Flourish No. 1

If you have The Speedball Textbook, be sure to look at the two pages on flourishing. There are some nice basic flourishes right after the italic pages.

To the right is the first flourish I learned and I used it for about two years before I went on to any other flourishes. It is a figure-eight and it is a good idea to start out on lined notebook paper with a pencil, ballpoint, gel pen, marker or anything that is easy. I would not start out with a dip pen.

The most important thing is to practice large. Fill up at least two spaces, vertically and the width should be at least 3.5 inches wide.
Or 9 cm wide - I think...I am not very good at metric. This will force you to use your whole arm.  I will look for a video online that shows whole arm movement or make my own.

First make layers and layers of figure-eights until you have some nice muscle memory.  Then try just the portion that is shown in the solid line - that also has a dotted line. You can see at the left end of the dotted line that I have a little too much curl on the beginning stroke. Beware of making fish hooks and pig tails at the beginning and end of a flourish. Those are tight little hooks and curls that do not stay close enough to the figure-eight.

Then try pulling a flourish off the bottom of a y or a g or a j. The first amy shows a very large flourish. the second one is a little smaller and the third one is too tight to my eye, but if you are addressing envelopes, you may choose to tuck in a small flourish. In general, you will want to have a little space between the word and the flourish.

Keep the flourish level, for now.
Keep the two halves symmetrical
And do a lot of practice of the one that is layered over and over to create some muscle memory.

Another good tip is to breathe. Students frequently hold their breath as they start a flourish because they are nervous. Holding your breath is not helpful. Keep breathing and pay attention to this next bit of advice...this is a really valuable tip.... make your flourish  IN THE AIR just above the paper....a couple times....to get the muscle memory. After you make the shape a couple times, then let your pen hit the paper and because you have visualized exactly what you want, you will surprise yourself at how close you get.