A First Try at Spencerian Penmanship

I have always loved old handwriting, and have been particularly interested in the style used during the Civil War because of my one time involvement in Reenacting, so I ordered a copy of Spencerian Penmanship (Theory Book plus five copybooks).  It is a reprint of the old copybooks used to teach school children the Spencerian system of handwriting back in the day.  The only omission that I have noticed in these copybooks is the fact that there is no punctuation, so I will have to do some more research to find out how to properly form things like the question mark and exclamation point.  So, with the help of these books I have been trying to teach myself how to write in this elegant hand.

I didn’t want to write directly in the copybooks, so I have been scanning in the pages and printing them out to serve as guidelines placed under a sheet of paper.  I ordered a few Leonardt Principal EF nibs, which are supposed to duplicate the qualities of an antique nib, and am using Higgins Eternal ink on a layout bond paper.  The layout bond is thin enough that you can easily see the guidelines through it.

So far I have been working through copybook #1, which introduces all of the small letters–the miniscules that don’t have an ascender or descender.  I have completed the pages that introduce the i, u, n, m, w, and v.  It seems that the most difficult aspect is to maintain an even spacing between downstrokes, and an even shading of the letters.  The slant of the lettering, being 52 degrees, is a little awkward for me still, but I think I am starting to get the hang of it.  Sometimes I feel like a kid writing lines in First Grade.  Below is an excerpt of my attempts so far, so you can judge for yourself:

Sample of Spencerian Copybook Practice -- i's, u's, m's and x's