WHEN & WHERE I USE MY HANDWRITING:

1. Notes for work from meetings, calls, webinars, training, etc.
2. Comments on forms for judged art displays.
3. In my own artwork - illustrations, titles & notes, headlines, etc.
4. Notes to school teachers for my kids.
5. To-do lists & reminders in my bullet journal.
6. Creative writing when a digital device isn't available.

It's important that I have legible, nice handwriting because I hand write several things across the public and private spectrum. It is not important to me that my handwriting look "pretty" or "impressive", just that it is legible and fitting for my age and personality, and that I don't feel that it ruins my creative work.

ORIGINAL HANDWRITING SAMPLE:

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY CURRENT HANDWRITING:

I like that my handwriting has a mature quality to it. I feel like it at least has some consistency in size and angle, and that my word spacing is legible. I like the mixed script quality where some letters connect, but it's still primarily print.

THINGS I DISLIKE ABOUT MY CURRENT HANDWRITING:

Some letters get lost or combined too much (for example, "ne" often looks like "m") and I write so fast that I skip or barely include letters, forcing me to backtrack to add them back in. It's small and the overall style is a bit too "sharp" or angled for my personality.

MY INSPIRATION:

This is a writing example from aestudier, found on Tumbler. I like the size and how she combines some letters without any letters getting lost or morphed. I like that her ascenders and descenders are minuscule so that the lines of text don't get lost in each other. There's a playfulness to it, but it isn't immature looking or childish. 

COMPARING MY HANDWRITING WITH MY INSPIRATION:

My ascenders and descenders are out of control in comparison to her tightly controlled letters. My writing is angled significantly, especially compared to her upright letters. Her letters are all clear when combined where mine sometimes get lost or become illegible (especially my "e"). Mine is much smaller.

TESTING DIFFERENT PENS:

I've been using the Bic Cristal Ultra Fine pen for about a year now and it's my favorite. I like ballpoint pens more than gel pens. I use fine liners for my illustrations and those tend to be used for the writing in my artwork. I tested out the pens I had on hand and decided that the Ultra Fine was still my favorite. I believe this is because I write so small- the thinner pen line means my tight and small letters aren't lost in a bold pen stroke (like in the Mildliner example).

PRACTICING THROUGH REPETITION:

I liked the idea of writing a word multiple times to play around with different things. I changed up the angle, speed, roundness, heights, etc. through the repetition. Then I highlighted the ones I felt came closest to my inspiration (though, admittedly, still not entirely similar to it!)

WRITING SAMPLE AT THE END OF THE CLASS:

Since I didn't really have that much practice (I completed the class in the course of a day), I wasn't expecting a lot of change in my handwriting. So I focused on slowing down and using a more upright angle. I also tried to keep my letters from getting too small. Here is a more direct comparison:

MY HANDWRITING NEXT STEPS:

The differences between the before and after samples aren't vast, but I can see several places where slowing down and focusing on creating rounder letterforms makes a difference. I also feel that I can further practice making the letters more upright, which will help me increase the size. One more thing I noticed in both samples that I'd like to improve is the difference between combining letters in a pseudo-cursive fashion (which I like) and dragging the pen from one letter to another (which I don't like).