Networked Learning Update!

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about when I say “Networked Learning,” check out this blog post!

I should start off by saying that I have never been artistic.  I have not one artistic bone in my body.  While some may have thought that learning to write fancy letters was easy, let me assure you that it hasn’t been.  It has been rough.  My second official practice went…terrible.  I spent so much time practicing with different marker types that I decided not to count it as practice because they were so bad.  I mean, I didn’t even finish the word at one point because it was looking so terrible.  Don’t believe me?

Then I found this great video that used Crayola markers to hand letter.  Name one teacher who doesn’t have Crayola markers?  I dug those out and got to work.  I watched the video at least three times and found a blog with some great visuals for downstrokes, upstrokes, and the alphabet.  I’d say the official practice number 2 was successful!

I focused on the letters that were causing me troubles.  After watching a video on handlettering mistakes, I realized I was making one of the biggest!  I’m normally a pretty quick writer, so slowing down has not come easy.  A few days later after practicing, I decided to put my skills to use.  Practice number 3 involved making a grocery list.

To be honest, I’m not super thrilled with how it looks.  I’m starting to notice not only do I struggle with slowing down, but I also am struggling with keeping letter sizes consistent and straight.  Below is a video of me practicing.  It is sped up, a lot.  But in reality, it takes me almost one minute to write the word “football.”

In the next couple practice sessions, I need to focus on writing slow, keeping consistent letter sizes, and writing in a straight lines.  As you can probably notice, many of my words are in a “V” shape.  A few YouTube bloggers have used graph paper to help with hand lettering so I’m going to print off some to try to help with my letter sizing and keeping everything straight.  Hopefully that helps!   I’ve been focusing mostly on script because it has been giving me the most trouble.  I hope to showcase a few different styles in my final blog post.  Thanks for following my journey!

Have you been learning a new skill?  Share a comment about how it has been going.  I’d love to hear!