As with any art form, regular practice is key when it comes to hand lettering. Try keeping a sketchbook dedicated solely to lettering or incorporate it into your normal journaling routine!
Line weight is crucial to every hand lettering style. It refers to the thickness of each downstroke and upstroke.
Choosing Your Fonts
Choosing the right fonts can make or break a design. The right font can elevate your design and give it a professional, polished look. It can also help convey your message in a unique and creative way. There are a lot of factors to consider when choosing fonts, so it’s important to be thoughtful and take your time when making your selections.
Whether you’re designing for a brand or for yourself, hand lettering can be a fun and relaxing way to express your creativity. But it’s not always easy to achieve the flawless lettering you see on Instagram or Pinterest. That’s because those stunning pieces are the result of years of practice and a consistent process.
In order to master your own hand lettering style, you’ll need to experiment with a variety of different techniques. One of the most popular is color blending, which adds dimension and interest to your work. Another great technique is shadowing, which makes your letters seem like they’re jumping off the page.
But even more than those two techniques, it’s essential to practice on a regular basis. Keep a sketchbook or notebook that you dedicate solely to hand lettering and try out new styles and fonts. You’ll be surprised at how much you can improve with just a little bit of regular practice!
Creating a Pencil Draft
Drawing by hand is a crucial part of technical design. It is used to create a rough version of the model before it is built up with computer-aided tools. Although most of these tools have replaced traditional pencils in the professional world, they are still widely used for draft designs.
Choose a pencil with a good core that has a wide range of lead grades to get the best results. Graphite pencils have a variety of core thicknesses that are used to control the tone of the mark made on the paper. For example, a pencil with an H in the grade will have more clay filler in the core and be more compacted. This makes it lighter and harder to mark on the paper than a pencil with a B in the grade.
Start by tracing a long rectangle onto a piece of foam. Then cut the 4 long sides of the rectangle using a foam saw or knife. Leave the tip of the rectangle uncut since you will cut it later when you make the body of your pencil.
You can also use photoshop to turn a digital image into a pencil sketch in no time. This process can help you get the look of a hand-drawn sketch in a matter of minutes, provided that you have a high-resolution original photo with plenty of contrast. Having a good contrast will ensure that the final image is sharp and looks more realistic.
Creating a Layout
If you’ve got a lot of lettering work to do, creating a layout is essential for making sure your design is well-organized and has the right look. This can include using lines for dividing sections, separating different types of content or images, and adding ornamentation.
For example, if you’re writing a wedding invitation, you might use decorative swirls and flourishes to create a more elegant look. This will help your design look more professional and will increase the chances of people actually opening the invitation and reading it.
Another important part of creating a layout is using typography to set the tone and personality of your design. Typography includes things like fonts, color, and spacing. Fonts can evoke different emotions, and choosing the right one can make or break your design. For instance, serifs can give your designs a more dignified and traditional look, while sans-serifs can create a more modern and minimal feel.
It’s also important to create a layout when drawing your letters, as this will help you get the best possible results. Start by drawing a pencil skeleton of your lettering, then fill in the outline with ink. Finally, add a little detail to your letters with shadowing. This will make them look more eye-catching and will give your design a three-dimensional look. You can experiment with different shadowing styles, such as using a light grey or using the same color as your lettering to create a more neutral effect.
Creating a Color Palette
We see words everywhere — on posters, billboards, t-shirts and books. And while we may not realize it, those words tell a story and evoke certain emotions in us. What if we could create our own hand lettering that was full of personality?
In order to do this, we need to make sure we’re using the right colors. To create a color palette, open the Color Panel and tap the + icon in the top right corner. This will create a new palette, which you can name using the keypad. Once you’ve created your palette, tap “Set as Default” to ensure it appears on all the tabs in the Color Panel.
Now that we have our colors, it’s time to add some detail. One way to do this is by adding shadowing. To do this, simply draw the outline of each letter with a darker shade of the letter’s color and fill it in with a lighter shade of that same color to create a shadow effect.
Flourishing is another great way to add some texture and depth to your letters. To do this, draw a series of thin lines around each letter to give it an elegant and refined look.
It’s important to keep practicing and not get stuck in a particular style, so try tackling a different type of lettering every day. It’s a good idea to keep a sketchbook specifically for your hand lettering or even just incorporate some illustrations into your everyday journal.
Creating a Shadow
When you’re lettering, line weight is the key to achieving the right look. Essentially, this means how thick or thin the lines are. Thicker lines are heavier, and thinner lines are lighter. It’s important to practice this aspect of hand lettering to make sure you’re drawing them the correct way.
Another thing that’s important to practice when you’re lettering is the various types of lettering styles. For example, you should learn how to draw serifs (the little bars that are attached to certain letters’ ends) and sans serifs, which can really make designs pop. You should also try to experiment with different capital letters and different widths of lines. This will add variety and uniqueness to your work.
If you want to create a more 3D effect, it’s also important to add shadows. This will help your design look more authentic and give it a more polished, professional finish. To do this, you’ll need to decide where the light is coming from and draw dark parts where the light wouldn’t touch your letter.
Although it’s tempting to jump into hand lettering head first and start drawing intricate quotations, it’s best to take things slow and steady. Hand lettering requires patience and full concentration, so it’s important to take your time and focus on each step of the process. With time, practice, and dedication, you’ll soon be creating beautiful hand lettering that will set your designs apart from the rest.
Creating a Flourishes
When done correctly, flourishes add a touch of elegance and style to any hand lettering project, and for this, rub on transfers are the answer. However, it’s important to remember that the main goal of any piece of calligraphy is to be legible, so you should avoid any embellishments that would interfere with the overall legibility of a word.
One of the most common mistakes new letterers make is adding too many flourishes or over-complicating their designs. The best way to avoid this is to practice the basics first. You can start by creating a simple loop on the tail of any lowercase letter. For example, after you’ve completed your last downstroke on a letter like c, you can easily add a little flourish by simply looping your pen downward and up again to create a small loop.
Another good flourishing technique to try is to add a swirl on the end of any uppercase or lowercase letter. This works especially well with letters that dip down at the end, such as r, m, and a. Just be careful not to overdo it, as an upward loop can easily be mistaken for a cursive “e.”
Finally, you can also try adding a spiral on the end of any uppercase or lowercase stroke. This works particularly well on letters that have a clear ascender or descender, such as n, m, and r. Just be sure to keep the size of the spiral small so that it doesn’t distract from the legibility of your words.
