructional books and videos and readily available. Fountain pens with crisp stub or cursive italic nibs are available at whatever price point suits your budget.

 

Italic also finesses the bogus argument between cursive and italic. Once you have mastered the basic letter shapes and learned how to join letters, the same script can be used for very formal printing, informal printing and cursive. Moreover, if you want to learn other calligraphic scripts like Uncial, Carolingian, Humanist Bookhand, Foundational or any of the Gothic versions, you would use the very same fountain pen and nib you use for italic.

 

If you are totally in love with the curlicues and loopiness of Copperplate, go for it. It's a different animal entirely and really requires a dip pen with flexible, pointed nib and a special kind of nib holder.

 

But I am not biased at all.

 

Happy writing!

 

David

[bobje]

Phantom,

Randal is spot on. Italic would also enable you to join the ranks of several other FPN contributors who are currently learning italic, including me, ksm, jade108, _inkyfingers, GJMekenkamp, and others.

 

Here are two good places to start. One is a set of videos from the late Lloyd Reynolds himself, and the others are more recent, from his students Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay.

 

Getty-Dubay

http://www.handwritingsuccess.com/GDIC/lowercase_videos.php

 

Lloyd Reynolds

[thephantom]

Thanks for all the help, everyone! I'm starting to look into Italic now, and I think the Lloyd Reynolds videos are great. Do you also recommend that I look into getting a manual as well? I read on another thread that many people use Write Now by Getty and Dubay.

 

I'm also wondering about paper and pens. I currently only have a Pilot Metropolitan with a fine nib, so I'm assuming I'd have to get a stub nib. Any suggestions for beginner FPs with a stub nib? In terms of paper, any good notebooks I could pick up to practice on? Or should I be printing templates I find online?

 

I'm completely new to this, so forgive me if I ask any obvious or silly questions .

[bobje]

Phantom, the Getty-Dubay book, 'Write Now,' is a good one. Many also have used the Fred Eager book, 'The Italic Way to Beautiful Handwriting'.

 

You can place a stub (italic) nib in your Pilot Metropolitan by purchasing a pen called the "Pilot Plumix," which sells for about $9 and comes stock with a stub. Just swap them.

 

In terms of practice sheets, grids, etc., FPN contributor KSM created an excellent tool to print your own. It's at this URL.

 

http://liniuszek.prv.pl/

[dms525]

Hi, Phantom.

 

The Lloyd Reynolds videos were made to study together with a workbook written by Reynolds. Each can be used independently, but they do complement each other. The Getty/Dubay and Eager books are good.

 

The Plumix nib that Bob mentioned is good for everyday writing. For learning, a broader italic nib is much better. You can see the letter forms more clearly, including errors you need to correct.

 

I think the ideal is actually a set of NOS Osmiroid nibs. You can find them on ebay. Those nibs also fit in Esterbrook J series pens. A pen and 6 nibs should set you back maybe $40-$50. Another option at a similar price would be a Lamy Safari. You can get a 1.5 or 1.9mm italic nib for it. The cost is similar to an Osmiroid set. Another bargain would be to get Ranga (Indian ebonite) pen from Peyton Street Pens with a 1.5mm italic JoWo nib. You can then get a Franklin-Christoph (1.9mm) "Music nib" which fits the Ranga. Altogether, about $100, but worth it. If you give up on italic <gasp>, you can always swap in a JoWo round pointed nib for "regular" cursive and have a really good writer.

 

There are many, many good options at both lower and higher price points, but those are my favorites. Learning with a nib that is at least 1.5mm or 1.9mm is strongly recommended.

 

David

[Randal6393]

@David: Sorry, I got lazy. Should have looked up Reynolds' college before I posted. Good advice you have given Phantom.

 

Hi, Phantom,

 

Well, as you can see, I get a bit lazy at times. But, other than that, hope you are enjoying yourself and trying out a variety of scripts and tools. Like David and Bobje, I love the italic hand. I also write Copperplate. It's fun but required more discipline and patience for me than italic ever did. Did you check out the listings on the pinned thread at the Broad (or Edged) Pen Calligraphy forum? A lot of information, for very little cost.

 

Best of luck,

[FromTheNetherlands]

Dear Phantom!

 

Indeed, I am learning italic writing at the moment.

 

For me, as a beginner, italic can 'easily' be learned with a HUGE BIG nib. When I started learning italic handwriting some months ago I bought a Pilot Parallel 2.4mm. This was the best decision I have made (in my opinion).

 

Soon after I bought the Pilot Parallel I stumbled upon a Sheaffer Calligraphy set in a second-hand store. I immediately started writing with the B nib (1.8mm), but I found that the 2.4 mm I already had was better for me.

 

In short: a bigger nib helps in showing where problems in the italic handwriting are. For example: I have a hard time writing the letter 'a', with a bigger nib I can more easily see where I go wrong compared to a less wide nib.

 

I use the book written by Reynolds and the book written by Fred Eager (both are mentioned in above posted posts).

 

Please do not take my advice for granted, members like KSM or Randal or dms or Bobje are a lot more experienced than I am.

Edited October 19, 2016 by GJMekenkamp

[ksm]

O, I've been called to the blackboard ;-) I'm not an expert, I just have a little over a year of experience. Both Randal and David (dms) are much more knowledgable.

 

You've stated, that your goal is handwriting improvement. In my opinion this rules out purely calligraphic styles (i.e. Copperplate, Uncial, Blackletter), and styles unreadable for modern readers (i.e. secretary hand and earlier „cursives”, kurrent etc.).

 

I've been told Spencerian has many flavours, from purely utilitarian monoline cursive all the way to calligraphic hand written with heavy flexing. Unfortunately Spencerian, and American business writing styles (i.e. Palmer) have steep learning curve, a lot of practice is required to change your handwriting movement patterns before visual effect become appealing.

 

Italic hand is has much gentler learning curve. Learn ductus (order and direction of strokes), learn to keep pen angle and in the matter of two months Your handwriting improves radically. Gaining proficiency on the other hand takes much longer time. 8 months after I've started to learn Italic Calligraphy I couldn't identify some problems with shapes of my letters, I needed an expert to point them to me.

 

About tools to learn italic handwriting:

 

1. Get Fred Eager's book, IMO it is the most complete resource.
2. Don't go wider than Pilot Parallel 2.4mm, the wider the nib the easier to identify problems with letter shapes, but after crossing certain point stroke of 10 nib width becomes to hard to draw in single uninterrupted move.
3. You do not need the sharpest nib out there for practice. Sheaffer's 3 piece set, Lamy Joy set, Kaweco Italic set or Rotring Art Pen set would all be equally good. Get 1.8-2.0 mm nib for calligraphic mode practice, 1.5 mm nib for further calligraphic mode and beginning of cursive mode, and 1.1-1.0 mm nib for cursive italic practice.
4. TWSBI's 1.1 stubs are not good for practice, they give very little line variation, on the other hand they make very good note taking pens.

[thephantom]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for all the advice and resources! I guess I should restate my goal. I don't exactly want to improve my handwriting. I actually do like my normal print handwriting. What I would like to do is to improve my posture while writing (ie. learning to write with my arm instead of my fingers), as I get writer's cramp fairly quickly after writing. I would also like to learn a different script, just for fun, which is why I was looking into Copperplate and Spencerian. However, I do think that Italic would be a nice entry into learning a new script, and it would also probably help me improve my method of writing. Let me know if this sounds right! I would like to eventually learn Copperplate or Spencerian, but I think that the learning curve (with the fancier style and the materials needed, like dip pens) might be too much for me right now.

[knarflj]

As an expert in none of these hands, but a dabbler in most of them, I'm going to suggest another way of thinking about your question: Which of these hands do you really love enough to practice regularly? I'm not sure that the monoline version of Spencerian is really that much harder to learn than italic (although my business-ish hand was already pretty decent, so maybe that's just me), and once your monoline Spencerian is good, then you can look into oblique holders and flexy nibs to ornament it if you want. Copperplate is usually done nowadays with dip nibs and an oblique holder, but back in the day when it was a standard business hand, they used oblique nibs, so that might not be more of an investment (to start, at least) than italic.

 

Not trying to talk you out of italic, which is also a lovely hand, just trying to point out what ought to be obvious, but which when making similar decisions myself, I often forget: if I don't love it, I won't work at it.

 

Oh, and a differing viewpoint on one other aspect of the question. I understand in theory why everyone advises starting italic with a very broad nib (or starting any of the hands at an extra-large size), but if your goal is just a nice everyday hand, that may not be the best for you. I find that although I can do really well writing larger than life with a big fat nib, that doesn't translate to my normal (very small) writing size at all: the motions and hand movements are just too different at that radically different scale. If I want to write well at my everyday size, I need to practice with an everyday nib, or something very close to it.

 

Jenny

[Rednaxela]

This might be what you're after:

 

https://archive.org/download/MillsModernBusinessPenmanship/Mills%20Modern%20Business%20Penmanship.pdf

 

Otherwise google 'The Arm Movement Method Of Rapid Writing'.

 

Both splendid books on handwriting technique.

[FromTheNetherlands]

This might be what you're after:

 

https://archive.org/download/MillsModernBusinessPenmanship/Mills%20Modern%20Business%20Penmanship.pdf

 

Otherwise google 'The Arm Movement Method Of Rapid Writing'.

 

Both splendid books on handwriting technique.

I must say: This handwriting itself is very beautiful! I will use this pdf for my capital use. I always find my own capital letters very ugly

[Rednaxela]

Agree @GJMekenkamp, it's a beautiful script, and the Mills book is a true classic.

 

You might also like this guy's Instagram page: http://instagram.com/mjgebhart. Especially his early videos I found to be very informative.

[FromTheNetherlands]

Agree @GJMekenkamp, it's a beautiful script, and the Mills book is a true classic.

 

You might also like this guy's Instagram page: http://instagram.com/mjgebhart. Especially his early videos I found to be very informative.

You're right, this is pretty nice!

Although I must say the amount of spacing between letters (in his cursive handwriting) does not improve legibility, but this is just my opinion of course.

Edited October 24, 2016 by GJMekenkamp

[rafizip]

I've been using fountain pens for a number of years and now want to work on improving my handwriting, as well as making it more interesting. I just bought two books, Simple Calligraphy by Judy Detrich and Italic Letters: Calligraphy and Handwriting by Inga Dubai and Barbara Getty.

 

Any other suggested readings to get me started and any "pitfalls" to be aware of? Also would a medium nib work for beginners and just learning the new technique?

 

Thanks,

Edited December 29, 2016 by rafizip

[dms525]

I've been using fountain pens for a number of years and now want to work on improving my handwriting, as well as making it more interesting. I just bought two books, Simple Calligraphy by Judy Detrich and Italic Letters: Calligraphy and Handwriting by Inga Dubai and Barbara Getty.

 

Any other suggested readings to get me started and any "pitfalls" to be aware of? Also would a medium nib work for beginners and just learning the new technique?

 

Thanks,

 

Assuming you want to learn italic handwriting, based on your book choice, you will want to get an edged-nib pen. You can write italic script with a round nib or, for that matter, with a ballpoint or even a pencil. However, using an edged nib will make it more "interesting." Previous contributions to this topic contain many possible choices. One relatively low-cost option that hasn't been mentioned: If you already own a pen that takes standard JoWo nibs, you could purchase JoWo 1.1mm and 1.5mm italic nibs for about $25 each. These are super easy to swap in/out. Common pens that use these include Edisons, Franklin-Christoph's and the very reasonable Indian Ranga pens. The latter are available direct from the manufacturer and also from Peyton Street Pens.

 

There are (always) more expensive options, including custom-ground nibs on high-end pens and a few high-end pens that come with usable italic nibs, Aurora being the best of these, IMO.

 

I have no affiliation with any of the products mentioned except as a customer/user.

 

Happy writing!

 

David

[rafizip]

 

Assuming you want to learn italic handwriting, based on your book choice, you will want to get an edged-nib pen. You can write italic script with a round nib or, for that matter, with a ballpoint or even a pencil. However, using an edged nib will make it more "interesting." Previous contributions to this topic contain many possible choices. One relatively low-cost option that hasn't been mentioned: If you already own a pen that takes standard JoWo nibs, you could purchase JoWo 1.1mm and 1.5mm italic nibs for about $25 each. These are super easy to swap in/out. Common pens that use these include Edisons, Franklin-Christoph's and the very reasonable Indian Ranga pens. The latter are available direct from the manufacturer and also from Peyton Street Pens.

 

There are (always) more expensive options, including custom-ground nibs on high-end pens and a few high-end pens that come with usable italic nibs, Aurora being the best of these, IMO.

 

I have no affiliation with any of the products mentioned except as a customer/user.

 

Happy writing!

 

David

 

Thank you for your input, much appreciated.

[benrobert]

My reliable Pandafly drawing and brush pens never let me down, whether I need to create borders or details, letters or drawings. One of the best calligraphy kits for beginners of any age, they require no maintenance and are non-toxic.