Week 2 to Better Handwriting: Lowercase Print

Last week, I kicked off a series of posts focusing on improving handwriting. I’m working my way through the Penmanship with Melissa Esplin book and invite you to join me!

Review other posts in this series:

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Uppercase Print
• Chapter 2: Lowercase Print (this post)
• Chapter 3: Lowercase Cursive – coming February 8
• Chapter 4: Uppercase Cursive – coming February 15
• Chapter 5: Developing Style – coming February 2

Chapter 2: Lowercase Print

The format of this chapter is similar to Chapter 1 and starts with an introduction of Basic Strokes. There are more strokes used to make lowercase letters including the underturn and overturn (picture the round part of a “u” and “n”). I also learned that the “stem” of lowercase letters varies with some having a little hook at the top and others at the bottom and some have no hook at all.

Just like she did with the capital letters in Chapter 1, Melissa next walks us through four groupings of lowercase letters with helpful tips and stroke order marked. The practice pages for this chapter are on 4mm x-height lines which means it includes a dotted line to help keep the mid-height letters a consistent size. Like before, each line starts with a solid sample of the letter, then as you move to the right it fades out. I pulled these pages out of the binder so that I didn’t have to work around the rings, covered it with tracing paper and practiced each one.

I found that the lowercase letters much more challenging than uppercase. As I moved across the page to where the model letters faded out, my letters were not uniform at all. I think these are more difficult than capital letters because there are a lot more curves which makes it harder to maintain consistent shapes.

After finishing the letter-by-letter practice, I wrote filled a page with random phrases and words. I also mixed in a few uppercase letters. For this week’s practice, I used a .01 journaling pen and the 3mm x-height lines on page 49 for this.

What I learned this week:

In this chapter, I learned a standard way to form each lowercase letter. For several letters, I have been making differently for 40+ years! Here’s a few things I picked up that may help you as you work on your handwriting:

• The tip from the book that helped me the most to visualize an oval with a 45 degree slant when forming curved letters.
• I noticed that the “stems” of her sample letters are completely vertical. I tend to slant them but not at a consistent angle. Just changing to make these lines upright definitely helped my print look neater.
• According to Melissa, using lowercase generally gives your project a casual feel. However, you can add formality by making the letters slightly taller by stretching up the vertical lines.
• My eyes don’t focus as well as they used to and, even with my readers, after writing a couple lines my vision would get little blurry. I’m so used to it that I didn’t notice, but I found it helped to look away from my work occasionally and then allow my eyes refocus on my paper helped me be able to see what I was doing better.
• I also learned that when you concentrated on making the letters correctly, you have to be careful to not loose focus on other aspects of writing — like spelling!

I hope this series on handwriting gives you a few tips and encourages you to practice to improve your writing, and most importantly, get more comfortable adding tell your story on your scrapbook pages! Please keep in mind that I am just touching the surface of the information in this program. If you want to progress, I’d encourage you to get a copy of Penmanship with Melissa Esplin for yourself.

Keep Creating,

Rebecca