Learning copperplate is torture. Your hand cramps up. There are an overwhelming number of things to keep in mind, and neglecting any single one is enough to make the finished result look shitty. I don't have a prayer of getting them all right (it takes all my concentration just to get, say, two right), so there's the constant background frustration of knowing that everything you're producing is obvious crap. All of which on balance makes the appropriate elegant fluidity of line rather hard to achieve. Crabbed scrawling is considerably easier.

I have this theory that artistic merit lies on the far shore of a wide, deep ocean of unimaginable tedium. At the very least, facility with copperplate lies on the far shore of such an ocean.

God in heaven if an hour of copperplate practice leaves me exhausted where am I ever going to find the discipline to learn to actually draw.