A good start on Italics,
@Ngaire_W! Thank you for sharing!
If I may add a note to the excellent guidance and examples provided by
@Erica McPhee -- Italic hands (both historic and modern) tend toward elegant minimalism. The corsiva forms occupy a developmental stage on the way to Copperplate, which might make it tempting to try flourishing Italics in a way that you might be used to seeing in pointed-pen work. However, as
@Erica McPhee points out, most Italic flourishes merely extend the natural line of the letter itself, or add what we call a "swash" (which tends to project to the left of a straight-stemmed letterform). Adding more complexity than that often spoils that elegant line. Another way to think about flourishing Italics is to add weight to a line by placing a "diamond" at the midpoint. Here's a quick little example of that - flourished as much as I'd ever flourish Italics, and still comparatively quite austere. (sorry it's a bit messy - I dashed it off with a 2.5mm broad edge fountain pen made my Flourish Forum's own
@darrin1200 - but it gives you the idea)
Features:
modern letterforms, based on late Renaissance Italics
x-height = 12.5mm; nib 2.5mm. (x-height is 5 times nib width)
diamonds add weight at the midline
flourishes on the q, k, and f extend the exit stroke
swash on the k projects to the left of the straight-stemmed letter
One more comment on Italics in general. I noticed that the letters in your example look a bit "skinny" -- Like with other broad edge hands, getting the x-height to nib-width proportion really helps the look of the letterforms, emphasizing the distinction between the broad and thin portions of the forms. For Italics, the x-height is classically either five or six times the nib-width. So YES - absolutely use guidelines and measure them (or use one of the handy guideline generators, such as
http://lanquach.com/); it will make your practice so much more productive as you solidify a feel for the proportions that will then help you sense where to flourish and where to hold off.
--yours, K