Taking a shot at Chancery Italic Script

I've managed to improve my daily printing a great deal over the past several months by practicing italic handwriting using the lessons in Write Now! by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay. I haven't exactly mastered daily handwriting, and I haven't even moved on to cursive italic yet, but, because I've found italic nibs so much fun, I've decided to start on Chancery Italic Script, using the letter forms presented in this FPN thread but using lessons (i.e., grouping the letters and using the writing exercises) in Getty and Dubay.

Before I remembered to consult Getty & Dubay (who say simply writing the same letter over and over does little good), I spent my first practice session on lower-case As and Bs and my nom de blog, with the following results:





I had a hard time with nib size and lettering height, switching back and forth between a 1.1mm italic and 1.5mm italic (both on a Lamy Safari). According to the guidelines I read, the 1.1mm italic should be just about right for using the 5mm spacing on the Rhodia pad as a baseline and waistline, but I thought the lettering looked too spindly. The 1.5 mm should make for very chunky writing using the same 5mm spacing for waistline height, but I didn't think it looked too chunky — most of the time, anyway. Nonetheless, I may have to print out some graph paper with customized spacing if I want guidelines that yield a good look with these nibs.

The step-looking marks you see are me checking the nib widths against the line spacing. The Xs are where I was checking for the right nib angle. This is a bit of a challenge on the Safari, because my natural grip on the ergonomic section of the Safari does not place the nib at the correct angle with the paper at mu usual angle. I'm going to have to experiment with the angle of the paper a bit, and the line of the writing compared to my hand is going to be different.

I was pleasantly surprised at how consistently the nibs wrote. They are very prone to skipping on smooth paper if proper contact is not maintained. You may have seen that before in my ink reviews, especially with the 1.9mm nib (which I did not try in this lesson).

I don't think I'll be using Chancery Script to take notes in court anytime soon. ("Your honor, could you slow down a little bit? I'm having trouble keeping the wedge open on my lower case letters with you talking so fast.") But I think this is going to be fun!

Taking a shot at Chancery Italic Script