Despite everything I said before about the same strokes used in many hands, a new hand is still a new hand.

In Uncial, the pen angle flattens a little more and it changes things. As usual, I also started out by rushing. Anxious to learn a calligraphic hand is like anxious to get through a road with many speed bumps. You’re supposed to take it slow, all the way. If you forgot or tried to ignore the speed bumps, you wouldn’t get there much faster – instead you’d just have an unpleasant, bumpy ride. We’ll learn much more efficiently by slowing down and minding what we’re doing.

It being all horizontally condesed looking, and not having much ascender/descender space, I kept thinking of Uncial as a minuscule hand and didn’t fill the whole x-height space. I needed to remind myself that it’s a majuscule hand and expand my letters to the space it deserves. And it’s difficult to switch from 20º to 10º. I’ll try rolling the pen in my hand instead of twisting my arm.

S.