Handwriting Makeover - How to Quickly Improve Your Handwriting in 5 Simple Steps | Jimmy & Kasia | Skillshare
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Handwriting Makeover - How to Quickly Improve Your Handwriting in 5 Simple Steps

teacher avatar Jimmy & Kasia, A Couple of Compulsive Creators

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      1. Introduction

      2:37

    • 2.

      2. The Class Project

      1:50

    • 3.

      3. Analysing Your Current Handwriting

      5:59

    • 4.

      4. Finding Inspiration

      15:45

    • 5.

      5. Writing Tools and Materials

      9:20

    • 6.

      6. Create Your Dream Handwriting

      5:01

    • 7.

      7. The Daily Practice

      13:06

    • 8.

      8. Course Summary

      1:48

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About This Class

Have you ever wondered what your handwriting says about you? 

Is it exactly what you want it to say? 

If not, this is a class for you. 

We follow a simple, yet effective 5 step process that helps improve the handwriting we have and get it closer to our dream handwriting. 

In this class you will learn the following:

  • Analysing your own handwriting
  • Finding inspiration for your new handwriting
  • Choosing the best tools and materials
  • Creating your "Dream Handwriting Model"
  • Building a daily handwriting habit

I hope this course will help you see handwriting as a fun and rewarding way of self expression and it will be a beginning of your own handwriting adventure. 

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Jimmy & Kasia

A Couple of Compulsive Creators

Teacher

A duo of photographers and videographers with more than 10 years of experience.

Owners of a successful newborn and family photography studio aka www.swieties.be

Wedding & commercial photographers and videographers.

Enthusiastic creators who do not seem to be able to limit themselves to one area and constantly try something new.

Creative spirits always looking for new challenges. Tech geeks constantly trying out new gadgets. Passionate about DIY projects & cultivating the inner child. Determined never to grow up.

See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. 1. Introduction: Let's start this course with a question. If someone was asked to describe you based only on your handwriting, what do you think? They will say? I asked myself this question sometime ago and I didn't really like the answer. So I went through exactly the same process I will be guiding you through in this class. And I gave my handwriting a total make over. And then this class I will be showing you how you can do it too. Hi, my name is Garcia. I'm a photographer and filmmaker. Big fan of creativity in general, beautiful handwriting is something very elegant, sophisticated, especially nowadays in the digital age, a beautiful trend. Handwriting can really help you stand out from the crowd if you feel like your handwriting has evolved in a certain way and it doesn't really match how you have evolved as a person. This course is for you. This is exactly the feeling I had. I will show you how I am working on my handwriting and what are the biggest game changers has been for me. But you might ask yourself, why should I bother? Why hands, right? Well, as it turns out, our brains love it when we are handwriting. Handwriting and boosts the brain activity and it improves our motoric skills. It is also great for memory and learning are not the only benefits. Handwriting has been proven to promote relaxation. It has a soothing, calming effect and it can be also seen as a form of meditation. So if you feel like you're up for the challenge, Let's get to work. In the following six lessons, I will be talking about the tools and techniques that will help you improve your handwriting dramatically. I will explain how to troubleshoot your own handwriting and where to look for inspiration for your new handwriting style. We will go through several exercises that help relax the hand and improve the writing precision. You will be able to create your own dream handwriting model and then practice it so that it becomes automatic if you are excited to see how amazing your handwriting can become. Let's get started. In the next lesson, we will be talking about the class project. I will see you there. 2. 2. The Class Project: The first thing I want you to do and starting this class is taking a sample of your current handwriting. Just take a notebook or a piece of paper. It doesn't really matter. Ago sits in a place where you would normally see to a new handwrite and take the pen that you would normally use. Don't do anything fancy. I just want you to record it how it is now at the beginning, then hopefully at the end of this class, you will be able to compare it with your new handwriting and see the difference. I want you to pick a book. It can be your favorite book. It can be any book that you have at hand. I have here, one that I really laugh. It's Rebecca by Dafna do Maria. I especially love the color. It's so pretty. So I will be writing down the first page of the first chapter of this book. But you really can choose anything. I'm shopping, you know, be creative. But this doesn't actually matter. Just find a piece of text that can fill a page. So at the end of the course, I will ask you to do the same thing after you had some time to do the exercises. And then we will compare how your handwriting has changed. And then I will ask you to take a picture of both pages, put them next to each other, like a snapshot, and send it to me. I'm so curious to see what you have created. In the next lesson, I will be showing you how you can analyze your current handwriting and how you can choose what it is that you would like to change. So I will see you there. 3. 3. Analysing Your Current Handwriting: In this lesson, I want to show you how to analyze the handwriting you have right now and how to create a handwriting model for your exercises if you want to go deeper and really work on improving your handwriting, first of all, you need to know what the current status. You need to make a list of things that need to change and then work on improving them. So let's go to work. Let's see where we are at. At the moment. For this exercise, we will use the patients who had filled already with your current handwriting. In the previous lesson, we will have a look at certain elements and we'll see what can be changed or improved in your handwriting to make it more beautiful and more legible and to get it closer to your dream handwriting, Let's do it. First of all, let's have a look at the distance between the letters. Are they really close to each other? Maybe too close, or are they too stressed out? Make a note for yourself if there's something you would like to change about this. The second thing to look at is the slams. The letters lean to one side or are they straight? Or maybe some letters are leaning forward and some are leaning backwards. Take a good look at it. Is it what you want to be? Or maybe you want to change it a little bit. My letters were really straight. It was okay. I didn't really dislike it, but I had my dream handwriting in mind. I wanted my handwriting to lean a bit forward so that it would be more romantic, a bit more classic. So that's what I started doing. Instead of just writing straight. I moved my page a little bit and I tried to make all letters lean forward a bit more. Now, another thing I want you to notice is if you use an antibiotic elements in your handwriting, if you do, do you like them? Don't you like them? Or maybe there are some elements that you would like to introduce to your handwriting that you don't use right? Now, think about it and write it down. One very important question is your handwriting legible isn't difficult to read? Is this an issue? If you are using your handwriting only to write in a journal and its nobody else needs to read it and understand it. And you can read it. It doesn't really matter if it is very legible. But if you want to write letters and have people read them, it's better than what? They can do it without an effort, right? So be honest with yourself, is your handwriting legible? If not, what are the most disturbing elements? Just make a circle around them or write it down on a separate piece of paper. Have a look at your letters and think about their size. Are they too big? Are they too small? I do want to change something about it. In my case, I wanted the ascenders and descenders to be longer and the letters themselves to be a bit smaller. So I wanted to create an imbalance in my writing. Now, let's ask question that's maybe a bit more difficult to answer until you find your handwriting mature. Or maybe it looks a little bit childish. Maybe you learned a certain way of handwriting at school and he's just continue writing like that. Do you like it? Do you want it to look more mature? This were the basics. I hope you'll make some notes. Now, let's go to the fun part. The next step will be reinventing your handwriting. I want you to ask yourself one important question. If someone looking at your handwriting was asked to describe the person behind it, what would you like them to say? This is a very important question and a leading question in this course. So please pause the lesson, take your notebook and think for a moment, I really love this question because it goes a bit deeper than just the technicalities. It requires us to think about how we want to be perceived to help you with this question, I will tell you what it looked like for me. I'm not finished with the process of the creation of my dream handwriting, but I'm working on it every day and I already see really big changes. My handwriting was not bad at all. It was really legible, it was clear. But I also thought that it didn't express my personality. It was a little bit boring, not very creative, nothing really to remember about it. I gave it a thought and I decided that I wanted my handwriting to be more creative, more bold, modern, with a classic touch and also maybe a little bit playful and extravagance. I wanted it to look like a handwriting of a mature, sophisticated person. So what does it look like for you all? Please pause the video and write down what comes to mind for you. Alright, now that we have a clear vision of what it is that we want to achieve. Well, let's have some fun and look for inspiration. This is what we'll be doing in the next lesson. I will show you my favorite inspiration sources and which keywords and phrases you can use to find really beautiful handwriting and examples. So let's go to the next lesson. I will see you there. 4. 4. Finding Inspiration: In this lesson, we will be looking online for inspiration in creating our dream handwriting. Let's have a look at my first inspiration source. It's a Pinterest. I'm sure you now Pinterest very well already. Interest is an amazing tool to look for beautiful handwriting examples. So let's dive in. And here we are in Pinterest. As you can see, I have already typed in my first keyword, beautiful handwriting. Pinterest automatically has shown me many different keywords, suggestions related to my keyword. Alright, let's go through some examples and let's see what we could add to our inspiration board. As you can see, when you open an example that you like, Pinterest will directly show you related pins. I really like to go through them and this is a great way to discover something new. I love this one, I will say it's to my inspiration board. This is also quite an extravagant handwriting example. I kind of like it, so I will save it. Sometimes it can just be a small pieces. In this case, I really like how they are rounding the letter Y at the end. Let's save this one. This also looks nice. Here are some connections between the letters are quite interesting. It's always good to have a look and try to specify what elements you like about a certain handwriting style. And you can try to introduce them in your own practice. Let's go back a little bit. This is pretty good. That's maybe a little bit to the Karate for an everyday handwriting. I think I'll do my search them. I will check one of the suggestions of Pinterest. If I don't see anything really interesting, I just go back one step. This is maybe a bit too extravagant. Save this one. I will try a different keywords. Now, let's say elegans handwriting. I think it's good to be selective with your pins so that you have fuel. But really helpful examples. I'm handwriting style seems to be a nice keyword. Easy L and M handwriting would also be equal to one. Here we have other suggestions. This is pretty handwriting cursive, like this one quite a lot. Let's save it. As you can see, some suggestions come also between Europeans. Handwriting styles. Let's see that one. Here, there are a lot of examples. Another great keyword is handwriting fonts. As you can see, we already have a lot of nice font examples. It's also great to see how they construct their letters. Like this one is really pretty. Maybe you can start practicing to rise your b like this are a little bit like this one. This one looks nice as well. This is quite a striking modern forms. I really like it. As you can see, the possibilities are really endless. This is my own beautiful handwriting inspiration board. Let's go through the examples and I will show you what I have saved. There is also a whole alphabet. I find it's a little bit to the corrosive material. There is always something you can find inspiring, even if it's just a piece of one letter. Here are some beautiful handwriting fonts. I love this T's and the same if you'll just one pin, you can always go down the rabbit hole of the examples that Pinterest is showing to you. So you can spend hours like this. This would meet for Pinterest. I will share with you in the course notes a link to my Pinterest board, as well as my favorite keywords. Now let's do the same search with it in Pinterest button this time in Google images, you can use exactly the same keywords and see what comes up for you in Google, but start with beautiful handwriting. As you can see, Google also directly gives you some other suggestions you can check out. Let's see beautiful handwriting cursive. Now, beautiful handwriting, easy. If you see something you like, you can add this image to your favorites. As you can see, Google also offers a lot of wonderful examples. So in Google you can also use the same keywords, or at least we were using for Pinterest and it will be added to your course materials. Let's try one more. Maybe handles writing. This one seems to be great. And also have a lot of suggestions. Let's try one more writing. I am sure that you will find some wonderful examples here. And now let's check out our last inspiration source, Instagram. I have opened Instagram and I have chosen the first hashtag. The first one I will be checking out is again, beautiful handwriting. Let's see what Instagram shows us. This is really amazing. What is also great about Instagram is that you can go to the profile of the person who's post you like and find more inspiration on their profile. How amazing. Let's say that this one is also very pretty there as opposed to like. You can also check which hashtags the person is using and then use one of these cash tax to look for your examples. Let's go with handwritten preclude fellowship is also a great one. Instagram offers a different way of looking for inspiration, but it is also very nice because you can find people that inspire you. You will find the list of my favorite hashtags in the course materials as well. Now let's talk about my favorite inspiration source. This is not an obvious one, but it is amazing. I am talking here about all documents. My grandmother was showing me some old handwritten documents from the 1940s, 1950s. I was so amazed at how beautiful the handwriting used to be. It was really an art form. That moment I decided that it was something I wanted to work on as well. It amazed me how elaborate and beautiful people's handwriting used to be in the past. Now not everybody has access to all documents. I also don't have any at hand, but it is very easy to find them online nowadays and just type in Google, all documents handwritten and you will see a lot of beautiful examples saved, the ones that you particularly like and analyze what makes them so special, grave. Now that we have finished looking for examples, It's time for a little analysis. Gather your examples and ask yourself some questions. Ask yourself what it is that you especially like, write it all down, I will tell you what it was for me. So for the general characteristics of my dream handwriting, I knew I wanted the letters to be slanted, to be leaning forward. I also knew I wanted to change the proportions of my letters. I also knew I didn't want to include too many the correlative elements to keep the handwriting modern and elegance in general. I also noticed that I'm more attracted to styles that feel more relaxed than elaborates. I knew that I would have to work on my capital letters to make a bit more of a statement because they were a bit boring. Now, I invite you to go on a little adventure and visit all the inspiration places I was talking about. Make a list of handwriting styles and things and details You are the most attracted to and who knows, maybe you will find another amazing inspiration source, which I did not mention. If yes, Be sure to share it with us in the course. In the next lesson, we will be talking about upgrading your writing materials, your environments, and also the correct posture. So I will see you there. 5. 5. Writing Tools and Materials: Hi there my creative friends. Welcome to lesson five. In this lesson, we will be talking about choosing the best writing tools and materials for you. About the correct writing posture, and also about the ideal writing environment. Because believe me, this is also important. So let's dive in. Step one, collect all the writing materials you can find in your house and try them out. You will quickly notice that some of them have to pinpoint, some too thick. Some are maybe Perfect. That's some lead to your handwriting flow easily. And someone take a piece of paper and write down awards with all of your bands, right? Award, and then continue with a line and do the same exercise with the same word with all your friends. The brand new like the mouse, and use it for all the exercises in this course. And if you are not able to pick one sweeter between firms to see which one suits you best. Now, if you have not found anytime that you actually enjoy writing with, I would advise you to take a trip to specialized stationary store. I am sure you will find your favorite there. My advice for you is just to take a notebook with you. They normally provide a piece of paper to try out the pens. But having your own notebook will give you the advantage of being able to write down the names of the pens you are trying out. This will really help you make the best choice. Once you find the pen, you'll really laugh. You will automatically start paying more attention to the writing process. You will try to write more beautifully. And let's not forget if it's a beautiful plan. You will also feel so much more sophisticated. One of the pens I started using recently is this one, Lamy Safari pen. It's really affordable. I liked the design and it has an ergonomic grip. So it's wonderful for beginners if you don't want to invest too much in inexpensive pan and you are not sure if you'll be using it. This one is really great. It's affordable. Try it out and see if you, if you like writing with a fountain pen. If not, of course, there are also many other options. This is a ball, Ben, pilots friction, Bolton. I really enjoy writing with this one. It's maybe not the most elegant one, but I enjoy using it. You'll find the link to my favorite bands in the course materials as well. Now let's talk about the paper you're right on. First of all, the notebooks. I really loved beautiful notebooks. I think that they are great motivation to keep, keep at your practice. And they really make this moment feel special. Here is a black leather one. Here I have a bit more fun. One. Another option is just as simple writing, but this one doesn't have any lines, so it's good to decide in the beginning if you want to use a lined notebook or not. For the beginners, I recommend using lines notebooks like this one. They are much easier to write in and they let you concentrate on the form of your letters instead of having to look at your alliance and checking if they are straight or not. Alright, now that we spoke about our fans and our notebooks, Let's talk about the writing posture. The next point I would like to mention is the correct posture. Now, I love to write in my journal, I am sitting in the sulfur, are lying in bed. But if you really want to work on the form of your handwriting, it's important to sit at a desk when you are doing it. Make sure that your desk is not too high or too low, and that you are able to rest your arms comfortably on it. Before you start your handwriting exercises, do a little body scammed and cross your legs. If they are crossed. If your shoulders and your arms are relaxed, relax your neck. Relax your face, relax your hands. And to finish our bodies can close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Now that we have checked in with ourselves and we have relaxed our body. Let's talk about the right position of the paper on your desk. You should pay attention to what position of paper is optimal for you. Though it's when you are handwriting. You'll notice the moments when it feels the most comfortable. Maybe, you know, at the end of the page, it feels a bit awkward. You feel it's not flowing the way it should, then it's a sign. You should place your paper more to one or another side. Just experiment with it. Place your paper a little bit to the left. Try placing it's more to the right. Maybe at a slant. See what works best for you. Another thing to pay attention to is the grip. Don't hold your pen too tight. Remember to keep your hands and fingers relaxed before you start doing your exercises. There's one more thing I would like you to pay attention to your environment. So what is your environment like? Try to tie the their own DID or desk. And you will see that you will directly feel better about the whole experience. I know this may seem trivial, but it's really not. Try to do it. And you will see the difference. Here is a little bonus tip. You don't have to do it. It will feel uncomfortable at first, but it makes a big difference. Here's a little bonus tip. You don't have to do it to go through the exercises. It feels a bit uncomfortable at first, but it can make a huge difference. Try switching your pen hold. I used to write holding my pen like this, holding the pen between my thumb and my index finger. But I noticed that as I was going through the exercises, I put more and more pressure on the pen and it was difficult for me to relax my hands. Afterwards I switched to a different pen hold. Now I hold my pen between my index and my middle finger. It felt Really stretch at the beginning and I didn't have too much control over the pen. But as I was doing the exercises, that control came back and I was able to start from scratch. I was able to forget all the forms that I used to use and create a totally new handwriting like this. So I really recommend it. Try switching your grip and see how it goes. And this is all I wanted to talk about in this lesson. In the next one, we will be talking about something really exciting. Creating your own dream handwriting model. 6. 6. Create Your Dream Handwriting: Welcome to lesson six. In this lesson, I want you to create your own dream handwriting model. I want you to go back to your examples and coffee, the letters that you liked mouse, I don't encourage you to copy someone else's handwriting just to look for what inspires you the most, tried to copy all the letters you like the mouse in one place, and then we will make our own dream alphabets. Others can be divided into groups based on their shapes. Write letters from each group in many different ways, and see which one they liked the most. Keeping in mind that it took years to shape your current handwriting. So just keep practicing and be patient with it. Go a little bit deeper. Separate the shape from the letter like I do here, and practice the shape as a pattern. Don't think about it as a letter, just see it as a, as a form that you are perfecting. After you have worked on the shape on the farm. Incorporate this letter in several different towards and try writing it like this. Do It also several times so that it becomes automatic for you. I hope you haven't been able to create your dream handwriting model with the help of this class. Now that we know what our goal is, we can talk about the practice. This is what the next lesson we'll be talking about. I will see you there. 7. 7. The Daily Practice: Hi, Welcome to lesson seven. Now that we have our dream handwriting model, we will talk about the practice. We will go through several exercises which will help you make your new handwriting automatic. Repeat this exercise is daily and do not give up. And also try to stick to your new handwriting model every time you are writing something down. So let's dive in. This first exercise is one I called the lines. Just start making lines. Row of lines in your notebook. Do not rush through this. You'll see that in the beginning your hand is not yet relaxed. You're not yet in the rhythm. So they will not all look the same. As exercise progresses, you will gone down and it will become automatic. Try to do at least five lines on this exercise. The second exercise also consists of lines. This time they are horizontal. Try to keep the length and the distance between lines the same. Again, do not rush through it. You can see it as a kind of meditation. I find it really relaxing. The following exercise and make like a brown shade. Try to make all three bars the shape the same. So these practices are different hand movement than the previous one. So on them. The other direction. Feel awkward at first. Your hand will get to always move your notebook so that it's comfortable for you. For the last exercise, we will combine the two directions while I'm facing right and one facing left. Another great exercise to relax your hand is this one. Just try to make the shape as regular as possible. Why do you feel that your shape is not working the way you want it to try to take a break, relax your hand, and I'll get back to it. Now. Let's pretend we are writing the letter M and continue with the shape for the rest of the batch. Let's turn this pattern upside down a bit. Okay? So these are the basics exercises. You can repeat them every day. You can do as many of these as you would like to. They were really helped me with the control of the pan. Especially if you have changed your grip to the one where the pen is resting between your index finger and your middle finger, then it can feel a bit weird in the beginning. But if you do this exercise this a few times, it will feel normal. Again. I will show you what my regular practice notebook looks like. This is one of my notebook, so let's just calculate. As you can see, I do a lot of repeating exercises. Here I was practicing, award some shapes. Here again, the basic exercises. Here. I was practicing the l and h, which are most similar letters. Then I go move to a ward. In this case it was there. So this practice is kind of an improvisation. You now start with some basic exercises. Then you can take a passage, um, which you like, write it down and separate one word, choose one word from it. And Practice Award. And you can also practice a specific letter that travels you're more than the others that you want to improve. Now we'll take a book and we will start writing the first chapter them again. As you can see, I decided to pause the copying all the texts and focus on, on one letter. I had a bit of a problem with my b and my S. So I will first focus on the shape. They want to have. My letters S. I wants to keep them already the same in all the wars. Also, any combinations of letters that you find more difficult. You can practice them separately. Apart from this practical exercises, I also want you to do two more things. I want you to take up journaling, Journal daily, write down your thoughts, your reflections, your plans for the day. And also while you're doing this, try to focus a little bit on the form and see how your handwriting is evolving and how it's getting closer to your handwriting model that you have in mind. Another thing I want you to do is writing down passages from book. I also recommend that you do it daily. It doesn't have to be five pages. Just do as much as you feel like at the moment, but don't give up for me. This is almost like a meditation. It gives me a lot of joy and it also helps me improve my handwriting. You can use philosophy, books, poems, I recommend any sort of inspirational content. And to summarize, please remember that this process takes time. Do not try to rush through it. It is so much better to do just ten minutes a day, but do it daily then to do two hours a day and give up after a week. I am still not aware. I would like to be with my handwriting, but I really see it's changing and evolving. And so will you remember that you will have to practice quite a lot before your new dream handwriting becomes automatic. So don't be a perfectionist. Have fun with it. In the next and the last lesson, we will summarize everything that we have learned in this course. And I will give you one extra tip that will help you stick to your handwriting practice. I will see you there. 8. 8. Course Summary: Hello there, my creative friends. I am so happy that you've completed this course. I hope that you enjoyed it and that you started to see handwriting as a form of creative expression. By now, you should know how to diagnose your handwriting and how to decide what you want to change. You should also know where you can look for inspiration. And I hope you already have your favorite pen and your favorite notebook. I hope you know what exercises you should start doing today and continue doing every day to make your handwriting awesome. And here's my bonus tip for you. Make handwriting a part of your morning or your evening routine. I really liked the journal in the morning. It's a part of my morning routine together with exercise, with meditation and other elements. And it's really helped me plan my day. It helps me to live a more conscious life and I really recommend it. And now let's circle back to the beginning to our class projects. Once you have been doing these exercises for awhile, let's say a week or two. See how your handwriting has changed already. Write down the same passage you did in the beginning and place them next to each other. Please submit your projects to Skillshare. I'm really so curious to see what it was like for you. Do not treat it as a definitive version. Just see it as a step in the right direction. I encourage you to do the same exercise every two or three weeks and record the challenges and the progress you are making. If you enjoyed this class, please leave a review below. It will help others find it. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next class.