Sunday Play: Today, We Don’t Practice. We Play.
It’s Sunday, and the lesson is officially OFF the table. The practice sheets have been excused. The difficult letters have been asked to come back on Monday. Nobody is checking spacing, slants, pressure, consistency, or whether that loop is doing what a loop is supposed to do. Today, we’re not practicing. We’re playing.
When learning calligraphy, it’s easy for every moment with your pen to start feeling like a lesson. You’re studying strokes, fixing letters, checking proportions, and trying to figure out why your hand has once again ignored the very clear instructions provided by your brain. After a while, even something you love can start feeling like another assignment. We definitely don’t want that. That is why I created Sunday Play.
Sunday Play is our time to forget about what we’re supposed to be working on and write whatever makes me happy. No drills. No critiques. No staring at one letter like it has personally betrayed me. For today’s Sunday Play, I wrote my name: Felecia. There was no worksheet telling me to write it. It wasn’t part of a lesson. I simply wanted to see my name move across the paper and enjoy how far I’ve come on this calligraphy journey.
There is something special about writing your own name in calligraphy. These are letters I have written thousands of times, but calligraphy makes me slow down and see them differently. My name becomes more than something I quickly scribble at the bottom of a form. It becomes something I get to create. If every letter isn’t perfect? That sounds like Monday’s business. 😂
Sunday Play isn’t about secretly squeezing in more practice while pretending to relax. We are not turning fun into another productivity assignment. If our and happens to learn something while we’re playing, fantastic. If it doesn’t, we still spent time doing something that made us happy.
You can write your name, a favorite word, one letter, a page full of loops, or something that makes absolutely no sense. Let the letters lean. Let the loops wander. Use the pen you’ve been saving. Try the color that has nothing to do with your usual palette. It’s freestyle. There are no rules here.
So, put the lesson away. Give your hand a break from trying to get everything right. Pick up your pen, choose something that makes you smile, and let yourself enjoy calligraphy without asking your work to prove anything.
Your pen. Your paper. Your Sunday.
Have some fun. ✒️
-Felecia