Much like Dory we just keep swimming, moving on from making love in art form of course to planting the proverbial seeds of creativity if you will. This week I’ve started my next project, it’s been in the pipeline for way too long… without further ado let me introduce you to the alphabet of flowers well the letter “A” anyway. I have been wanting to include something extra to my finished calligraphic pieces and what better to complement beautiful handwriting apologies for tooting my own horn here than to pair it with some beautiful florals. I haven’t decided what to do with them when I’m finished though do you have any suggestions? I think I’d like to see them on a poster.

I am always looking for an opportunity to learn. I think if you can only find one thing to love in life, make it to love to learn—don’t get me wrong I am blessed enough to have a family I love dearly. However I love learning about new things. How about you do you find it easy or difficult to learn new things?

I find that a lot of the people I’ve asked, including myself end up in a place I’ve heard called the plateau, meaning we get into something new it’s shiny and exciting and then we come to a point where we have to implement what we’ve just learnt to become more proficient. But here we hit this plateau where we know the information, we simply don’t practice, or want to practice it enough to become more proficient—AKA an expert. What I’ve distilled down in my years of learning is that if you get to this plateau and you become disinterested in the subject then it is time to move on because you really aren’t as interested as you previously thought. At least when you reach this point you will now possess new knowledge you previously didn’t have! Congratulate yourself for sticking to the subject, seeing it through, celebrate your new knowledge and move on to the next thing.

Don’t be discouraged by this, let me reassure you that there is something out there for everyone. It’s taken me years to find something I wanted to stay on the plateau for and build my way even higher to that expert status. My process has been a slow evolution, I started in 2015 wanting to learn hand lettering, I quickly moved on and fell in love with calligraphy, dabbled in acrylic painting but ended up back with calligraphy. Still 5 years after I started my journey I’m only just now scratching the surface of the many disciplined years ahead of my learning, but that is why I started this blog to document the journey and keep me on track to consistently be at my desk week after week, it’s my accountability partner. Now on to this week’s practice.

This week I got some real practice time with the entrance and exit strokes writing the three letter word “ici” which I could only compulsively Google to find the no longer existing Imperial Chemical Industries. Interestingly enough it was a chemical company one of the largest in Britain and only recently merged and lost it’s name. But it made/makes all sorts of things one of the most notable for us here in the US is paint. Who doesn’t like paint? Sorry for the off topic deviation but the more you know right?

Reviewing the practice I can clearly notice that I was executing them all wrong. It took me until the fifth row to notice the second “i” in “ici” was too far to the left, I wasn’t extending it enough to create that smooth exit stroke off of the “c”. Then it took me until the ninth row to figure out that the dots over my “I”s were too low. Execution stroke/principle count is 2,1,2 stopping just shy of the x-height, small loop to the right or a modified 3 up to x-height, 3, 2,1,2 ending with dotting your “I”’s. The only way to improve is through practice, but if you’re practicing wrong how much improvement can you see? Being the stickler I am I’d say that you can’t truly improve correctly until you execute the practice properly. Happy Practicing!