How to practice?

[treehugger9]

Maybe the answers to this question are contained in the topic  "self learning a new script", but I'd like to analyze more this subject.

How do you practice? Is it useful to write the same letter thousand times? Is it better to practice with letters or words?

I obviously started repeating the same letter million times, but when I started to have more confidence with letters I could not avoid the temptation of writing words. At the beginning I was quite satisfied by quotes and sentences I wrote, but now I'd like to write some postcards and I notice I can't do a good job, yesterday I waste lots of colorful paper since I made mistakes continuously.
Maybe it's early to write postcards? Have I to return to practice one letter at the time? Would it be useful?

I don't think I have lots of problems with letterforms, my problems are mostly about the slant of the whole words as some letters came more slanted then others.

[schin]

Hmm.. of course, drills are important..

I like to do flourishes so I write lots of one or two words. But if I feel an uppercase letter is weak, I will write it over and over again until it is strong, and then continue doing words. And from words I went on to do full sentences and correspondence and learning to design a page. But everything starts from a strong foundation.. a thorough knowledge of all the letterforms.

If your slant of words is not correct, then I think you should practice more words and sentences

There is just so much to learn!

[tintenfuchs]

I'm having a hard time with consistent slant too, what helped me a lot was drawing many, many slanted guidelines. Not like in the practice sheets you see, but twice or three times as many, so that every word has its own guideline to lean against. So that every downstroke can be drawn over a guideline. Also, try the following trick from Dr. Joe Vitolo's book: Take your pen, close your eyes. Make a straight stroke. Open your eyes. Then angle your guidelines+paper so that they align with the stroke. Your paper will probably not lie straight but at an angle, but your writing will be straight, since that is the angle you need. This can differ from time to time.

[treehugger9]

Thank you!

I'm having a hard time with consistent slant too, what helped me a lot was drawing many, many slanted guidelines. Not like in the practice sheets you see, but twice or three times as many, so that every word has its own guideline to lean against. So that every downstroke can be drawn over a guideline. Also, try the following trick from Dr. Joe Vitolo's book: Take your pen, close your eyes. Make a straight stroke. Open your eyes. Then angle your guidelines+paper so that they align with the stroke. Your paper will probably not lie straight but at an angle, but your writing will be straight, since that is the angle you need. This can differ from time to time.

Thank you Natascha, I'll try drawing more guidelines, it will help.
The trick sounds strange ahah but I'll see if it works, i hope it!

[Blotbot]

I am trying to develop some basic flourish skills, so I have been slavishly reproducing the capital variants in the Eleanor Winters book with pencil and paper.  By comparing my letter to hers and then trying to figure out why her's look so much better, I am getting better at the slant and positioning of the loops and spirals.  I am afraid this does not come naturally to  me, but I am improving and becoming more confident.