The Sign Painters Process: Make Your Own Hand Painted Sign

1. Introduction: Hi and welcome to my class Custom sign painting. My name is Sarah Bounds and I am an independent artist with professional sign painting experience. In this class, I will be teaching you how to make your own hand painted sign. This class is designed for anyone who wants to take decorating or advertising into their own hands. Sign painting comes in really handy for a court in your home at weddings or social events and can even be used for professional advertising in this class. I will take you through my process from start to finish so that in the end you too can make your own unique ham painted signs. 2. Project Description: throughout this course, you will be given the opportunity to make a sign of your own. This will be your final project, and it will include three components, a sketch, a digitized template and a final hand painted customized son. For this project, you're going to need a sign board. You can use cardboard or foam board. I'm going to be using a plastic styrene board. It's pretty thick. It has a matte finish. It's not very glossy that paint will it here. Well, to it, you're gonna also want to have a surface that paint will stick to Well, so make sure you keep that in mind. You're also gonna need some paper and a pencil. This will be used when you sketch out your sign. We're also gonna need some paint, so I'm gonna use a liquid shock paint for the lettering on my side. I'm also going to use an acrylic paint for my visuals that I will be putting on my sign. You can use similares materials. Just make sure that they are going to stick well and not smudge. When you put your ceiling over the top of them, you're also gonna need some transfer paper amusing. A white serial transfer paper. You'll need scissors as well. You'll need brushes. I'm going to recommend that you use a thicker and a thinner rash, the thicker one for filling in spaces and the smaller one for details and outlines. You're also gonna potentially want a paint palette. If you're gonna be mixing paint for your visuals and with your paint pat, you're gonna need some. Rinse water in a cloth to clean your brushes with. Once we get to the end of the sign making process, you're gonna want some Q tips for cleaning up smudges and ammonia. Ammonia is really good for cleaning up any kind of smudges left by your chalk pain, and you'll also need a ceiling. I'm gonna use a cry lawn matte finish acrylic sealant on my sign board. In addition to these materials, you may also need a can of Matt spray paint or other paint to use as a background color for your sign board. Depending on what kind of signed you're going to make, what kind of material you're going to put it on for this project. I also recommend that you choose words for your sign that are no more than 2 to 3 lines. This can simply be 2 to 3 words like pink lemonade stand or antique shop. The simpler it is, the larger your thought can be on your side, and it'll just be easier. For your first sign, I will be using the words fresh blueberries. You will also need to choose a font for this sign. You can make the font yourself your own hand lettering, or you can use a font that's already located on your computer. I'm going to use a fun that already exists, because it will be a much simpler to demonstrate that way. 3. Sign Layout: when you start to consider making a sign, the first thing you need to dio is to clearly define for yourself the signs purpose. Is it going to be a road sign, a table sign, a storefront sign or just something you hang up in the house as decor. Each of these different kinds of sign will demand different layouts to fulfill their purpose. For example, a table sign is typically smaller. It's gonna have answer. You're looking font on it, depending on the event that it's used for, and it's not gonna be super bold or thick. A road sign or storefront sign, however, are going to be much larger. The fonts gonna be thicker and more bold so that it's easier to read from a distance. Every sign needs to also have significant contrast in colors. You are not gonna be able to read your sign very well. If you have a light blue font on a slightly darker blue background, you're gonna want a significant difference. There says that your words pop out, so you want to keep that in mind when you're deciding what you're gonna use your sign for and what colors you want to use on your sign. So the first things you're going to do are determined the size of your sign. My sign is going to be seven by 17. My sign will be for indoor decorative use. You're also gonna want to determine your signs font and the size of the fund for your sign . So again, if you're gonna be making a large road sign, you're gonna want tohave a larger, more bold font. If you're gonna make a sign for a wedding and possibly for, like, dessert table, your fault could be much smaller and can even have a cursive flair to it. Then the last thing you're gonna do is determine what color's your gonna use and how those colors are gonna contrast each other so that your sign pops out and it's easy to read If you're going to change the color of your signs Background. You're gonna want to do that before you start sketching out your template onto your sign board. So you're gonna you're gonna want to make sure that you paint that sign ahead of time and have given it plenty of time to dry. If you're going to paint your sign board a different color. I would recommend using a spray paint with a matte finish so that it's easy for your paints to stick to it. I recommend that you use a mat spray paint primer that dries quickly and can be applied evenly without many coats. I typically stick toe white or black for my sign boards, and I use a chalkboard spray paint for the background as it has a really nice matte finish in the paint adheres to it well. 4. Sketching Your Sign: When you start sketching out your sign, you're gonna want to make it a pretty simple sketches, just giving you a general idea of your silently up. You're gonna want to include in it your text and the sign shape, and you're gonna want to try to balance out the sign well, so that you have even blank space on either side of your words. You can always use different sizes of text for emphasis, and you can put in some space fillers. Teoh fill in those empty spaces of your sign. So here on my side, I am noting that I didn't quite balance this out super well. But it's not a big deal because it is just a sketch. Also have thes pretty large, empty spaces on my side, and I'm gonna probably fill them up with some sort of illustration, and I think for the sign, blueberries would be perfect. So I'm gonna go ahead and draw in some little Bunches of blueberries for this sketch. 5. Making Your Template: here. I'm going to be using escape to make my digital template for my sign. The first thing I'm gonna dio is change my page size so that it matches the dimensions of my sign board. You're gonna want to make sure you have your measurements and the right units. And then my sign word is going to be 17 in just wide by seven inches high. Once you have your dimensions all figured out, you're gonna go ahead and make a rectangle that just outlines that page that you just made . Once you have erect Ingle, you're going to go ahead and fill it in with whatever background color you're gonna use for your sign. I'm going to be using a black charcoal color for my sign. That's gonna be pretty accurate to the color my sign board is. And then once you have your background selected, you're going to start making your text. I'm going to use this text tool and make my text for it. First words gonna be fresh. I'm gonna go ahead and make it in a black phone. Released initially, once I have typed out my word, I'm gonna go ahead and expand it and make it bigger by hitting control and then dragging my mouse. Then I'll go ahead and balance it in the middle of my sign board, and then I'll go ahead and make my next text box, which will have the word blueberries in it. And I'll do the same thing. Once I have my word typed out, I'll expand it by hitting control and dragging my mouse. Now, once I have both my words typed out, I will make sure that they're centered well, that they have a good balance between each other and the edges of the sign board and that they're a decent size so that they're not taking up too much of the board. But they're also not true. Smaller read. Now I'm gonna go ahead and add those blueberries that I was talking about in my sketch. I'm just gonna go ahead and import that file, size the image down by hitting control and dragging my mouse in, and then I'm gonna make sure that gets well balanced on the image as well. I'm also gonna duplicate it and mirror it on the other side. You know, merit by going up inspecting this mirror tool now you have. Well, I have my sign board layout. I'll figure it out now. My lettering is actually gonna be white, so I'm going to go ahead and change that to a white color, and then I'm gonna go up and save my file. Then I'm gonna make sure that I save a copy of this files that I can make a printer friendly version that I will later used to sketch onto my sign board. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and make that template version by saving another file. So I'm gonna go ahead and alter that. So first thing I'm gonna dio is change the background from this great color Teoh a white background, and then I'm gonna take the text and turn it black, and that's gonna make a printer friendly template. I'll save that file, and then I won't go. And at my print preview, you're gonna want to mess with your printer settings to get your file to print out correctly. And I'll give you some tips at the end of this video for things to look out for when you're printing every computers different every printers different. So I don't really have a how to guide or getting your template printed out. But here's my page. Set up looks good, and that is your template. 6. Transferring Your Template: So in this step, we're going to be transferring our template onto our sign board. Here I have some white transfer paper. When I draw over the top of it, it's going to leave a white line where my pen has invented the paper. When you go to put your transfer paper under your template, you're gonna want to make sure that the right side is facing down. So here I just test it to make sure that the white part that's gonna rub off onto my sign board is facing down. And you contest that by rubbing your finger on the backside of the transfer paper. And if it's white, that's the side you want facing downward, right? And once you get your transfer paper situated, you can start transferring it on with a pen or any kind of writing utensil. I like to use a pen myself. It just comes out smoother, so it's easier to keep your lines straighter. So when you start to sketch your template onto your sign board, you're gonna wanna test to make sure that you actually are sketching it on. So here I am, writing a little bit and then checking to make sure that it is transferring and you want to do that so that you don't end up having your whole template drawn out. And then you go toe look and you haven't actually gotten anything on your sign board. It's very frustrating and time consuming and just generally not Sutton. So here I'm starting Teoh outline my little visuals on my sign and cute little blueberries . When you go to outline any kind of image that you've put on your template, you're gonna wanna put in as much detail as you can, especially if you're going to be adding color. So here I'm gonna outline the Berries themselves in the leaves. But I'm also going to add in a little bit of lines for shadows and other details so that I kind of have a general idea of where I want to put darker paint and lighter paint. It just makes the process a lot easier. Once you've finished sketching out your template on for your sign board, you're gonna remove your tracing paper. And if you want, you can also remove that template. It makes a lot easier for you to move your sign board around 7. Painting Your Sign: you're gonna go ahead and start painting your side. No, I recommend that when you start painting your sign, you do it in parts. I would do your words first and then move on to your image or your visuals. I also would recommend that when you start painting, you start by adding the paint to the outside edge of your lettering. Here, I'm using a chalk pen, which I'm pretty comfortable using. So I'm preferred over a paintbrush, but a paintbrush could do just as much of a good job as your truck. Then here you can see that I am outlining the outside edges of these letters and then kind of filling in as I go. And this helps you to have a nice buffer zone so that you're not going toe accidentally. Get outside of the lines while you're painting. Now, when you do use a chalk pen, you're gonna want a prime it a little bit, which is what you saw me doing at the beginning of this section here. I pressed the tip of it down until the pain sort of comes out. You're gonna want to do that lots of different times. You'll see me doing it in this video frequently just helps get the ink flowing a little better. This is how I would approach using a paintbrush. It's very similar to using the pen, but it's, you know, a little bit finer and a little bit different. So I'm gonna get some of the ink out of my pen by dabbing it into my inkwell here until there's a significant amount that I condemn my brush in. And then I'm just gonna go ahead and once again outlined the outside edges of these letters so that I have that nice buffer zone that keeps my paint from running beyond the lines that I have drawn out for my sign. This pretty simple process. You definitely get more delicate lines, so this is a good way to do finer sign painting If you want, like smaller fonts or curses, I would definitely recommend using a paintbrush rather than a pen. Once you have your outlines again, you're going to go ahead and fill in the inside. It was notice here that when I'm filling in the inside, I'm using a thicker fresh. This just makes it a little more efficient. You don't have to, but I definitely tend to use the larger brushes once I have my outline. So here, once again, I'm going back to using the pen simply because it's just more efficient for me to use the pen for this particular sign. And I'm gonna go ahead and do the rest of the letters. This way. Once you've finished your lettering, you're gonna want to go over it a second time to make your letter stand out a little more, especially if they're a light color. Like colors tend to not be as bold the first time that you go over them. Now we're gonna move on to the illustrations on your side. I'm going to be using a reference image, and I suggest that you do the same. It helps you get your visuals a little more accurate. I am going to be mixing paint for this sign. I'm gonna use my visual reference to try and match it as closely as possible. And then I'm gonna start painting. Make sure that you keep your visual reference nearby so that you can continue to look at it as you're going along with your painting. 8. Sealing Your Sign: Now we're gonna seal the sign So the first thing we're gonna do is put a little bit of paint on the same material of your sign board, and then you're gonna make sure that it dries completely. You can make sure that it's completely dry by moving your sign around and looking for a shiny glare mark on your pain. As soon as that doesn't show up anymore, you're pretty much clear to go ahead and spray over the top of it. And when you do spray over the top of it, what you're looking for is any smearing or smudging that happens as soon as you apply the paint. So I'm gonna use this cry long matte finish acrylic sealant and go ahead and spray it on pop. And I'm not seeing any smudging or smearing going on, but I will make sure that it drives completely before I make that final conclusion. Once you have tested out your pain and your seal it, you can go ahead and spray over the top of your sign so you're gonna go ahead and put a layer on top, make sure it's nice and even and then once you're done you're gonna let it completely dry and then go ahead and add another layer on top of that, still making sure that it a nice even layer unless ceiling will make your sign more weather resistant. So if you decide that you wanted to be an outdoor sign, you're not gonna damage your pain by having it outside the ones that's dry, your Sinus done. 9. Cleaning Up Your Sign: So once you finish thinking your sign, you're gonna want to go back and touch it up a little. First, you're gonna want to remove all of the little white trace paper marks that you have left on the outside edges of both your images and your lettering. You can do that pretty easily with some water and a Q tip. Well, just lightly go over every single edge that still has some of that trace paper, and that should get the majority of it. You might have to go back over with just another like wet Q tip to get some of the residue that might be left behind. If you're gonna need to touch up some of your acrylic painting, you're gonna need to use paint that matches your background. So in this case, if I had smudged one of my blueberries and needed to go back and touch it up, I would take a black paint and go over that smudged area to fix the problem and make the lines more crisp. Okay. Oh, if you need to clean up some of your chalk paint, you're gonna need to use ammonia and accuse him, so I'm gonna go ahead and put some ammonia on my Q tip off screen here, and then I'll bring it back and show you how to do that. So here I'm making the Q tip a little bit smaller and pointed so that it's easier for me to clean up those smudge marks without damaging the rest of the lettering. I'm gonna go ahead and wipe that section with the ammonia and then go back over it with a dry Q tip toe. Soak up all of the leftover ammonia that might give us a couple of times before it comes out looking cleaner. 10. Conclusion: I hope you enjoyed my class and were able to learn new skills. Now, you can make a sign any time you need one for your family or your business. You now have all the tools and instructions you need to finish your final project. I encourage you to share your progress and post ideas or questions to myself and your fellow peers. Once you have started this project, I also encourage you to share your progress and the finish sign in our project gallery. Once again, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I hope you enjoyed taking this class. Thank you for spending this time with me and enjoy your sign making.