My Spencerian

[TravisNG]

It may be ambitious of me to start off my calligraphy learning with Spencerian. I have never been known to start slow, my own parents say I had skipped crawling and went straight to walking. I started two weeks and couple days ago, but I'm sure it isn't premature to ask for some critique.

My current tools are a speedball oblique holder with the plastic flange; which I am beginning to resent for want of adaptability, Zebra G nibs, and Higgins Eternal Black.

Attached photos are some of my practices throughout the past week. They are ordered from old to new.

[Judy G]

Hi Travis!

Learning Spencerian is in my bucket list. For me, you're off to a good start!

[AndyT]

Quick question for you, Travis: how large are you writing?  And a supplementary: what reference are you using for your letter forms?

[TravisNG]

I am writing using the iampeth spencerian guide lines #1. I am not sure exactly how large that is. For my references I use the Spencerian System of Practical Penmanship and The New Spencerian Compendium.

[AndyT]

Those are excellent references, and everything you need is there.  The thing to do, as I'm sure you're well aware, is to study them obsessively in the minutest detail and subject your work to a withering critique, constantly referring back to the exemplars.  Simple!  Downright dispiriting I can assure you, but it does work.

At the risk of telling you what you already know, may I mention a couple of fundamental concepts?  The first is that Spencerian is a semi-angular script.  What this means, leaving the capitals aside for the time being, is that the letters and joining strokes are mostly built from shallow curves and held together with tight turns.  The style is neither smooth and rounded like copperplate, nor truly angular like certain forms of German cursive or some modern interpretations of Italic.  For writing to look like Spencerian, you need those gentle curves and short turns - essentially you just need to take the sharp corner off as you change direction.

The second concept is slant.  Your guidelines give you the 52° main slant and you seem to be sticking to that rather well, so it seems to me that you're off to a good start there.  What is less often discussed is the connective slant, but it's absolutely crucial because it determines letter spacing.  Officially it's supposed to be 30° (unless you're using Zaner's 50°/ 25° formula ... let's not muddy the waters), but the essential thing is that it is as consistent as the main slant.  If you make the curves of the joining strokes shallower, it will be easier to judge this.

I hope that wasn't too much of a statement of the obvious. 

The reason for my inquiry about the size was simply because it's difficult to tell from your pictures.  Spencerian is handwriting, not calligraphy, and is intended to be written quite briskly.  It also has a tendency to spread out horizontally, which is part of its appeal.  For both those reasons it's sensible to keep it quite small.  Until recently I've been using Brian Walker's guide sheets which are ½" between baselines, and 2mm between base and waist.  (So an "a" will be 2mm high, a "d" 4mm, an "l" 6mm and an "f" 10mm overall, with 6mm above the baseline).  This is actually a little large, so now I've dropped down to a sixteenth.  I don't think that's going to be practicable with a G nib, and it's entirely up to you how large you write - but I'd suggest that you don't go much bigger than 3mm or 1/8" from base to waist.

Hope that helps.

[TravisNG]

Andy,
 I really appreciate the detailed feedback. The connective slant of 30 degrees seems to be inferred and not obviously stated in the resources I am currently using and I definitely overlooked it. The entry was definitely eluding me, but after like you suggested I have been obsessively studying exemplars and comparing them to mine. So I believe I have discovered some of my short-comings, which I hope will be displayed in my future examples. I will also start taking my photos with the pen next to them for scale, I can't believe I didn't think of it before hand.

Much Appreciation,
Travis 

[Roseann]

Good for you Travis!

[TravisNG]

Thanks again everyone for the encouragement. Over the weekend I came down with a terrible cold, which I'm just now coming off of. I tried my damnedest to practice, but for some reason being ill created an intense aversion to the smell of my higgins eternal black. I managed only to get an hour a day until sunday when total congestion allowed me ignore the smell, lol.

In this sample I see I need to work on the space of the entry into each letter. I can see some improvement in the shading of my T's and D's. The capitals are bad, but I am far from focused on them. They were entirely done for fun. I got my hands on a 5/8" turn of the century oblique, which is so much more comfortable than the plastic speedball holder.

[AmyNeub]

You're doing so good. I love to see people learning Spencerian. I posted some of my first Spencerian on my IG feed and I love going back and looking at it. And I am sure 6 months from now, I will look back at my posts and say wow too. I just started learning too last June. What helped me is to print the guidelines in 50% opacity and write on them. It helped me to go up on the 30 degree and then down on the 52 degree slant. I would use the angle line for the ascenders and descenders. Your hand will get used to this and help with the letters. I have learned a few hands and this is the hardest. It is a beautiful script.

I also like to write the letter u, over and over connecting the letters. This gets you to see the up and down and parallel lines. I also started using a pencil to learn the letters, because sometimes the pen and ink can be troublesome. The letter n is nice to repeat too.

Running ovals will help with the hairlines and if you are like me, shaky lines.

You can see improvement in your letters. I always look at the letter i. You go up on the 30 degree angle, but when you come down you curve back. You need to come down on the 52 degree angle. I did the same thing in most of my letters, because of my cursive and learning Copperplate.  Your s looks great. You just have watch yourself. Keep posting, I would love to see your Spencerian.

[Faeleia]

You can work on the angles.. I think the connecting curve to your letters are often too rounded. Spence letters look more angular, like seeds rather than little oval M&Ms. Why the food reference? Maybe cause I keep thinking about food. Then.. forget the capitals until you can do the caps well. I always go back to the lower case when I feel like my writing has turned to turd, and restart from there.

[TravisNG]

Thank you kindly Amy and Felicia. Invaluable advice, and I very much appreciate your bluntness Felicia. Today during practice I feel like I had a moment of clarity. I feel like I've taken a great stride in my Spencerian, I'm just too damn excited not to share.
I see a huge difference in this sample(tell me I'm not crazy), compared to my previous submissions.

First two lines are a Frederick Douglass quote. The third and fourth are of my own making, the words i couldn't get out of my head after noticing the change.



-Edit In my excitement forgot to add a question that's been on my mind. I've noticed on some specimens that there is occasionally shading on lowercase O's and A's. When and where is it acceptable to put shading on lower-case letters? I know the obvious t and d. I've read other than those two letters there is strictly no shading on lower-cases, but what I've seen seems to contradict it. **CONFUSED**

[Faeleia]

Oops I didn't mean to sound blunt, but I'm really sleepy this couple of days..

Great! It's looking better bl in blinders are really pretty, esp the b now you can work on consistency. There's some math to this.. let's go to the angles of 52deg slant and 30 deg connecting slant.. make sure that the connecting slant has a slight curve in them. Loops letters should all have loops that look the same in size, angle, thickness etc. - the loops on l, b, h, k.. and j, y, g, z too.

On letters like a, there's a gentle n shaped curve upwards very slightly, following the curve of the oval in 'a'. when you end your 'a', the connecting curve should have a slight u shaped curve (compare your 'a' and 'n's, some of them have sharp v shaped connectors like a tick ('horse', 'I am', the 'n' in blinders'). you should keep in mind that they should lead in to the next letter, and should not appear to have a break in the middle to achieve an elegant look. As such, it's gonna be a bit like chess, where you gotta envision your next letter and how they should look when joined to prevent breakages in the connecting lines. or you can make it look less obvious What amy mentioned about drills, there are portions where practice books ask you to connect a letter to the next random letter, like ab, ac, aq, aw, ak47, so you can get used to these letters before writing out longer sentences.

 'a' should look like 'd' if there's a ascender to it, which means the size of the oval in a, d should be the same. o is slightly narrower, and as for shading, it's completely arbitrary. The shadings in spencerian serve to create some visual interest in the piece, and it certainly wouldn't look so appealing if one particular word like 'bookstore' <-- my fav word to write had shadings on all of the letters, compared to the rest of the sentence that is barely shaded at all. From far, the aesthetic of this would look like one blob of ink. So it's better to space them out, like stars in the night inky sky..

[AndyT]

Splendid stuff from Amy and Felecia as usual. 

On shading, there's only one generally accepted rule, which is to keep it to every other letter at the most.  Which is just fine and dandy until the first time you hit a double ff or tt for instance, or you come across an awkward word like "illustrate" where the obvious letters to shade are all up one end.  That's where a bit of discretion and lateral thinking come in.  The old rule of giving the second letter of a double half a shade is not entirely satisfactory, but worth bearing in mind - and it's also handy to have an alternative f in your repertoire for ff, because that combination sticks out like no other on the page if you're not careful.  So, you can try a looped f followed by one finished with a wedge like p.

Shading of Spencerian is not compulsory, in fact it's more of an Ornamental Penmanship thing.  Just keeping it to t, p and d generally looks good, and it's in the businesslike spirit of the style.  A shade on f is a nice addition, but other than those four letters it's entirely at your discretion and less is usually more.  By which I mean "if in doubt, leave it out", but I also mean that a Spencerian shade ought to be no more than a slight emphasis - certainly not like the heavy uniform shades in copperplate.  A good reference for lower case shading options is P Z Bloser's book on Ornamental Penmanship.

[FlowerCityLetters]

I'm learning a lot from this too as someone who is also learning Spencerian. Good feedback from everyone.

Faeleia you make me laugh! I love your examples and humor. I especially liked your explanation on the shape of the connecting curve; when I'm not careful mine look very sharp and it's something I need to work on. This is great stuff.

TravisNG, you're doing really well and I can tell you're practicing! One thing that really helps me is practicing letters individually for awhile to get the right shape going, and then going from there slowly and practing 2 letter combos and and 3 letter combos like Faeleia mentioned - it helps to hone it on all the little details. Well done - can't wait to see more of your stuff.

[TravisNG]

I'm really enjoying this forum, thank you everyone for your support, wisdom, and encouragement. I've been really taking the time to break down every individual stroke and be very critical of every angle and curve to each and every letter shape. I think I've read through The Theory of Spencerian Penmanship atleast half a dozen times now and wading through the New Compendium and not to mention the depths of this forum, and others like it reading and sponging the information. In doing so I've stumbled upon another frustration pertaining to whole arm forearm and finger movements. In The Theory book, and the compendium it calls Spencerian a combined movement script, finger movement used in the up and down strokes forearm for the side strokes and whole arm to make Capitals. I took this as Gospel and this is what I've been practicing. Unfortunately it seems there are some conflicting opinions out in the wild on this subject. I've seen examples of what people are calling true and real Spencerian in which they only forearm and whole arm movement while keeping the fingers immobile. This has been causing me some anxiety, I'm starting to fear I've been practicing and committing to muscle memory bad habits.