Tag: lettering

Letters by Lydia: Lettering Relaxation

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Welcome back from break everyone (or, at least, Michigan students)!

I’ve been missing spring break already and feeling kind of gray getting back into school, and one of my favorite things to do when I’m feeling a bit down (surprise, surprise) is handlettering! I like to get cozy in a blanket, put on a mindless tv show, and do some experimental lettering of various words I hear while watching my show.  It’s a really relaxing way to just kind of shut off my brain, and it also gives me the space to make art without worrying how it looks, because it’s just for me.

Because of that, I like to play around with new techniques and try things that might end up looking a bit wonky.  Today I took pictures of my process with one of the words I did.

I started out with just writing a word, nothing fancy.  This is typically how I start out, just a bare bones word to build off of.

Then I’ll add the first detail–in this case, a shadow or 3D effect.

From there I start to have fun with it.  In this specific piece, I picked the original green color randomly, and then kind of took off with the green theme and thought it would be cool to try doing some sort of leaf effect, and I honestly (no pun intended) love how it ended up looking.

Once I’m done messing around, I’ll take a step back and see if there’s anything else I can think of that might tie the piece together.  Here, I really liked the leaf effect, but I felt like the word itself got lost and needed something to help differentiate it from the background.  So I added a classic black outline–you can never go wrong with one of those.

And that’s it!  After that I did a few more words while finishing up my show, but I forgot to grab pictures of those.  Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as it’s fun and relaxing 🙂

I hope you enjoyed getting a glimpse of how I use art to relax and focus on the process!  Are there forms of art that you find particularly relaxing or restorative after a hard day?

Letters by Lydia: Faux Calligraphy

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Welcome back to another post! Today is all about faux calligraphy, so let’s start by explaining what that even is.

Faux calligraphy got its name by, as you might have guessed, being a sort of “fake” form of calligraphy.  Where traditional calligraphy uses a brush pen to get those thin upstrokes and thin downstrokes, faux calligraphy allows you to get the same technique with a regular old pen (or, really, any sort of pencil, marker, etc that creates a standard line).

In this example, the top version is regular calligraphy with a brush pen, while the bottom version is faux calligraphy using a marker with a bullet tip.

So how does this work? It’s actually pretty simple, which is why a lot of people, especially beginners, prefer it over traditional calligraphy.  A lot of beginners also use it as a gateway into traditional calligraphy, because it uses the same principles without requiring the technique involved in using a brush pen.

To start, you can just write whatever word/letter/phrase you have in mind.  This can be in cursive, or in print, whatever you prefer!  The next step is the key: you need to identify all the downstrokes. In the example below, I showed where the downstrokes are on the cursive letter “a”, but if you want a more comprehensive guide, I have a few other blog posts about handlettering basics that should help you out!  Once you identify where all the downstrokes are, you simply make those lines thicker, whether by drawing an outline and filling it in like I did, or by just adding a few extra lines around it.

Find the downstrokes, outline them, and fill them in 🙂
Here’s a little alphabet guide to help if you’re struggling with the downstrokes, too

Once you’ve got the basics down, this another style where there are a lot of fun variations to play around with. I included some of my favorites below, to show that you can do this with cursive or print, vary the thickness of the downstrokes, bring in color, etc. With the “lazy” and “hard” styles, the lazy one is just what you’ve been doing already (it isn’t lazy, it’s just easier than the hard version). The “hard” version is where you kind of map the downstrokes out in your mind ahead of time so that the lines don’t intersect and downstrokes remain solid white. This takes some practice to get the spacing right, which is why I called it the hard version, but it’s definitely not impossible and can be really fun to practice!

I hope you enjoy trying out a new style, or at least learning about it, and for all the umich students out there, have a great spring break!

Letters by Lydia: Valentine’s Day <3

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Hey y’all! Since Valentine’s Day is coming up, I thought it’d be fun to give some ideas for anyone looking to make valentines for their loved ones.  I know a lot of people don’t like Valentine’s day because it can be really tough when you’re single, but I’ve always loved it because I have so much fun making cute little valentine’s for all my friends!  It’s like a crafter’s dream holiday, getting to sit down with washi tape, fun paper, stickers, pens, and make cards for the people you love.

Anyway, here are some different styles for lettering I thought fit the Valentine’s aesthetic:

A fun ribbon font always looks good, and you can’t go wrong with doing conversation hearts! For the last one, I just thought it’d be cute to do something a little more structured but still fun and with lots of red and pink.  I’m always happy to do tutorials on different types of lettering like this too, if anyone is ever interested 🙂

As for general guidelines for making Valentine’s cards, I honestly feel like you can never overdo it.  I love to go all out with glitter, lace, bright colors, stickers, etc.  Even if you don’t want to go that route, basics like pastels, hearts, red and pink, and all that cute stuff never fails.  I also love doing puns (Love you a waffle lot, olive you, etc etc), cute little drawings, and inside jokes because that makes the cards more personal and heartfelt.  As for little drawings and extra things to add, you can always do candy, hearts, bows, flowers, roses, and literally anything you think the recipient would like 🙂 Here’s a few little doodles I came up with:

I hope this made you excited to make some cards for your loved ones if you’re so inclined! Either way, have a great week and enjoy your Valentine’s Day next week! <3

Letters by Lydia: Sometimes it Doesn’t Work

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Welcome back to Letters by Lydia! Hopefully everyone was able to stay safe and warm in the snow, or maybe even go out and build a snowman 🙂

Today I want to talk about all the times–and trust me, there are many–that lettering ideas and techniques don’t work out.  A lot of times in the art community, especially on social media, we only see the work that people are super proud of: work that’s polished, high quality, creative, unique, and so on. Because of this, it can be really easy to fall into the trap of feeling like your work isn’t good enough, or that everyone else is much more talented. That said, I have noticed lately that people on social media seem to be getting a little more vocal about the importance of the process. Bad art is just as important as good art, because it helps you learn and grow as an artist. If your art was perfect all the time, there would be no room for experimentation, doodling, mistakes, and most importantly, fun!

I’m sure none of this is news to most of you, but I wanted to share an example of some lettering I did today that I couldn’t quite figure out. I wanted to try a new lettering style where it looks like letters someone wrote with their finger in the snow, which ended up being much harder than I anticipated.

After consulting an overwhelming number of google images, my first attempt landed me with this:

When I first did this, I wasn’t in love with, but with some distance I can honestly say this might’ve been my best attempt.  I chalk it up to beginner’s luck, though, because I could not for the life of me produce this kind of style again.  In hindsight, I think the key was only using two colors, because this was the only attempt where I limited my color palette that much.

My next attempt I’m actually super proud of and think looks pretty realistic. The issue? It took forever, so it didn’t feel reasonable to try and do a whole word in this style. My original idea was also to have this as a type of style, not a kind of one-time piece that would be difficult to recreate.  In any case, this is what I ended up with here:

After this, I started trying whole words, and played around with using the colors in different ways, different textures, and different thicknesses.  I don’t dislike any of these, but I don’t think any of them read quite as I wanted them to–they look like pretty snow-themed pieces, but not necessarily like someone was writing in the snow, unless you’re looking at them with that style in mind.

Of course, in this example of things not working out, I still generally liked the end results, they just weren’t what I had in mind originally.  That said, I can’t tell you the number of times I try things that end up looking absolutely terrible, and I can definitely start sharing that stuff too! But I thought it was important to show that there’s also this middle ground where the work you produce is still good, it just doesn’t align with the vision you had, because this also allows for artistic experimentation and learning new styles and techniques.

This is a style I plan to experiment with a bit more and see if it’s something I can refine, but even if it isn’t, I had fun playing around with something new!

I hope you enjoyed reading, and stay safe out there in the snow!

Letters by Lydia: Cursive vs Calligraphy vs …?

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Happy Wednesday, y’all!

Today we’re gonna take a bit of a deep dive into the terminology for different types of lettering.  Overall, it really doesn’t matter, but I would say the most common question when it comes to lettering is “isn’t it just cursive?”  If you don’t know the difference either, no worries!  Hopefully this clears things up 🙂

So what’s cursive? I’m sure most of you are aware of what cursive actually is, but things probably get a little foggy in terms of how it differs from other forms of lettering. The main difference is that cursive isn’t really a form of art and instead a style of writing. Cursive is supposed to be a way of writing that’s more efficient than regular writing because your pen never has to leave the page–in other words, it’s practical and more of a fancy-looking shortcut than anything.  It’s also much more rigid in terms of style and rules; there’s a cursive alphabet that, aside from a few stylistic variations, is pretty set in stone.

Lettering (synonymous with handlettering), on the other hand, is an umbrella term for all sorts of word art. Calligraphy, which falls under the lettering category, is probably the most similar to cursive.  There’s a lot of different kinds of calligraphy, but it’s typically based loosely on cursive, and is centered on the idea of using strokes (you can check out my post on upstrokes and downstrokes to learn more about that!).  Unlike cursive, calligraphy is much more flexible and can involve a lot of experimentation or style variation, which in my opinion makes it a lot more fun.  You can see my version of a calligraphy alphabet below, and then I also included potential variations of uppercase letters (A) and lowercase letters (I chose “r” because it has a lot of fun options).  Some people also refer to this as modern calligraphy, because calligraphy can also refer to the sort of gothic style that would use a pen and ink or some sort of pen with a nib.

Lettering in general essentially just means “drawing letters” in an artistic way.  This means that instead of adhering to strict rules like cursive, or requiring the use of strokes like calligraphy, lettering can be any creative depiction of letters.  For example, bubble letters would fall under the lettering category, because instead of using lines and strokes to create a letter, you’re using shapes.

There are pretty much limitless other categories that fall under the umbrella of lettering, but some other common ones include brushlettering, which I’ve talked a lot about, faux calligraphy, serif and sans serif, gothic, and tons of other ones.  Hopefully that helps clear up any confusion, but feel free to leave any other questions in the comments!

Have a lovely rest of the week everyone 🙂

Letters by Lydia: Karin Brushmarker Pro

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Happy Wednesday everyone! Today we’re taking a look at what are probably my favorite pens of all time: the Karin Brushmarker Pro.

These are notorious in the handlettering community for being some of the best brush pens out there.  Unfortunately, they have the price to match, but we’ll get into that later.

Karin is a Polish company that, as far as I know, literally only makes brushpens.  They have three different types, the decobrush, decobrush metallic, and the brushmarker pro.  The two types of decobrush are opaque and good for dark surfaces, and the brushmarker pro is their version of your standard brush pen, which what I have.  They’re super juicy, pigmented, and high quality.  The tips are made of nylon instead of felt or bristles, which makes them extra bouncy and durable.  They can fray a bit, but it takes them a lot longer than felt tip pens.  For example, when you look below at the swatches I included, you can see that some of the pens can get a finer upstroke than others.

They make 72 colors total, but I only have the small set, which comes with 26 colors (swatches above) and a blender pen.  If you don’t know, a blender pen is a colorless pen that is supposed to be used, as you might’ve guessed, for blending different colors together.  However, I don’t love the blender pen with this set, because Karin markers are already super juicy and actually blend really well together using water and a paintbrush, no blender pen needed.  In my opinion, it also just doesn’t work super well.

The only other major con of this pen set is the price, like I mentioned before.  This set of 27 pens is $60, and the set of all 72 colors runs for $153.  In my opinion, the quality is well worth it, but that doesn’t change the fact that buying a set of these is a pretty big purchase.

Overall, this is more of a fangirl post as opposed to a legitimate recommendation, because I know most college students aren’t gonna be able to shell out $60 for a few pens (I got these for Christmas a few years ago).  But if you ever do get the chance to use them, enjoy!