I firmly and truly believe that practice makes perfect.
I am also horribly, horribly bad at practicing anything. Ever.
It has to be fun while I’m doing it, or the lizard brain says “um, no” and turns off all concentration. It’s a very unobtrusive button, and I usually don’t notice until I look up from my book and suddenly realize it’s three hours and four hundred pages later and what happened to music practice today?
There’s actually a funny story in that about how I finally taught myself* to crochet after repeated attempts by much more accomplished adults failed- basically, leaping headfirst into a complicated project (AKA hi, top-hat octopus! And curlicue scarf!) somehow worked better than learning to read patterns and to do stitches and practicing them properly. I don’t think anybody really approves of my doing this, because it really? Doesn’t make any sense?
But now I can crochet.
So, I’m not the person you’d expect to find practicing something as painstaking as handwriting. In fact, I have terrible handwriting, and I always hated my italics practice in school!
But. Look at this mound of brush lettering practice sheets I’ve done!
We’re all confused. Myself included.
But it did help when I realized I should just print out all the free practice sheets I’d collected and stick them in a folder ready to go, and when I realized I could listen to music or audiobooks while I did them.
It turns out everyone is right: making slow, steady progress really is satisfying. Just look at this quote from Wake Me Up by Avicii I did a little while ago:
And then, the pencil + final pictures of a quote from Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger, that I just did a few days ago:
So much better. There’s a long way still to go. Shaky up-strokes, wildly differing thicknesses on some downstrokes, and a wholly regrettable flourish (what even is up with that? I did better flourishes a month ago). But! Progress.
And, yeah, it also helps that I discovered slant-lines, and learned that my notebook smudges if I’m not careful.
I actually started writing this in the upper right corner and moved out and down from there, a few letters at a time. If anyone has any tips for lefties doing handlettering, please tell me!
*With lots of help from my very patient mother. Not only did she show me how to do all the basic stitches at least five times each, she also listened to me wailing things like “Five crochet in a magic circle?? A magic circle! How do I do that? Now I have to learn witchcraft with my crochet?” and wisely suggested that I google it.