Beginning Script Lettering (with Crayola Markers)

1. Intro: My name is Charlotte Hill. I'm a letter illustrator and designer. I live and work in Portland, Oregon. In this class, I'm going to be showing you the basics of script hand lettering. So with him flattering, I think a lot of people think of it as really intimidating. I think has kind of an idea of elite being kind of calligraphy and depends and medieval monks illuminating manuscripts. And you know, it's really not something that's not difficult to get into practice a lot of practice of all their tips and tricks, But at the end, that's really a lot of fun. And once you get started, I get her to stop for this class. Our project is going to be first, a little bit of practice, just working on kind of the basic alphabet and strokes and that type of thing, and we're gonna put it to use right away and addressing someone's name car. So someone special in your life is going to benefit from this past right away. I'm really excited to get going. You guys, I think you have a lot of fun. Let's get lettering 2. Supplies: okay, Before we get started at our supply list, it's actually really short and quite easy. So first thing, we need paper. Quite a lot of paper. Actually, we're probably gonna be doing a lot of sketching. And I don't want you to be stressed that you don't have enough papers to get a big stack of paper ready. You're gonna need a pencil for sketching. Obviously, then you're going to need more. So what I'm recommending for this class is the cradle of super tip marker. I don't Crayola. It's kind of weird counterintuitive to be using a Children's sports supply. But these are actually super great for getting with thin lettering and strokes. And the bonus is really affordable on Super Nice. Get them, Adam. Probably any Children store or a choice door or also on Amazon. Now, if you have another marker you like to use already, if you're someone who is already working on our house and hands brush pens, you can use those. I'm just gonna be demonstrating with the super tip, and it's kind of what I recommend. Is there a pretty low level investment? So I do think they're a great thing to purchase that. Lastly, you're going to need your envelope to address for our projects. Now I do recommend having a car to go in the enveloping on Choose an envelope that's ready to go. But if you just want to address a blank envelope, never Sunday. I mean, you do you those air your life choices. But that's our supply list, and we're ready to get going. I'm going to start off with a step that you can do now or you can do later. But, um, it's the idea of inspiration. So I wanted to start you guys off with some inspiration. I collected it from different places on the Web and put together a Pinterest board. The link is in the class information so you could go to that, and I've just pulled some different examples of fluttering different styles for you to look at. It's really, really important that you look at inspiration because you can't create in a vacuum. You can't walk yourself away from the world, so I would never recommend copying someone in terms of creating your own work. But copying can be hugely helpful just to learn techniques and to kind of absorb different styles. So, for instance, even just studying different kinds of lettering to see how people do things, you can look at this and you can see how do they have this are coming to this? Why? How does that flow into the Al? How are they doing all those things? So just take some time, either now or later. But at some point before you start working on your project, really take some time to get inspired. 3. Four Basic Principles: okay, Before we get going, there's just four basic principles we need to talk about. The 1st 1 is the idea. Um, six strokes and then strokes. 2nd 1 me to talk about is the idea of our access for interest of not being pretentious. We can just say the ankle third thing we talk about IHS Cool, wonky three. There IHS our baseline. She may be able to see have a baseline drawn out for all of these very thin, sneaky and are four things we need to discuss ISS are with versus height or are with and height Who had a moment there wasn't sure it spilled that right? 4. Principle One: Thick & Thin: Okay, so think for system. So the way we're going to achieve that with these markers is we use the points, hold it basically closer to vertical. It doesn't have to be 100% vertical, but we use the tip here and we draw thin line. Then I'm gonna tip it over, and I'm gonna use the other side of it to draw a thick line so thin here we're Upton thick . We go this way. So before we ever start making any letter forms, just practice the flow of switching from thin to thick. So I'm going along here, go thin and Oh, I'm thinking I'm on the side. Then I'm thinking, I'm on the side, keep testing out what that feels like. And so another thing to talk about as we transition from thick to thin, they could go like this. And I could never remove my pen from the paper. And I could do it kind of with switching my pressure. But an easier way to do this is go from thin here, pushed down too thick, then release catch it again and do the same process over again. So is I transitioned from thick to thin I release and I catch it again like a sneaky trick . It looks like you want the whole time touching, but you didn't. So just practice. Make a ton of different squiggly lines going from thin to thick. Just get your get your muscles used to that feeling. Follow this. Takes a while. You know, you have to get your brain, your muscles. You still these feelings. So just keep making fix. And Ben's practicing with the switching of that angle and see how that feels. And then we will move on to making letter forms. You know, after the other incidents, one stress about it, the shapes you're making are pretty or not, like a lot of them are probably gonna be ugly. It's not a big deal. The idea is just to get the feel of it some. We went crazy here. I'm making all sorts of arguably ugly things just to practice and warm up these muscles and get them used to have left, bringing 5. Principle Two: Axis & Angle: OK, point number two, our access or angle, whichever one you want to call it. So we don't sandal stuck up. So there's two ways of going about this, and I'm not gonna say it's necessarily wrong to do it one way. It's just not what I would advise you to do, particularly well, starting so we can write it like this. And we can just kind of how are letters point wherever the heck we feel like it. H and they say you're coming doing the same thing. Z is just like going free Willy. Well, there's a down here now are here, Do you going back the other way So we can go like just whatever we feel like doing, or we can kind of make an effort that sounds like we weren't making before. Make an effort to have it all be on the same angle. We're not going to use that marker. Gracious God, Let's try again, starting at the moment so you can see there's kind of a rhythm as I go. Everything's kind of going the same way, So if we look at this and we kind of draw some angles on it, we'll see that I have the single running here. This one's more here than we tilt again and everything is just working basically on kind of different planes. Everything's fighting against it, and I'm not saying that can't be a style. It just needs to be used specifically as a style. And like I said, it's not what I would suggest as you're kind of getting the general feel for this. But if we look here, I'm not saying I'm perfect. But you know, it's hand lettering. I don't This style is not to be absolutely perfect, but in general everything's running about the same way, and that's kind of how we want it to be going. So that's an important thing to consider. As you're drawing, what angle are your letter is going to be on? They can be more up right? That's what or they could be on a strong snapped whatever it ISS. Just make sure your whole word has agreed and they're all doing it 6. Principle Three: Baseline: way. Next thing we want to discuss is our baseline. This one is not so much of a writer wrong, but something that again, if you think about you, can make more intentional style choices and you could make sure you're not falling in a weird no man's land. So I write out the word baseline appropriate is that and I can you can see jump near pencil this with baseline I can make it all sit basically on the same baseline is ending about where the hell is ending the eyes hitting about the same place and so forth And everything is sitting there Never access We have our thick thin And now it's all on the baseline Or I can intentionally choose to shake it up a little bit And I can very where my letters fall in relation to one baseline So might be is on it My a is hanging below it I s jumps back up again It's the e l I jumps up and comes back down and the jumps back up again and you end up with kind of crazy crazy baseline happening. What you don't want to do is you don't want to dio one baseline with, like, an e popping up for s popping up. You either want to choose to be inconsistent or you want to choose to be consistent. If that makes sense, this is especially fun to Dio. If you're maybe on a curve, it can Rick make it more funds that kind of debt below the baseline. He already got some wonky nous going, and then you can kind of choose where things fall above below the baseline. 7. Principle Four: Width & Height: Okay, next up, our weights so are thick and are thin. Basically, we can have letter forms that are wide or we can have ones that are more compressed and again it can be down the middle. But if you think about these, it just helps you make more kind of intentional style choices. So I can make my for lack of a better word, fatter words very spread out their big strong doesn't necessarily mean the shapes are any different. It just means how wide and far heart I'm making them as well as their actual with is just stronger. You see, here I'm running good at catching in a couple times. So I have that one, which maybe is not exactly hefty, but is wider versus hello it It's cousin here. We're gonna make quite thin and compressed same principles of thick, thin, same principles of access. Now we're just chatting. Are our words wide or they very thin or more accurately, are letters wide or thin, which in turn makes our word wider, thin. So good thing to do at this point is just to take these principles we've talked about and put them into practice. You'll see in the class info I've provided some sheets that you can use to traits I know means. I'm trying to say that I am the best letter or even an expert letter, and that you should all copy my letter forms. I just know it can be overwhelming if you don't have a style of cursive you already use. It's really hard to transition from just your everyday printing handwriting into lettering , and it can be helpful to have something to trace just to get yourself used to some different letter forms. So practice was those. Or look through some inspiration. Find shapes you like, use those. Think about your thick thins. Think about your baseline, your access. Think about your wit and just the son some time getting the muscle memory in there, and then when you feel comfortable, we can move on to choosing our name and addressing our card 8. Sketching: Okay, So hopefully you've had a chance to practice all the principles we talked about. Maybe on some of the alphabet sheets that we have posted, and now you are ready to choose your name for your envelope. But we're not gonna not gonna touch the envelope yet. So calm down. So go ahead and choose your name. I'm doing Angelica because I want to, and I do what I want. And here we go. Just practice writing it a bunch of different ways. Just pencilling it. At this point, you don't need to be doing markers. Just think about the principles we talked about. Your slant, your baseline, your whip, and go ahead and practice a bunch of different ways to write this name. There's no pressure here for this to look amazing. There's no pressure for you to really figure anything out. It's just a time for you to keep practicing these principles and seeing what you like. So lots of these sketches air. Not gonna look so great. Probably you can see some of minor, pretty ugly. But this is just a chance to practice all the different things we talked about and really get comfortable with. this word before you move onto an envelope. One good way to see how you're feeling about your laddering also is to turn it upside down and kind of study the rhythm that we see if there any weird gaps, any weird things happening and that can give you a different perspective. So once you feel like you practiced your name a fair amount and you're feeling pretty comfortable with the kind of rhythm your liking go ahead and I recommend starting to think it and seeing how that feels, remember, your strokes are a little different when you're thinking so it's gonna give you an idea of how that's gonna feel, see, gets a little tighter. You may not follow exactly, and you can keep penciling before or you can go ahead and just go into thinking like I'm doing. If you're feeling really confident that you've got this rhythm kind of drilled into your muscles, then go ahead and just work on just for thinking it. Once you feel like you've got a good handle on, you know what you want to do. Our next step will be the actual car 9. Lettering Envelope: Okay, so we are ready. Teoh, get to the final stage and put the name on the envelope. So a nice way to kind of look at spacing. It's just check out where the names you've drawn previously fall and then you pencil, sketch it in. No reason to not to You guys don't be a hero and make sure it fits. Could see what we're human. We make mistakes. And even though Bob Ross would say we can turn our mistakes into a little happy trees, I'm not 100% sure how to do that on an envelope. So I'm just gonna say, if you make a mistake, you should probably just redo it. But I think we're good here. We'll always look a little different when we use the when we use the thinking. But I think we're good to go. I'm just this guy out of the way you go just like we practiced. Think, thins. Here we go. And now I like Teoh sometimes at a little embellishment. So just for kicks and giggles, we're gonna go ahead. We are going to do some embellishing. This is not a, uh required step by any means I just want to show you guys some different avenues. You could take this since you've done the basics, The world is your oyster. The hacky monologue to the way we are done. The card is ready to hand off to a special someone. Now that you've finished your card, please remember posted to your project so that your classmates and I can see it. 10. Wrap Up: Thank you, guys. Thank you. You did this whole class and I'm really so excited. I can tell you how excited I am that you decided you wanted to start hand lettering and that had to be the one to show you there is so much available for you to grow in this. There's so much lettering for you, Dio and you've taken the first step and you're a letter now. So I hope you stay smart. Stay kind and please keep