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Timo Ostrich — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 13:46:40 +0000

Drawing bubbly letters is so much fun! Today I will show you how to create charming letters which look really fluffy and bubbly. Some simple tricks will make the letters look nice and realistic.

I have drawn hundreds of bubbly letters in the past. Let me teach you how to do it fast and easy! Let’s dive right in.

What you need

Bubble lettering is more about the right technique than about using many materials. You can start with just:

A simple pencil and a rubber
A fineliner
Some colored pencils (optional)

Create the basic lines

The first step is to write your desired word in a monoline font. Sounds easy but this part is very important.

The look of your lines will define the appearance of your whole bubble lettering.

Let’s use the word “bubble” for this tutorial (what else?). Try to draw playful and rounded letters instead of sharp edges. Rotating each letter by a few degrees will help to make your lettering look more dynamic.

Attention: Make sure that you can still recognize the letters.

It’s okay to have the letters close to each other. We will make them overlap later on.

Draw the bubbles

The next step is to outline every letter. Think of ballons and soap bubbles while doing that. They are very rounded and when you try to shape them their outlines stay smooth and rounded.

The smaller the inner part of your letter (also called counter) the more bubbly it will look. You can also change the look of the counter. For our tutorial we will stay with a simple circle.

I love to make the letters overlap because it emphasizes the appearance of bubbles. In this step you can already decide which letters will be in the foreground. Make it look a little random instead of using the same pattern from left to right. You can achieve that by drawing some inner letters first. Erase the baseline to get a better look of the letter hierarchy.

Add some reflections

Let’s have a look at the details. One of the most important detail is the typical reflection on a bubble or a balloon. It helps the viewer to get an understanding of the threedimensional shape. Drawing consistent reflections will make your bubble lettering look really professional.

Choose a light source and draw a reflection on every single letter. You can even decide to draw more than one reflection – as long as you keep the consistency.

Finalize the shapes

Finalize the shapes of your bubble letters by tracing the main lines with a fineliner. Use a rubber to erase all unnecessary lines. Looks good, doesn’t it?

You can stop here if you just needed the outlines of a bubble lettering. For example to create a bubble font or something like that. If you want to make your lettering look more colorful just move on to the next step!

Colorize your bubble lettering

Fill the shapes with some colors. You can even use blending techniques or watercolors to get a great look. Keep the reflections in white. If you used a waterproof fineliner you can paint over the lines without problems.

Adding shadows

As always you can enhance the 3d look by adding shadows. There are two main types of shadows you could draw on your bubble lettering:

The shadows of the letters which are infront of other letters
The main shadow that falls on the ground under the whole word

Remember where your light source was. The shadows always have to be on the opposite part of the reflections. It’s all about consistency again. By duplicating the shape of the letters you will create realistic shadows.

For our lettering we will only go with the “inner” shadows because I want the word to fly in the air instead of standing on the ground.

Decorate the lettering

Adding some decoration is an important part if you want to create an awesome bubble lettering. It will make your lettering look dynamic and unique. Furthermore the decoration helps to make the viewer understand the bubble topic. In this case I will just add some simple bubbles all around the lettering. Some of them are even bursting at the moment.

Now that looks really bubbly, right?

Simply keep in mind to fill the whitespace around your word evenly. By keeping the balance between whitespace and drawings your final lettering will look harmonic.

More inspiration

Finally I want to show you some more bubble lettering styles you may want to use. What’s your favorite version? Let me know in the comments!

The post Bubble lettering: How to draw superbubbly letters with ease appeared first on goodjerseysmall.com.

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Sandra Brezina — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 16:01:54 +0000

In this tutorial, I am going to show you 4 ways to draw basic block letters. If you are interested to go a step further, you can learn some basic typographyic facts and proceed with my advanced-level approach to develop variations of your basic letter shapes.

Drawing simple block letters

Usually, you develop only those letters you need for your lettering project. However, let us go through the steps of creating a whole alphabet. I use squared paper and develop my letter shapes within a grid of 6 squares in height and 4 squares in width. This template is our basis for applying 4 methods for creating block letters.

My tip: Play with your grid. If you use 6 x 3 squares, your letters will have a more condensed appearance.

Method 1: Using outlines

Based on your skeleton letters, draw a consistent outline around your shapes. The rounded corners here are just my personal preference.

Note: Round edges influence the look and feel of your letters in so far that your lettering looks very friendly and soft.

Method 2: Applying geometric shapes

For this technique, you draw consistent shapes such as rectangles around your skeleton letters. A squared paper underneath your drawing helps to ensure consistent widths. Your skeleton should be centered within your geometric shapes.

Method 3: Scribbling

This is my most favourite approach since you can shape your letters at speed. Scribble onto your lines as thin or as thick as you wish. Outline your result to gain a more precise appearance. Refine your result and fill in your letters.

Method 4: Use a monolinear brush marker

Use a monolinear brush marker (felt tip) and write your letters above your skeleton. Place a paper above your writing and redraw your shapes with a pencil. Optimize your shapes.

Challenge yourself: Block letters have multifaceted shapes. Develop your own style by building fancy shapes out of your basic block letters. I give you more advanced tips to modulate your letter shapes in the course of this tutorial.

Creating an entire block letter alphabet

Place a new sketch paper above your skeleton and add widths to your lines by drawing equal shapes (rectangles) around each line. Take a close look at my example to see my process of how I develop more complex letters such as A, R, M, N, V, W.

Once you are happy with your letter bodies, fill in the sketched shapes.
Congrats, there you have it: your alphabet of block letters with monolinear strokes.

Advanced skills to create block letters

Let us talk about sans serifs and serifs

We can divide block letters into sans serifs and serifs. During the industrial revolution around 1760�?840, new type designs began to emerge, among them sans serif letters which were called grotesque letters as well. The reason for this name: People were not used to the appearance of letters without serifs.

Sans serif letterforms lack calligraphic characteristics. They do not have any elongations or ornate endings added to their stems.

Serif letters which go back to ancient Roman times have one thing in common: they all have specific marks or decorative stuff added to their major strokes or stems. The Trajan’s column in Rome for example shows a very ancient Roman alphabet whose delicate serifs were achieved with a chisel.

High contrast and low contrast letterforms

There is another classification: You can divide your letters into shapes of high and low contrast or no contrast at all.

My tip: The respective stroke width has a great influence on the look and feel of your letters. All capital U letters are based on the same skeleton U you see in my sketch. Letters with monolinear strokes whether these strokes are thin (2nd row on the left) or thick (3rd row on the left) are shapes with no contrast. Differences in widths draw attention to your letters and in most cases they look more interesting or elegant or playful. Experiment with creating various degrees of contrasts.

Advanced level knowledge

Your capital letters sit on the baseline and go to the cap height. This is your basic frame made of 6 x 4 squares.

Round (B, C, D, G, J, O, P, Q, R, S, U) and triangle lettes shapes (A, V, W) need an overshoot. This means: Their shapes have to go a tiny bit below the baseline or the cap height or the left/right side of your grid (B, D, O, Q, �?.

Our alphabet includes round, rectangle and triangle shapes. Optical adjustments are necessary to make your letters look similar. This has nothing to do with mathematical measurements. You have to measure the appearance with your eyes.

Take a close look at my letters E, F, L, T. Draw their crossbars shorter than 4 squares wide. Otherwise they would appear a bit out of shape.
Draw the lower belly part of your B a bit wider than the upper part.
In my example, the N is a bit wider than 4 squares. This applies to my letters K, M and X as well.
Draw the upper crossbar of your letter Z shorter than the lower crossbar.

My pro tip: What about the crossbars in general?

The crossbar of the letter H is centered and sits at the x-height.
The crossbar of the letter A sits below the x-height.
The crossbar of your R is below the centered x-height, but above the crossbar of your A.
The E has a crossbar which sits a bit above the centered x-height.
Referring to the F, its crossbar is a bit below the one of your E.

Note: The crossbar is always a bit narrower than the width of your stroke. When you draw your letters with a width of 1 square, your crossbars have to have a width size under 1 square.

Creating a medium contrast block letter

Proceed as follows: Draw your skeleton. Scribble out the widths as you wish. Keep calligraphic principles in mind. When you move your hand upwards, you have to create a thin stem. When you move your hand downwards, you have to draw in a thicker stem.

Outline your scribbling and optimize your shape. Once you are satisfied, fill in the body.

If you are unsure about the right placement of thickened strokes, look at Google for high contrast sans serif fonts to analyze the correct structure.

Creating various block letter shapes

Take the skeleton alphabet you created at the beginning of this tutorial. Use it as your starting point to develop further block letter shapes.

Step 1: Place a sketch paper or squared paper above your skeleton.
Step 2: Scribble onto your lines and modulate the widths of your stems.
Step 3: Outline and optimize your scribblings to gain precise block letter shapes. Remember all the optical adjustments that might be necessary.
Step 4: Add serifs to your block letters if this is the style you have in mind.

Tip: Research Google to be sure about the correct placement of serifs. Make a moodboard and collect various serifs and ornate elements added to stem endings. Once you know the rules, you can break them by adding your crossbars at quite a high position for example. When you introduce principles to your alphabet, consistency is the key.

Step 5: Fill in your letters to gain a high black and white contrast. This helps to evaluate the look of your letters.

Once you feel comfortable with this technique, you can challenge yourself by drawing artistic block letter shapes.

Applying the scribbling method to a hand lettering project

To provide you with various types of letters, my lettering example includes multifaceted shapes.

Tip: Use a square paper underneath your sketch. My pro tip: Keep your grid in mind. Another method is to sketch out shapes (identical rectangles, ellipses and triangles) where you place your letters inside. This helps to sketch out homogeneous letter shapes.

The scribbling technique is a quick and rough method to help you evaluate your concept. You get a good impression of how your hand lettering project might look.

Take a blank sheet of paper and add your style to your block letters. Outline the scribblings, add serifs or rounded corners, swashes, flourishes, decorations. This step is the most time-consuming one. In most cases, you will draw one sketch after the other to get the most out of your basic concept. Use your creativity and give shape to your artwork.

Note: The final step is very relaxing. You have solved all your problems in the meantime. Concentrate on refining your project and redraw your beautiful block letters with a very sharp pencil. The following steps are up to you. Grab your pens and refine your lettering or scan your artwork and use it as a digital template for further proceedings on the Ipad or computer.

Final words

I hope you enjoyed reading this tutorial and learning my tricks and approaches of creating various block letter styles with ease. Have fun by lettering quotes with amazing block letters. Stay amazing!

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Sandra Brezina — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 13:02:54 +0000

In this tutorial, I am going to show you a variety of ways of how you can easily jump into the process of creating great compositions of your hand letterings without being overwhelmed by this task.

To improve your skills, decide to hand letter quotes of at least four or five words. Be honest to yourself and do not count filler words, such as: the, and, is, are, etc. They actually do not count as complicated words to fill into your composition.

The longer the message, the more practice you will get in the long run.

Where to start when it comes to composition

This may sound very trivial but write the respective message you want to hand letter in capital letters first. It is just a handwritten note, so do not use any specific style. Don’t forget to check the correct spelling. It is your reference as you go along and should always be nearby to your sketches.

A big issue in composition is hierarchy. Which are the most important words you want to focus on? Which words do you want to highlight?

Take a pencil or colored pen and underline words of primary and secondary importance to aquire the first distinctive features for your composition.

This decision helps to structure your layout visually and communication-wise. As example, have a look at the quote: If you stumble, make it part of the dance. I had to create this hand lettering composition for a client project in portrait format. For me, the most important words in this quote are stumble and dance. But there is no wrong or right. Maybe you find the word you important as well.

Draw boxes around each word to get an impression of the length of your words. It may even be helpful to count the letters of each word.

Arrange containers as placeholders for your words

Start to create thumbnail sketches by proceeding as follows: Have the format of your composition in mind (for example: square size for an Instagram post, portrait format for a poster artwork, landscape format for a greeting card) and use the desired format as borders of your sketches. Draw a vertical line which serves as the center line of your very first sketch. Arrange the text boxes symmetrically onto this vertical line. Stack them on top of each other to visualize the amount of words you have to deal with. This arrangement looks totally boring, of course, but this is just the starting point. Balance is a key component of good composition. Look at nature, at the harmoniously striped fur of a cat, for example, or at the pattern of butterflies. Symmetry is very pleasing to the eyes. In this context, I would like to give you some insights to the cover picture I made for this tutorial. I created a very basic layout style. I arranged my words in a square format which are well-balanced in length, even though the word layouts is shorter than well-done and lettering.

By adding flourishes and a stylized L, I enlarged the word layouts for the sake of my composition’s symmetry. To make my lettering more interesting (it is well-balanced, but also very static), I included different lettering styles: sans serifs, high-contrast serifs, fancy bouncing serifs and a playful script style. To break up the composition block shape, I decided on an arch shape for my less important words. In general, putting so many different styles within a composition is far too much. But for a cover design, it may be an attractive concept.

Enlarge your boxes for very important words

Make a new sketch where you enlarge those boxes which serve as placeholders for your words of primary and secondary importance. You will see: these changes usually trigger ideas for arranging your containers in a new way. Try to place smaller boxes side by side. Start changing the uniformity of your boxes step by step. How about a box in the shape of a wave, a diamond, bowtie or triangle for your words?

At present, your text boxes are arranged on horizotal lines. Now, it is time to play around in order to break up the static look and feel of your composition. However, keep legibility in mind. We use to read from left to right, and from the top to the bottom.

Play puzzle by using various shapes of boxes

Try to arrange your text boxes on slanted lines in order to give your composition a more dynamic look. Maybe you find a perfect place to include a ribbon or an arch shape. Filler words such as articles and prepositions can be put in small circles, within lines or between dots to integrate decorative elements into your artwork. This step is like playing puzzle. It’s your turn to find the best solution in creating manifold options with different shapes of boxes and arrangements. The more you work on your concept, the more ideas will hopefully cross your mind.

As you go along, try to observe any empty spaces. Try to avoid these and develop ideas for illustrative elements, easily drawn elements or flourishes as extensions of your letters.

Keep in mind: Symmetry is an essential feature of pleasing layouts. It may look nice to have a container shape at the beginning which is repeated at the end of your layout.

As soon as you are satisfied with your framework of boxes and have chosen your favourite option, make a new sketch. Stick to your framework, but this time you write your words instead of drawing boxes.

Tip: I recommend to draw the first sketch without using any lettering styles. Roughly letter your words to see if they fit in in a pleasing manner. Optimise your composition until you are happy with your solution. Draw decorative fillers for unpleasant empty spaces. Scribble your rough ideas onto your sketch. As soon as you have your final layout, place a transparent paper above your drawing and start elaborating the shapes of your letters.

Introduce two or three lettering styles and solve all the problems you come up with within the sketching phase step by step.

Grab your pens or something digital

As soon as you are ready with your well-prepared final sketch, grab your favourite tools or your Ipad or computer, and get your composition ready. Congrats! After all these steps, you can be proud of what you have accomplished. I elaborated my piece in two ways, by drawing and digitally.

Bonus tip

If you are still struggling with composition, I have an alternative for you to start with. Sketch out a shape, such as a circle, for example. But if you like to create something more fancy, take an illustration. My demonstration example for you is a typically British bowler hat and the song lyrics: Like an Englishman in New York. Draw your illustration, place slanted lines within this shape and play with the shapes of your containers.

Concentrating on the borders of your illustration might help to create your letter shapes and composition with more ease than starting on a blank sheet of paper.

Inhale inspiration in case of a creative block

On social media like Pinterest you can always find amazingly composed lettering artworks and collections of layout grids. Inhale inspiration, but never copy. In case of a creative block, I recommend the following step: Choose some great designs from the web and redraw them just by using their empty boxes. Try to use the shapes of these boxes for your own words or shift them a little bit around.

Use the lettering generator

If you want to test some compositions simply use the lettering generator. There is no faster way to test different styles, arrangements and decorations. Give it a try!

When you are happy with your composition you can event print it or just use it as a sketch.

Final words

I hope you enjoyed reading this tutorial and learning my tricks and approaches of creating hand lettering compositions. Have fun by lettering quotes and developing interesting or playful compositions. Stay amazing!

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Ilona Regnery — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 07:53:49 +0000

Colored lettering pieces are always fascinating! Especially those with nice gradients. It often looks more difficult than it really is, promised. I’m happy to lead you through 5 different techniques. My pics and tips will help you doing blends like a pro in no time and with every blending you will get better. Are you ready to find out your favourite blending technique?

What you basically need

Mix-media paper or a smooth watercolor paper for the first three techniques
Water color paper for the gel pen blending �?the ink stays better on a rougher surface, especially by using glitter gel pen
Smooth brush pen friendly paper for the infusing technique
Brush pens: a light and dark pen of a color family e.g. light and dark blue, light pink and berry; color triple combos of your choice e.g. yellow, pink and red
Gel pens in different colors and a white gel pen for highlights
Watercolour brush or water tank brush fine
Paper towel
Fine liner black
Pencil & eraser for sketching your lettering

Blending with the lightest colour

This technique works well with a lot of different brands. It’s important to use the very lightest and a dark pen of one colour family. In this example I’ve used a dark blue and a light blue pen for doing the gradient.

Prepare your lettering

This blending technique will get the best results by working with letters which have empty areas, as faux calligraphy or block letters. If needed sketch the word with a pencil first and follow the lines with a black fine liner. Wait until the ink is completely dried and erase all visible pencil lines.

Partially add the first colour

Use the dark color brush pen, for example a dark blue, and fill out the first third of the first letter.

This technique works best if the dark color is still a bit wet. Try to resist the temptation to fill out all letters at once.

Blending with the light color pen

Take the light brush pen (light blue) and go slightly with short strokes over the second half of the dark area up to the middle of the letter. The darker color will infuse a bit into the nib of the pen. This way the colours start to mix together, and you will see the darker colour is fading out. Clean the nib of the pen a bit on the paper towel. Then continue the blending process again with short strokes. Now the mixed colour infuses a bit into your pen, and you will fade out the mix until you will finally end up with the original colour of the light colour pen. Clean the nib in between. Finally use the cleaned brush pen and go slightly over the whole colored part with long strokes, clean the nib after every single stroke.

Using the brush pen only in one direction give you full control over the blending process and help avoiding the paper get thinner or damaged!

Repeat these two steps until all letters are filled with blends.

Finish & decorate

Add shadows with a grey brush pen to your lettering for more depth and some white gel pen highlights for a glossy look.

Using a blender pen

Blender pens are great for blending or lighten up colors. Many brands offer their own blender pens, some not. Commonly they are filled with a mix of water, glycerine and alcohol. Often you can use one brand with brush pens of another brand, as long the ink is water based. Try first on a separate paper, to see if it’s working well.

Write the first layer

Take a light color brush pen, for example a light pink, and write a word of your choice.

Add the darker color

Add a bit of the darker color (dark pink) at the top of the first letter.

The smaller the letters are the smaller should be the dark part �?this helps to avoid the letters get too dark in total and don’t show a nice gradient.

Blending with the blender pen

Now take the blender pen. Go slightly over the dark part with short strokes. The blender pen dilutes the dark colour and this way the dark colour absorbs a bit into the blender nib. Spread now the diluted color down to the bottom of the letter. Try to do it with short strokes in one direction, to hold the full control over the intensity of your blending. If needed clean the blender nib a bit on a paper towel and continue the blending process.

Work this way until every letter shows a nice gradient.

Finish & decorate

Add shadows with a grey brush pen to your lettering. White gel pen highlights underline the glossy look perfectly.

Blends with a brush or water tank brush

This technique is a favourite of a lot of artists. Depending to the amount of water, you can play with the effects. From a very compact and opaque blend up to watercolour effects, which gives your blends a beautiful delicate look.

Sketching with a grey brush pen

Use a very bright grey brush pen and write a word of your choice first. Continue as soon the grey ink is completely dry.

The shade of the sketching brush pen will influence the result and brightness of your finished lettering. Try to use a very light fawn shade for bright blends and a light cool grey for darker blends.

Add the colours

Here I’ve worked with a colour combo of purple, pink and yellow. You can also use different blue shades, blue green mixes or one of many other nice triple colour combos.
Add the colours to the first letter and let a little space between each colour areas.

Dark colours are often rich in pigments. As darker the colour as smaller should be the part of that colour to avoid your blending ends up with a dark mess.

Blending with the brush

Use a semi wet brush and mix the colours together where the little spaces are. For this start nearly at the end of the first colour (purple). The wet brush will dilute the colour and absorb it, so you’re able to paint with the diluted colour down to the empty space and a bit to the next colour. Work with short strokes. Clean you brush and work now upwards from the second colour (pink) up to the first colour. Repeat this, until you will have a nice mix, where the empty area between both colours was before. Clean your brush and continue the blending process by mixing together the second and last colour (yellow).

For more watery and delicate results use smaller colour swatches with more distance to each other and more water. Continue and fill out all letters this way.

Finish & decorate

Add outlines with a black fine liner and shadows with a grey brush pen. White gel pen highlights will give your lettering a shiny look.

Gel pen blending

Blending with gel pens is a lot of fun. You can do it with the pens itself by painting over the last third of the previous colour and mix in the next colour. A technique I prefer if I work with glitter gel pens. For blending the Gelly Roll moonlight pens, I prefer the water tank brush.

Preparing your lettering

Best thing is, opaque gel pens are very versatile. You can write with them over a light brush pen lettering, but also to fill out block letters or faux calligraphy with them. Opaque gel pens are rich in pigments, this means we can easily overpaint the next colours by accident while blending. To avoid this, the letters of the lettering shouldn’t be too small. This in mind I choose a big YES with enough room for the blends.

Add the gel pen colours

Add at least two different colours to your first letter. I’ve used four colours in my example (dark red, red, neon orange and neon yellow). When using gel pens it’s totally fine to add the colours a bit overlapping.

The gel pens possibly absorb a bit of the other colors. Clean them to avoid bad surprises next time you’ll use them.

Blend with water

In my experience a more wet brush works well (better) when blending gel pens. Start where the colours meet and mix them at this small area well together. The brush will dilute and absorb the strong pigments very fast, so cleaning the brush in between is a must. Repeat this procedure everywhere the colours meet until you have a nice and smooth blend. I admit, it can be a bit tricky first. Practicing with big letters and less colours at the beginning, will help you to master this technique very fast.

Work from one letter to another to finish your blending

Finish & decorate

Shadows and white gel pen highlights give your gel pen blending a nice finish.

Infusing technique

Wonderful effects, fast and easy. Loved by a lot of artists. And best thing of all, you don’t need any special equipment for this.

Basics

You can do the infusing technique in a lot of different ways. Dip your lighter brush pen nip into a bottle with a darker water colour, or add some colour onto a plate, glass or a piece of plastic first and pick up the colour with a bright pen or hold nib to nib, like I did. As bigger the difference between the colours as better the effect will be. No worries about your pens. The nib maybe will stay coloured, but the pen will write again in its original colour as soon as the infused colour is completely gone.

Nib to nib

Hold your pens together, nib to nib, until a good amount of the darker colour infused into the lighter pen. If needed spin the darker pen a bit around to infuse enough of the dark colour.

The same way your brighter pen get infused with the dark colour, the dark pen absorb the bright colour. This way you can use both pens for beautiful blends.

Writing

As soon your brush pen absorbed enough colour, you are ready to start doing a lettering. You will see how the colour will change while writing. If it’s turns back to its original colour too fast, you can repeat the procedure and continue your writing.

Finish & decorate

A nice dropped shadow with a black fine liner fits very well to this kind of lettering.

Now it’s your turn. Have fun and enjoy the relaxing effect of the blending process. What’s your favorite ombre lettering technique? Tell me in the comments!

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Timo Ostrich — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 09:00:21 +0000

A special form of ribbon lettering is the so-called rope lettering. I developed this form of lettering for a maritime hand lettering and was amazed how well it worked out.

So I created this step by step guide which allows you to create fancy rope letterings by yourself!

Using ropes as a blueprint

At the beginning I have to repeat my typical hint when it comes to transferring properties of an object to a lettering: Take a close look at the object in reality! In this case I used a thick rope where you can easily see which lines are characteristic for a rope:

And based on exactly this pattern we will design our hand lettering.

Different degrees of detail

The rope pattern can be abstracted in various stages. Depending on how detailed you want to draw the rope, the approach is slightly different.

For versions 1 and 2, we can define the word with two outlines and insert the pattern afterwards.
Variant 3 forces you to draw the outlines in a curved style as well.

For our tutorial we will use the first version.

The basic form of your rope lettering

The basis for rope lettering is a lettering with thick, consistent line width. After all, the rope is always the same thickness. You should make this preliminary drawing with a pencil. Just write the word in a monoline style.

In the second step, you draw a border around the previously drawn line, always with the same distance between them. Here you can already define where the rope overlaps – and which part is on top or bottom.

Drawing the pattern

First, you now trace all the outer lines with your fineliner so that only the shape of the rope remains. You can then erase the pencil lines completely. Once your basic shape is finished, an almost meditative process follows: we have to apply our rope pattern line by line to our letters. So: music on, head (almost) off and full concentration!

Always attach the elongated “S” in the direction of the rope to create the typical rope pattern. The outer lines are used as a border.

Adding color

By coloring the rope in brown you get a charming maritime look. Your rope lettering font also is a great style for a focus word in longer lettering compositions. If you want to color the rope afterwards, you should use a waterproof fineliner for the outlines and the pattern. Then the lines will not blur (so much).

The detailed version

If you want to make your rope a little more realistic, you can draw it without an outer contour. This is achieved by drawing the pattern with some kind of curve. As with a real rope, this will create areas of varying thickness. With this approach, the rope is created practically line by line. The result has a bit more depth.

Tip: Alternatively, you can create the basic shape with a thick, round marker.

Then you don’t have to add the outlines afterwards either. In my example I used a white POSCA marker on kraft paper.

The white rope on the brown background looks completely different again – but also super chic!

Using natural forms

If you want your rope lettering to be even more realistic, you have to abstract your letters a bit. In doing so, we try to draw the lines really the way you would lay them with a rope.

Corners are reduced and loops are usually larger. It is important to find a balance or a compromise between realism and readability.

If you are unsure about the lines you can use a real rope to test how you can create some letters. Let’s have a look at a more natural rope lettering using the german coinage “meerweh” – which means that you are missing the sea.

Practice using the lettering generator

In the lettering generator you will also find a few fonts in this style. You can use them to get a feeling for rope lettering.

After a few tries you are ready to try it all on your own. Have fun!

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Sandra Brezina — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 13:45:21 +0000

In this tutorial, I am going to show you my step-by-step process of crafting a beautiful typographic illustration which looks as if it is made out of innumerable colorful mosaic tiles. When I first discovered these gorgeous fauxsaics, I even thought that they are all real mosaic artworks. It was a real epiphany to find out that all these superb designs are hand drawn illustrations and digital illusions perfectly created with Illustrator, Photoshop or Procreate.

The name fauxsaic means false or simulated mosaic tile.

To stimulate your inspiration and dive into this style, you should take a look at the website of Nick Misani. He is an Italian designer based in New York and is a master in creating complex and breathtakingly beautiful fauxsaic artworks.

Get inspired

I also detected the website maverickmosaics.com by Bonnie Fitzgerald (founder of Maverick Mosaics) which I find very helpful to study mosaic art in detail and get a better understanding of how to cut your typographic illustration into mosaic tiles.

Keep in mind that your elements should have edgy rectangular, triangular or trapezoidal shapes rather than rounded contours to be recognized as realistic mosaic tiles.

But do not be intimitated: We will come to this step later! And with each mosaic lettering you create, you will be more experienced of how to finetune your illustration.

What you need

A fauxsaic brush set of your choice (I am using this one)
Or Procreate’s default brushes
An iPad with an ApplePencil and the app ProCreate
Some scratch paper and a pencil

Make your sketch

Note: If you prefer to make your very first sketches on your Ipad, proceed like this. I am too traditional to start digitally 🙂

I decide on a script style and draw several sketches on a piece of scratch paper. As soon as I am happy with my result, I refine my monolinear pencil drawing by thickening my letters a little bit. To save time, you can do this thickening process on your ipad. This is just my personal way of elaborating things and bringing them to life non-digitally in front of me.

Your letters will be cut into square-like pieces and surrounded by a second layer of mosaic tiles. For this reason, I pay attention to have enough space between my letters and keep the tracking constant.

I do not care about any patterns or ornaments surrounding my hand lettering in the sketching phase. I will think about these add-ons later.

Proceed in Procreate

You can scan your sketch and insert it into a new Procreate file or you can make a picture of it with your ipad which is the way I do it here. Open a new document. The size is 3000 x 3000 pixels (= 25.4 x 25.4 centimeters) at 300 dpi (RGB color scheme) with a number of 55 layers which is optimal. I prefer square sizes which makes things easier regarding future posts on Instagram.

The resolution of 300 dpi keeps me on the safe side in case I want to print my design.

I insert the photo of my sketch into my file, reduce its opacity and prepare my pencil drawing. I create guidelines helping me to center my design. I place baselines and x-height-lines to refine my hand lettering piece. Last but not least, I turn on a 2-D-grid which I like for consistency reasons.

Create your hand lettering

To create my hand lettering based on my pencil drawing, I use a default monoline brush pen. Then I use this monoline brush pen as eraser and cut the terminals (ends) of my letters to have sharply edged letterforms. As you see in the picture, I center my lettering piece within the document.

Develop your mosaic tiles

Now you can use any sharp brush to cut your letters into pieces! I like to use the brush prepared by Molly Suber Thorpe which is called tile cutter �?sharp edges brush. Currently, we have a white background. But at a later stage, we will color our background with grout.

So keep this fact in mind when you cut your letters into pieces. The distance between all your tiles is the space where the grout (whether greyish or offwhite or as you plan to match your style) will show through.

I like to work in a way I can go back and reverse my decisions. So here, I like to cut my letters in a non-destructive way to give them the shapes of triangles and squares.

The size of my tile cutter-sharp edges brush is around 40%.

I tap on my lettering layer and choose mask. Whenever I paint on this layer mask with my brush in 100% black (= RGB: 0-0-0), my brush functions as an eraser. Whenever I use 100% white (= RGB: 255-255-255) on the layer mask, I can change my decisions and undo my deletions.

And of course I can delete the entire layer mask if necessary.

Take your time. Zoom in and out while you are going through this process. Try to generate a result which resembles a real mosaic artwork.

At present, my hand lettering looks as you see in the picture. My design is undestroyed in black and all the mosaic tiles are on the layer mask above.

Develop your second row of tiles

On a new layer, I outline my black letters with my monoline brush in orange. The color you choose does not matter at this stage. Do not be afraid to overlap your black letters with the orange drawing. We will fix this in a second.

Tap at the new layer and opt for a layer mask. Then go to the layer of your black hand lettering and click select. With your hand lettering selected, go to the new layer mask of your orange border, take a huge monoline brush in black and delete all areas where your orange drawing overlaps your hand lettering.

Note: This is an easy way to get rid of these unpleasant overlappings.

Prepare your mosaic tiles

Every single mosaic tile has to be separated by a certain space where you will see the grout at a later step. For this reason, take a hard brush or the tile cutter-sharp edges brush. Opt for black and work on the new layer mask above the orange border to create your second row of mosaic tiles.

Don’t forget: Do all your deletions with a brush in black on your layer mask! Black is the correct color to erase items. Opt for white, if you want to undo your actions.

First draw an outline along your black letters.
Then, cut the entire orange area into more or less equal parts.
Give your tiles the shapes of squares, triangles and/or trapezoids.
Look at the terminals (ends) of your letters and let them have sharp edges for a realistic result.

In case you want to add any changes to the orange area, you can always go back to the layer itself, take a brush in orange and change your drawing.

Add the grout

Create a new layer below your two existing layers. Choose your grout brush from Molly Suber Thorpe’s brush pack and color your background in black.

Create your own grout brush

However, if you want to create your own brush, just follow my process. Go to Procreate’s default brushes in the sketching section and duplicate the Bonobo chalk brush. Tap on your duplicate to get into Procreate’s brush studio. On the left side, you see the brush menu. Go to the fourth section which is called “Grain”. Click on the top right bar (edit) to get into Procreate’s preset library. There I choose “Recycled Paper” as my new source of grain and confirm my selection.

When you come back to the section “Grain”, play with the adjustments to individualize your own grout brush. You can test the settings of your new brush in the area on the right side. Just paint with your brush there.

Finally, I go to the last item of the menu and rename my new brush. Great job! Fill the background with your new brush in black. Don`t worry! You can change the background color at any time.

Add a mosaic pattern

The brush pack of Molly Suber Thorpe includes various fauxsaic pattern brushes. I choose a creamy white color and use the “Roman-Circles” brush to paint my pattern on a new layer. The pattern layer is above the grout background, but below the two layers that contain my letters.

In case, you like to have a background filled with a regular tile pattern made by yourself, do the following: Go to Procreate’s default texture brushes and choose the grid brush.

Refine your design

This step is very important: Currently, the pattern shines through your black letters and its orange frame. But the thing is: there should be only grout instead. Follow my approach to correct this: Go to the layer of your black letters (= “First Row” layer). Click select, return to the “Roman-Circles” layer and click delete. Your black letters will be cut out and you will see the grout shining through. Next step: Go to the orange (= “Second Row”) layer, click select from the menu window, return to your pattern layer and click delete from the menu window. Your orange areas will be deleted. Your result should look similar to my picture:

Go to your pattern layer and add a layer mask to it. Take your black tile cutter-sharp edges brush (or a default Procreate hard brush) at 40 % (always have the same brush size which depends on the size of your design!) and draw a line around your orange border. By doing so, you let the grout shine through.

Further refining

After this step, you may discover that some tiles look weird. I add a new layer above the layer mask of the pattern layer. I call it “Extra stones”. I add stones which I draw in creamy white with the brush I used before. I also erase elements I do not like from the layer mask which is below. During this manual refining work, I always switch between the new layer and the layer mask below. Step by step I refine my design and zoom in and out to evaluate my actions.

Finally, I put the pattern layer, its layer mask and the new “Extra stones” layer into a group and flatten it (= merging these 3 layers). The result is one single layer which is much easier to work with.

Coloring your design

It’s time to choose some colors for our black letters.

Place a new layer above the layer mask of your layer containing your letters (= first row of tiles).
Convert this layer into a clipping mask by tapping on it and clicking clipping mask from the menu window.
Fill this layer with your color of choice.

Repeat this step for the orange layer (= second row of tiles) and for your pattern layer (= Roman circles pattern for example).

If you are unsure about color combinations, I like to recommend this instagram account. This site is really great to get inspired. Another gorgeous tool to find colors is Adobe Color.

Optional coloring of your pattern tiles

Maybe you like to color your pattern tiles in various shades. To do so, go to your pattern layer, click the selection tool and choose “automatic”. Tap with your apple pencil on a tile and move your apple pencil to the right while staying on the screen. This process increases the selection threshold and you see that the area you want to select is getting bigger (= the selected area gets black). Once you are happy with your selection, tap on other tiles. They all get black once they are selected. Add a new layer above your pattern layer, convert it into a clippling mask and fill your selection with a color of your choice.

Note: Sometimes, the selection does not work correctly or as you wish. Don’t be worried. You can always go back if there are wrong areas selected by tapping with two fingers on your screen.

If you like to add a second color, a third color and so on, you always have to go to your original pattern layer, select your tiles on this layer and then add a new clipping mask above and fill it with your color of choice.

Adding texture for a realistic look

Let’s make a brush to add some texture to our tiles. Add a new layer at the top of all other layers and choose black as your color.

Duplicate the Bonobo chalk brush from your default sketching brushes.
Tap on the brush to get into Procreate’s brush studio.
Go to “Grain”. Click on the top right bar (edit) to get into Procreate’s library. There I choose “Charcoal Vine” as my new source of grain and confirm my selection. Then I edit the adjustments a little bit and confirm these. Don’t forget to label your new brush.

Just tap with this brush on the screen. I reduce the opacity of my layer. I just want to decrease the polished look of my mosaics, but I do not want to darken them too much. By the end of this tutorial, I will change the mode of my texture layer to the blending mode “linear burn”, since this blends very nicely with my tiles.

Adding highlights and shadows

At present, our design looks very flat. We will fix this in the following step. First, I group my three layers with their corresponding layer masks and clipping masks in three separate groups (= lettering group, outline row group, pattern group). Pay attention to leave these three groups as they are! Never delete your originals! Then, I duplicate these three groups. Within each group, I delete every color clipping mask. My duplicated groups just consist of the main layers and their layer masks. I flatten (= merge) these groups to receive three layers: my hand lettering layer, my outline layer and the pattern layer. I merge these three layers to receive ONE single layer. Copy this layer to have two identical layers. Click alphalock. Fill one layer with white color (= highlight) and the other layer with black (= shadow). These two layers lie behind your three groups. Move the black layer a tiny bit to the right and downwards. Move the white layer a tiny bit to the left and upwards. The effect is the following: the white highlight layer and the black shadow layer are visible to some extent on the left and on the right side of your main design (= the three groups) and let your tiles pop from the background. Remove alphalock and click Gaussian blur for your white and black layers to blur the edges a little bit. I reduce the opacity of both layers as well.

If Gaussian blur does not work, check if you really left the alphalock mode.

Let us make our tiles pop from the grout

To reduce the flatness of your tiles, you can follow the following steps: I go to my pattern group and duplicate the main layer (= the bottom layer of this group). The duplicate is now below the main pattern layer. I set its blending mode to “normal”, but reduce its opacity. Now, go to the pattern layer above and play with various blending modes. Choose “darken” or “multiply” for example. Do you notice the magical effect? By reducing the opacity of the layer below, grout is slighly shining through the tile which looks as if the edges are darker. This effect gives a curved shape to the tiles. Let’s proceed with our lettering group. Duplicate the entire group and flatten (= merge) it to receive one single layer. Set this layer which is below the main layer to “normal” and reduce its opacity. Set the blending mode of the layer above (= the black lettering layer) to a blending mode you prefer and play with the degree of opacity. The flatness of your tiles will vanish to some degree. Proceed with your outline group in the same way.

Color variation is the key

Have a look at real mosaics, handmade ones, or very antique artworks.

Even though they have similar shades of colors, some mosaic tiles are darker or lighter or show a slight variance in their shading.

Let us mimic these color deviations to give our artwork this little extra touch to shine. Remember the way you selected all those innumerable tiles to recolor them. You always have to go to the main layer which contains your items, select your tiles manually, jump to the new file and fill this file with your preferred color. First, we go to the pattern layer and randomly choose our elements which we want to darken for example. I choose a midtone of grey. I create a new layer below the top texture layer. Once I have selected all my tiles on the pattern layer, I go to this new layer, fill it with grey and play with various blending modes. I decide to use “color burn”. You may also go to your settings and experiment with various degrees of saturation or brightness/darkness. For our hand lettering and the border, you have to go to the merged layers we have just created before, select your tiles on these two layers (one layer after the other of course), jump to a newly created layer, fill it with white or a bright orange and reduce the opacity. Don’t worry: as soon as you get used to this process, you do these steps automatically. 🙂

If you keep layers of selected tiles darkening or brightening your main design on top of your layers, the advantage is the following. You can easily blind your color clipping masks, create new clipping masks on top, fill them with new colors you prefer and your color variations will be there without the task to select any tiles once again.

The final touches

Adding feet to our fauxsaic

I take a picture of my feet and insert it into my file as my top layer.

I erase all the background from the photo by using a big monoline brush. For smaller parts, I use the technical brush from the sketching brushes and finally an airbrush at very small size. Since my feet are very saturated, I cut them off from the shoes and place them on a separete layer. I use a gradiation curve to reduce the redness. Then, I merge feet and shoes on a single layer again.

I duplicate my “shoes” layer to create a shadow. For the layer below, I click alphalock and fill it with black color. I duplicate my black layer, so the result is: “shoes” layer, black layer 1, black layer 2. Note: If your light source comes from the left upper corner, your shadow is on the right side at the bottom corner. However, this is my personal preference of having a concept of light and shadows in my mind. Undo the alphalock mode for all these layers. Move “black layer 1” a tiny bit to the right and downwards. Reduce the opacity to some degree and set the blending mode to multiply. This is your hard shadow which is near to your body. Move “black layer 2” somewhat farther to the right and downwards. Reduce the opacity to some degree and set the blending mode to multiply. This is your soft shadow which melts with the floor. I like to use Gaussian blur bit for these shadows to reduce their sharpness.

The last two steps

When you stand on a floor, your body casts a shadow on the tiles and your shoes. For this reason, I add a new layer on top of my “shoes” layer, take a soft non-opaque (= reduced opacity) airbrush and draw a very slight shadow above my right shoe in black. Have a look at my picture. The left shoe is brighter than the right one.

And here is our very last step: Create a layer at the top, take a soft non-opaque airbrush at a big size, reduce the opacity and choose white. Tap very, very gently two or three times on your screen at the left side of your design to brighten your artwork. This last step is only a soft nuance of brightness of the left side compared to the right side of your fauxsaic. And that’s it! Yeah, after all this time-consuming work, let us enjoy our gorgeous mosaic lettering artwork.

Final thoughts

Thank you very much for joining me at this tutorial. I hope you had fun and learned a lot. I know that some steps seem to be quite complicated. That’s why I added a lot of pictures to visualize my step-to-step guidelines and present to you my structure of layers. However, if you find it easier to follow along a video tutorial, I recommend the class of Molly Suber Thorpe (on the platform Skillshare) and the video of Abbie Nurse on You Tube. For me, the process of cutting my hand lettering into innumerable mosaic tiles is very relaxing and meditative. And in the end, you are rewarded with a very stunning artwork which surprises a lot of people since it looks so real 🙂

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Ilona Regnery — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 07:47:19 +0000

Galaxy letterings are fascinating and real eye catchers. These letterings are great to stand alone
for one-word messages but are also perfect for focusing on particular words in longer
quotes.

I will show you the galaxy lettering technique with a brush pen. But if you prefer to write block
letters or fake calligraphy, no worries. The blending technique is the same �?simply start with
step 3.

What you need

Watercolor paper (smooth)
Brush pens: light grey, middle grey, light blue or turquoise, pink, purple and dark blue
Gel pens white in different sizes, at least one in medium size
Watercolor brush or water tank brush fine
Paper towel
Fineliner black

For this tutorial we will use brush pens to paint our galaxy. If you own high quality watercolor paints and brushes may use them instead of brush pens. You should try both techniques sooner or later.

The basic brush lettering

In this tutorial we will use a brush lettering to start from. Choose a light grey brush pen first. Use the word “Galaxy�?like I did or any other word of your choice to add a galaxy blending.

If needed write a pencil sketch first and erase all lines after the ink is completely dried.

You will get the best results and a nice big area for the blends, if you use a brush pen with a medium or big nib.

Add colors and blend them together

Use the colors pink and light blue (or light turquoise) and add swatches of them to all parts
of the first letter. You don’t need to follow a pattern nor does it have to look like my example.

That’s the fun part of this technique and makes every piece unique. Simply fill out
the major part with a mix of light blue and pink. Add only few small strokes of purple and
dark blue in between.

These darker colors are rich in pigments, so small strokes are totally enough.

Blend the colors together using a fine semi wet watercolor brush. Start from bright to dark. Allow the darker colors to infuse into the bright areas, if needed add some more water. Blend all colors well together.

Clean the brush between every blending area will help you keeping your pinkish and blue areas bright.

Does an area turns out very dark, you can fix this issue easily. Add a bit water to this area and remove the pigments with a piece of paper towel, a cotton bud or a dry brush. If your blends look too bright, add carefully a bit of dark blue or purple to a few edges and blend in smoothly. Repeat until you’re happy with the result.

Continue with the next letter of the word. Add the colour swatches first and blend them together. Where letters are connected, blend the colours into the following letter. This will give them a harmonic look.

Doing this step letter by letter will help you to elute the pigments easily out of the paper and getting nice blends.

Add outlines

After all colours are dried completely, use a black fine-liner and add outlines to your lettering. This give your letters a smooth look and helps to fix possible little blending accidents at the edges. If you like, you can also add a thicker black line at the shadow side.

Add the milky way and stars

Use a white gel pen and add small wavy lines to the letters. Take your semi wet brush and
spread the added white ink. With small stippling moves you will get a nice cloudy look.

If the result is too dark yet, add a bit more of the white gel ink and repeat this step.

After all letters got a small milky part, Let the ink dried completely.

Now add small and bigger dots, using white gel pens in different sizes. Start with the smallest
size, I’ve used a 05. Add many little dots to your letters. Especially to the edges of the milky
way, inside and over the complete lettering.

Add now with the next size (08) only a few stars with enough distance to each other. Finally add only here and there a big dot with the biggest size (10). The smaller the gel pen size the more you can add little stars. Of course you can do this step with only one size too. In this case try to work with different pressure.

White gel pens can pick up the colors of your blends. Clean them between using.

Add the flares

Flares give this kind of blending a more galactical look. Use a white gel pen and paint small
crosses with long strokes close to the edges of your letters. If you like, you can add some
very small and short strokes to the center of the crosses too.

It’s really fun to add them, but easily it can become too much. Try to add no more than 1-2 to small and up to 3-4 to capital letters.

The flares come out more visible and intense if you add medium grey shadows to your lettering first.

And that’s it! You just created your first galaxy lettering. The effect is really stunning, isn’t it?!

Now it’s your turn. Keep on practising and your letterings will become better with every single piece you will create.

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Ruth Lange — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 09:49:18 +0000

What you need

For this project you will need:

Some black cardstock
A white colouring pencil or chalk
A pencil sharpener, an eraser, a pencil and a frame (optional).

Start by cutting your cardstock to your desired landscape size (to fit your frame e.g.). Now you are ready to start chalk lettering!

Sketch out your layout

Before you start drawing the design in white, it is best to draw your layout using a pencil. These lines can be erased later. Start in the center and draw three long boxes for the lettering (the middle one being slightly longer than the upper and lower box). Then add some circles on either side of the boxes where you want to place your pumpkins. Let these vary in size for more visual interest.

Sketch out your lettering

Still using the pencil, sketch out your lettering:

“happy�?(upper box)
“PUMPKIN�?(middle box)
“season�?(lower box).

Both “happy�?and “season�?are lettered in cursive and lower-case letters, whereas “PUMPKIN�?is written in bouncing upper-case letters.

White, white or white

If you have a few different white pencils, try them out on the back side of the card stock to see which pencil or chalk has the brightest colour.

The great thing about using a white colouring pencil, in contrast to chalk, is that it doesn’t smudge as much.

Let’s start lettering

Now the fun begins! Use your white pencil to follow your pencil sketch with crisp clean white lines. Add a parallel line to the downstrokes to create faux-lettering. Don’t worry if some lines are slightly thicker than others. We’ll take care of little flaws later.

The next word is a little simpler to draw. The line furthest to the left is drawn as a thicker rectangle, whereas the rest is a simple thin line. The exception to this is the letter “N�? It has its thick line in the middle. It looks better that way.

Draw the word “season�?in the same style as “happy�? Feel free to add some swirls at the beginning and end-letters of these two words.

Outline the pumpkins

Now we move on to the pumpkins! With little pressure, trace the shape of each of your pumpkins. These should vary a bit and not look too circular.

Since some of the lettering is overlapping the pumpkins, try to give those areas some space.

Giving the pumpkins shape

The pumpkins may vary in size and shape, but are all constructed in the same way: Draw an ellipse in the center of the pumpkin and then continue to draw two or three ellipses to either side of the center. Make these shapes look like they are overlapping.

Add a thick stem the top pumpkins, as well as some little rounded lines indicating depth to the upper pumpkin.

Decorate your lettering

Next, we want to decorate the lettering. Using pressure, thicken up the outlines of the lettering a bit and start shading the inside of the thick downstrokes of the first word. Let the white fade out into the upper half of the letters.

Since the word “season�?is written in the same style as “happy�? it makes sense to use the same type of decoration.

Fill in these letters with white as well, thinning out the color towards the top.

To give some more variety to the lettering, fill in the thick strokes of “pumpkin�?completely with white.

Add some shadow lines

Another way of decorating lettering is to give it a simple shadow line.

This makes the letters pop and gives them some depth (for more tricks like this take a look at the 3d lettering techniques).

Draw thin lines to the right-hand side and bottom of each of the lines of each letter.

Shading the pumpkins

Now it’s time to shade the pumpkins. In order to make them more realistic, they need highlight and shadow areas. Start coloring in the center ellipse, leaving some of the black in the center untouched.

Color the other parts of the pumpkin thinker on the outside and more faded toward the inside of the pumpkin, leaving some black in between the ellipses.

Ground the pumpkins

Add a shadow beneath the bottom pumpkin, which fades toward the bottom of the page. This grounds them and prevents the pumpkins from looking like they are floating. Now would also be a great time to carefully erase any pencil lines that are still visible.

Final touches

Adding some smudges of real chalk here and there makes your piece look more like chalk art. So, draw some chalk on a leftover piece of paper, rub your fingers in it and using circular motion, rub the chalk into your drawing here and there.

Finally your chalk letterings get’s an awesome look and is ready to be shared on social media. 😉

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Sandra Brezina — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 12:04:00 +0000

In this tutorial, I am going to present to you a variety of projects where I decorate glass objects and things like mirrors and a window with hand lettering.

Moving beyond paper and materializing your hand lettering skills on objects bigger than sizes of DIN A4 or A3 is challenging and at the same time very cool. Large-scale letterings are just striking. Don’t you think so, too?

My preferred supplies in general

When I do hand letterings on objects in my flat, I usually do not want my creations to stay forever.

For this reason, I use chalk markers or water-based acrylic paint markers (Uni-Posca) which are semi-permanent.

Chalk markers of the brand Bistro are great for sketching and roughly outlining your work, but they can be easily smudged and removed from glass. If you touch the glass by accident, the chalk will get off the surface. However, if you want to change your lettering on a frequent basis, this brand is just perfect. Regarding the various chalk markers shown in the photo, I prefer Uni Chalk and Zig Posterman chalk markers. The ones of Zig Posterman (produced by Kuretake) are waterproof when dry. The Zig Posterman wet-wipe version is erasable with a wet cloth.

If you want to generate long lasting lettering artworks on glass, choose oil-based markers, such as the ones of Sharpie.

The Sakura Pen Touch and the DecoColor paint pens (the latter is produced by Marvy Uchida) are oil-based as well and they are good tools to write on small glass projects.

Hand lettering on a mirror

Let us start with a small size to get used to the right choice of markers. Be inspired by my approach to turn a mirror into a charming and personalized artwork.

What you need

Pen-Touch by Sakura (fine point or medium size) �?approach 2
Posca paint marker (brush pen and/or bullet point) �?approach 1
Stabilo all-white (aquarellable pencil)*
Staedtler lumocolor non-permanent pencil*
Scratch paper and a black piece of paper (or a transparent foil)
Paper towel and/or microfibre cloth
A cotton swab
Thin rubber gloves

Note: The two white pencils are perfect tools to sketch out your idea on glass. You can easily remove them with a dry or slightly wet cotton swab. More facts: Mistakes made with acrylic paint can be removed with a dry cotton swab. Oil-based markers can be wiped off with nail polish remover containing acetone.

Ensure that your mirror is totally free of dust and grease. I recommend to use thin rubber gloves throughout the entire process to avoid to leave any fingerprints on the glass.

Let’s dive in!

Approach 1: Mirror, mirror on the wall

Sketch out your lettering design

Since my mirror is a very fancy and antique type of object, I decide to start my design with floral elements. You can draw your illustrations directly on your mirror by using my recommended white pencils. If you hesitate to start without guidelines, this trick is for you! I sketch out my flower with a pencil on paper first. Then I turn my drawing and trace over my pencil lines at the backside with my white pencil. It is sufficient to redraw just the contours. Don’t waste time with any details. We will fix this directly with the marker. Put some scratch paper below your paper to avoid to copy your drawing onto your desk. 😉

Copy your drawing to the mirror

Put on your gloves now. Place your sketch on the mirror as preferred and follow your original pencil lines with a pencil once again. By doing so, you copy very faint white lines on your mirror. These lines are just a slight hint, but this is better than having no guidelines at all. Take all your time and be careful. As long as you are in the sketching phase, all marks can be removed with a dry or slightly wet cotton swab or microfibre tissue.

My tip: Writing on a mirror for the first time, may be confusing and difficult because of the specific characteristics of this object. Try to concentrate on the lines in front of you and do not look at them from a side angle.

Approach 1: If you are happy with your line work, use the Posca acrylic paint marker (0.7 mm pin type) to cover as precisely as possible your white sketch lines. Add all details to your design.

Add your hand lettering to the mirror

Proceed with your hand lettering and repeat the process as before.

Keep in mind: Acrylic paint dries fast. Draw your hand lettering and if you love faux calligraphy like I do, create the thick strokes as you go along. As soon as the paint has dried, thickening your strokes will result in scratches and unpleasant clumps on dried areas.

If you need to apply thicker lines or additional paint on dried areas, make tiny dots.

If there are any sketch marks left, use a dry or slightly wet cotton swab to remove them. But proceed with care. Of course you can softly touch your lettering as soon as the paint is dry. But note: any interactions such as rubbing above the paint with a tissue or cotton swab may scratch the acrylic surface. Lean back and enjoy your hand-crafted mirror decorated with letters!

Approach 2: Hand lettering on a mirror

Draw your sketch directly on the object

Put on your gloves. This time, we sketch out our design directly on the mirror with our white pencil.

Make up your idea first to avoid to make too many corrections.

Take your oil-based marker and cover the white lines with paint.

The advantage of oil-based markers is great: I draw my monolinear letters first. Then I thicken my strokes to generate my faux calligraphy style.

I work quickly, but dried paint is not that problematic as compared to acrylic paint. You can work on it and there are no clumps or scratches.

To give my lettering a further boost, I take another oil-based marker and decorate my letters with tiny gold dots.

You can even take a microfibre cloth and clean your mirror very gently and carefully. Now your beautiful mirror piece is ready to be hung 🙂

�?or gift wrapped.

Approach 3: Hand lettering on a glass door

Develop your sketches on paper

I am going to decorate the blue glass door of my kitchen cabinet. It has a size of 50 x 67 centimeters. I develop my sketch in DIN A4 (portrait format) to have a rough concept.

What you need

Chalk markers*
Rubber gloves
Wet cloth or microfibre cloth or paper tissue or household cleaning eraser
Cotton swabs
Painter’s tape
Some kind of glass to test the flow behaviour of your chalk marker
Stabilo aquarellable pencil or Staedtler lumocolor non-permanent pencil

*Please read my tips on chalk markers and their levels of permanence in the introduction.

Working on big glass objects

Put on your gloves and ensure that your object is free of dust and grease. First, I make a grid with use of a painter’s tape. I do this just by eyeballing with the goal of leaving about 1 centimeter around my future lettering. Then I attach my sketch near to my working place and fix more painter’s tape wherever I need guidelines for my letters. Since my hand lettering is arranged aslant, I can adjust the tapes without use of a spirit level.

I redraw my sketch directly on the glass door with a white pencil. I focus on each letter and correct unpleasant lines with a dry cotton swab. Take your time and work on this drawing until you have a result you are totally happy with.

Next step: I take my Uni chalk marker, test its flow behaviour and start to cover my white lines. Chalk markers do not leave a homogeneous opaque coverage. But their typical chalk-like appearance is very charming.

My tip: If you love faux calligraphy, you have to work quickly to fill in your thick strokes. Create your thicker strokes as you go. If the paint dries, a double layer may scratch your paint. Try to create quick feather-like strokes.

Keep in mind: If you touch and smudge wet paint, wait until it is dried and remove your mistakes with a cotton swab.

Stippling is a nice technique to fill in shapes and produce an interesting texture.

Just one final step

Finally, step back and take a close look at your lettering. Is there any space that needs some filling with lovely details? Do you have to make any adjustments?

Illustrations are nice add-ons to your lettering.

Yeah, your project with extraordinary hand lettering on a big glass object is completed! Be proud of your work.

Approach 4: Reverse hand lettering on a window

Develop your sketches on paper

For this project, we will move to a regular double glazed window and decorate it with a beautiful lettering inspired by the summer season.

Measure your window first. I elaborate small rough sketches and enlarge my final lettering design by eyeballing all details. Then, I redraw just my lettering on tracing paper according to the required size. My window measures 77 x 100 centimeters.

What you need

Sakura Pen-touch or acrylic markers or chalk markers*
Rubber gloves
Microfibre cloth or paper tissue
Cotton swabs saturated with nail polish remover containing acetone
Painter’s tape
Some kind of glass to test the flow behaviour of your chalk marker
Tracing paper

*Please read my tips and hints on markers in the introduction. Since I write on the outside, I use an oil-based marker to protect my design against the elements, such as rain and hail. I want to see my correct design in my flat.

For this reason, I will be executing my hand lettering back-to-front on the outside pane of the window.

But keep in mind: if you do letterings for shopping windows, you will always draw your design back-to-front on the inside pane within the shop to protect your artwork against bad weather, dirt and damage. Your artwork is correctly seen from the outside of the shop.

Don’t forget: Put on your gloves. First, I draw my floral elements without using any guidelines. I take my oil-based marker and start to draw on the outside of the window.

I attach the tracing paper on the inside of the window �?/p>

�?and have the design back-to-front on the outside pane where I start to redraw my hand lettering. For this process, I switch to acrylic markers. The oil-based markers are great, but it is not that easy to remove mistakes. Soaking cotton swabs with acetone is quite time-consuming.

Due to the window’s double glazing, you may be confused because of the slightly distorted lines. Never look at your letters from a side angle.

Focus on each letter directly from the front and keep the same view during the entire process!

Always draw from left to right to avoid to touch and smudge wet paint.

Once the painting is complete, remove the sketch and enjoy this magical moment.

This is how the letterings looks like at night:

And this is how it looks at daytime:

Congratulations! You have done an amazing job 🙂

If you hesitate

Maybe you hesitate to start on a large format like your window. If this is the case, grab a glass jar from your kitchen and prove your lettering skills on it to turn it into a personal piece with an amazing touch.

Final words

I hope you enjoyed reading this tutorial and learning my tricks and personal ways of converting mirrors, windows and larger glass objects into unique hand lettered pieces of art. Have fun and be inspired to let your hand lettering shine on glass. Stay amazing!

The post How to create charming hand lettering projects on glass appeared first on goodjerseysmall.com.

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Timo Ostrich — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 14:37:48 +0000

Hand letterings with 3D effects practically jump at the viewer. Your lettering comes to life! There is a whole range of brilliant techniques to get depth into your letterings. In this article I will show you them. Almost all of them. From easy to difficult!

Overview

You want to achieve a certain result but you dont want to read everything? By clicking on the picture you will get to the corresponding section.

The feeling of depth To create three-dimensional effects, depth or different brightness levels (light and shadow) are always required. This works both in abstracted form and in harmonious combination. In the following I will go through simple, abstracted 3D techniques with you, but also realistic perspectives.
Ideally you should grab a few pens and join in right now!

One-sided contour
A simple and quick way to create a haptic impression is to use a one-sided contour. If you add a contour line to each letter with a little distance between them, your hand letterings will inevitably have some depth.
Here it is especially important to always set the line according to the same principle.
In other words: always left, always left and down, always right and up and so on.
Only the uniformity creates a three-dimensional effect. Of course you can vary the contour as you like and play with distance and position:

To practice the one-sided contour, I have also integrated a suitable font into the lettering generator!

Drop Shadows
Light and shadow ensure that flat objects suddenly acquire depth. In fact, a simple drop shadow is sufficient to emphasize a lettering.
Hard Drop Shadow
A hard drop shadow corresponds in its shape and size exactly to the original lettering. Imagine that you color your lettering completely black and then push it aside a bit. This is your drop shadow!
You can also use the contour lines as a basis for the drop shadow, as in the 3D technique “one-sided contour”. Once the lines have been drawn, you only need to complete the shape and then fill it with a dark color.

Soft drop shadow
In principle this shadow corresponds to the hard cast shadow. With the difference that it should be displayed a little more realistically. For this, the shadow must be soft and diffuse. You can create such a shadow with a fine pencil hatching, for example.
With digital lettering, the effect can be implemented much more easily with the help of a smooth blur.

Isometry
Isometry is a simple form of three-dimensional representation. There is no foreshortening in perspective as there would be in reality. Instead, the lengths of individual strokes remain the same even in depth.
That sounds complicated for now. But if we use isometry, you’ll quickly understand the principle. Especially with simple objects you can achieve strong 3D effects with the help of isometry. As always, a flat lettering serves as a basis. To turn it into a 3D lettering, only three steps are necessary:
Draw an offset version of your hand letterings behind the original lettering. Similar to the contour line and the hard drop shadows. The shape will be exactly like the shape of your lettering.
Now connect the edges together. Always use parallel lines.
Finally, fill the area with the same color.

Your lettering has now been given a third dimension: The depth (z-axis)!
You can also reverse the procedure by drawing a parallel line of equal length at each corner and then connecting the ends according to the shape of the letters.
If you don’t color the surface completely, but take an imaginary light source into account, you can enhance the effect even more.
To do this, imagine that a little light shines on your lettering from the side (for example from the right). All surfaces that point to the right should be painted a little brighter. The areas that are averse to light remain completely in shadow. That looks really haptic, doesn’t it?
Central Perspective
With the central perspective we create a much more realistic look by working with a vanishing point. All the lines that go into the depth of the image will converge on the same vanishing point. This principle can also be applied to letters in a wonderful way. First you draw the word you want to represent in 3D.
The second step is to think of a vanishing point. The position of the vanishing point has a fundamental influence on the later appearance of your lettering!
Once the vanishing point is fixed, draw a line from all corners and edges (sometimes you have to work with tangents) to your vanishing point. It is best to use a pencil for this.
As you can see, your word is already three-dimensional. In the last step, you shorten the lines that go deeper. This is how you decide how deep your word really is. To do this, repeat the outline of your letters between the alignment lines.
If you now erase the superfluous lines, you have a brilliant 3D hand lettering in a central perspective.
By adding light and shadow again, the effect is further enhanced. If you draw the shading parallel to the alignment lines, you will also add a sense of depth.
The principle also works with curved letters and brush letterings. However, this makes the process somewhat more complex.
And all this with only one vanishing point! In an complex lettering, the central perspective can also have this effect:

Two-Point Perspective
With the two-point perspective you have the possibility to make your lettering even more three-dimensional. For example, you can rotate the letters slightly in space.
For the step-by-step construction of your lettering you need a horizon and two vanishing points that lie on the horizon.
For construction and clarification I always draw these lines for the time being. But later we erase these guides again.
With a vertical line you now define a corner of your word. I want my “wow” to be diagonally across the room and end on the right half of my sheet. The height of the line defines how high your word will be later.
Now draw two vanishing lines from the left vanishing point, through the ends of the previously set line.
With a second, vertical line you define next the beginning of your word. The line is limited by the vanishing lines. With this line you now create an area for the front of the word.

The vertical lines of your letters remain parallel to each other in this perspective. Therefore, letters like the “H”, an “L” or a “T” are relatively easy to place.
The “wow” contains slants and curves, so the front shape needs some practice. Tip: To construct equal distances towards the vanishing point, divide your area (bounded by the two vertical lines and the two vanishing lines) using a diagonal. Where the diagonal intersects the centre of the vertical (here, exactly on the horizon) is the centre of the square in perspective. If you repeat this step several times with the new squares, you will get more vertical lines that will help you to draw the letters correctly.
With (or without) these guides you can now carefully draw the shapes of your letters. You will have to do a lot of erasing here. ????
Similar to the central perspective, in the next step you draw alignment lines from all corners and edges. This time to the second vanishing point, on the right side. These lines give the depth of our word.
Now you repeat the shape of your letters in the depth of the room – depending on how deep your word should be. Since most lines are hidden, I only had to repeat one line of the “w”.
Now you use the parts of the vanishing lines to the right vanishing point and drag them so that the complete, three-dimensional form of your word is created.
If we now remove all guides, you will see the finished word in the two-point perspective.
What now follows is clear: With additional shading and lighting, we will once again significantly enhance the 3D effect!
In the two-point perspective you can also place your word differently. By placing it completely below or above the horizon, you create additional space on or below your letters.
This way you will see three different sides of your lettering for the first time. Finally, an elaborated example of me for the two-point perspective:

Three-point perspective
With the three-point perspective, as the name suggests, we have a third vanishing point. This allows us to construct impressive perspectives. We completely dispense with parallel lines and construct all edges using three vanishing points.
Would you like to see a complete guide to the three-point perspective here? Then leave a comment on this page. If there is enough interest, I will add this section to the 3D Lettering tutorial.

Embossing
Letters cannot be emphasized only by depth and shading under the word. You can also create a 3D effect by using a relief. The classic Photoshop effect is called “Bevel and Emboss” and provides exactly this effect. At first the letter is only refined within its basic form.
So you start again by drawing your word using block letters (you can find a suitable alphabet here).
For our embossing we decide that we let the letters taper in the middle. Like a diamond cut. To do this, you draw a line in your block letters (perhaps you have constructed it with such a line). The next step is to connect the vertices with the ends of the inner lines. More areas are created! For some letters (for example the “O”) there are no corners. Therefore there is no visible edge. So we have to work out the raised appearance by the following shading.
Imagine the light coming from the top left of your paper. Accordingly, the embossing gets a simple shadow at the bottom and right.
Inner 3D
What works on the outside, works on the inside. In other words, you can also create a feeling of depth by cutting the shapes of your letters into the paper. The 3D techniques already described serve as a basis. The easiest way to demonstrate the principle is the isometric approach. The basis is again your block letters. There you add a small line at each edge.
The rule: The lines are only visible within your letter shape, all of them are the same length and parallel to each other.
In the second step, you use the ends of the lines to repeat the shape of your letters. Also always only within the letters.
At the end you add, as always, appropriate shading. And suddenly it looks like you can see inside the paper! A brilliant effect.
Technical help
The construction of 3D letters is a lot of fun, but also requires maximum concentration! Careless mistakes are quickly made and the whole perspective is ruined. Accordingly, 3D Lettering can also cause headaches. ???? The process can be made a bit more pleasant with a little technical help.
Graphic programs
Many graphics programs offer support in the construction of perspective drawings. For example, by automatically setting vanishing points and auxiliary lines. You can also undo your steps and use the power of layers. For hand letterings the App ProCreate with its drawing aids is perfectly suitable. You still have to construct everything yourself – but you get effective guides at hand! In my Digital Lettering course I will show you how to use these guides correctly.
3D and CAD Software
With the help of 3D and CAD software you have the possibility to distribute letters in the room as you wish. The software takes over any perspective distortion for you, so that you can create a template for your lettering at the end. If you draw directly on this template, you can create almost impossible perspectives that are hardly possible on paper.
Creatively combine
Of course, the individual techniques do not stand alone. It will be exciting to combine the different possibilities. This is how great works of art with detailed 3D letterings are created! And now it’s your turn: Dive into the world of three-dimensional letters and let your head smoke! ????

The post 3D Lettering: Eight awesome techniques at a glance appeared first on goodjerseysmall.com.