Fine Control With Relaxed Grip?

[j.a.j.]

I have got my quick handwriting to an level I deem acceptable. The movement does not exactly start from the shoulder but near enough.

 

My problem is that I feel I have no fine control for writing small text or doing detailed sketching with the grip I have adopted (picture with black pen).

 

Only way I get good enough small text or detailed sketches is if I move my fingers very close to the nib (picture with silver pen). I have the habit of locking my wrist in this grip which tires my arm quickly. Using a nib that has a lot of feedback is only slightly better.

 

Any suggestions?

 

[Inkling13]

If its a new style of writing, you will need to train those muscles just like everything else. Something you might want to try is to write larger, and perfect your form. It's easy to microsize your writing, but not so easy to train your muscles to act in a smooth coordinated writing, especially if you are using whole arm, large muscle groups for writing. Small muscles are for precise movements, large muscles are for powerful but less exact movements, generally at least.

[j.a.j.]

I try to be more precise, I can't get a feel of the nib with the loose grip (picture with black pen) regardless of using smaller or bigger muscles. It's like my brain does not sense the nib if my fingers are not very near it. It's slightly less worse with heavy pens (Lamy Aion, Jinhao 159) but not enough.

 

I have always had a horrible handwriting and my sketching in normal size has been clumsy and my arm tired easily. When I started to work on my hand writing I found out that bigger handwriting & more loose grip is much better.

 

Now I'd like to train my hand either to not tire when holding the pen close to the nib or to get the feel of the nib with more relaxed grip.

[Randal6393]

For small text, the muscles of the forearm are used. Style of writing also affects the look of the text. Your grip looks good in both pictures. I will suggest working on easing the tension of your hand. Write the same way with large or small text. Let the hand and arm just do their thing. And practice, practice, practice.

 

Recommend getting Eleanor Winter's Italic and Copperplate Calligraphy. An excellent text that teaches the basics of two very different writing styles. And then, more practice, more practice, more practice. Only fifteen or twenty minutes a day, after reading and studying from Winter's book for a few minutes. Set yourself goals for each writing session and worry about making handwriting a natural extension of the thought process. Do not compare one session to the next. Once in a while, write out a sample or two and store it to see how much progress you are making. Most of all, have fun.

 

Enjoy,

 

PS: I find a soft pencil best for studying Copperplate, a good italic nib for studying italic.

[j.a.j.]

Thank you for the advice. I ordered the book and will start work on relaxing the grip where fingers are closer to the nib's tip.

 

Based by your comments and other reading it seems more unrealistic to somehow magically train my hand to have better feel of the nib in a grip where the fingers are further away from the tip of the nib.