Ps-- about flourishes... (for me, thinking about it this way is helpful, but maybe not for others):
I think beautiful flourishes are the calligraphic equivalent of the tour fouettι in ballet
...meaning they'll be done beautifully when all the basic, component parts of *one* turn are mastered. In the case of calligraphy, that's the oval...
Flourishes are "advanced"-- they're something it's hard to imagine doing when we just begin a discipline, but which grow out of a lot of practice, and a trained body and eye. Any calligraphers struggling with flourishes (myself included!) should take heart-- I think we're in good company!
My yoga teacher always said about advanced postures and students' questions about them: "Do your practice and all is coming".
But in the meantime, I struggle too! Sometimes I have to throw out an entire envelope that is otherwise completely acceptable, because I got confident (or cocky?) and make some kind of ill-considered flourish that I couldn't properly execute, and didn't add anything to the design. Very easy way to make competent lettering look amateurish. I think restraint is pretty important in flourishing... the negative space around the flourish has to be considered as much as the form itself.
Anyway, happy practice, all! I'm off to do Estefa's drills.
As I said before, I really adore that comparison (I did ballet as a teenager, not very good, but I know enough about it and have seen enough ballet performances to be aware of that it has this deceivingly "simple" or easy look, when someone dances well, and that is only possible because of a lot of hard work and drill! And I guess that is equally true for (traditional) calligraphy.
About your yoga teacher's quote
Barbara Calzolari said something similar when I asked her how this "underline after the end of a word flourish" is done (when you come out of a small e for example, make a small loop and underline with a shaded stroke what you just wrote). She said something like, if I wanted to know the trick. I said, yes, do you have to turn the paper or something to make this work, and she laughed and said, there is no trick, you just practice, and practice, and then some day you just make this
And I just made a lot of these ill-considered flourishes, haha, they were "just" private mail so I will send them anyway. But it is very tempting sometimes to add something and then it is worse than before!