Hi Sweetchic! Welcome to the forum!
I see some great things happening with your lettering. I like that you date your practice sheet as well. This will be a good reference point for the future.
In terms of the a's and d's problem you mentioned - I would suggest some oval drills. Nothing but practicing that oval form. This will help develop your muscle memory so your hand doesn't hesitate. Do you have an italic hand background? I think I see a tiny bit of italic sneaking into your a's (or it is just your handwriting). Slow down and concentrate on forming each letter with the strokes, rather than writing.
Also, work on squaring off the tops of your d's, t's, and a's.
I would say concentrate on the midline, rather than the baseline. You want the top part of the lowercase letters to really be even at the midline. This is even more important than having them completely even at the baseline because we read the tops of letters first. It might be helpful if you take a pencil and ruler and draw lines on this practice sheet across the midline. You can see in Idaho, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Nebraska a little more variation of lowercase letter height than you would like for traditional copperplate.
Idaho and Massachusetts are the best examples. Your bottoms line up marvelously! But you can see how the little bit larger o throws off the flow of Idaho. And in Massachusetts the s's and the e are much taller and so make the midline a little bumpy.
I like Starlee's comments - your lower loops are lovely (say that 5 times fast
). Work on opening up your upper loops just a bit.
I don't want this to discourage you, though, because your lettering is very pleasing. It has a very sweet quality. You have excellent consistency and have done very well maintaining the slant. I'm giving you "advanced" critique because you are ready for it!
Your lettering is already very lovely so it's time to start analyzing and fine-tuning.
