Transcripts
1. Introduction to Brush Lettering Fonts: Hi there. Welcome to this course on rush lettering. Fonts. My name is Elissa, and I am a hand lettering artist. You may recognize me from Instagram or YouTube, where my account name is Listen. Letters. My own style is characterized by super vibrant colors, a lot of added embellishments and fun illustration. So why is somebody like me who is so focused on color and telling a story through my hand lettering artwork so passionate about teaching a course about rush lettering? Fonts Well, the shape of your letters and how those letters interact with one another is the foundation upon which all of the other elements are laid. Fonts can evoke different emotional responses from your readers. I believe that having the knowledge and tools to be able to create many different letter shapes and fonts is absolutely essential for any hand lettering artists at any level, whether you're a beginner and you're looking to create your own style or you're an expert and you've been doing hand lettering for many years to keep you from getting burnt out from using the same few fonts over and over. But I have found that there are not a lot of resource is out there for somebody who wants to designed their own font, who are learned a whole lot of different fonts without using tracing sheets or copying somebody else's hand lettering. I've created this course to give you an easy way to break down letters and words into simple elements so that no tracing sheets or copying is needed. You'll be able to easily and expertly change each aspect of letter shapes such as curves, angles, stroke, thickness and height. We'll also be investigating. Have to combine your letters into words in various ways. There will be plenty of demonstrations throughout the course to show you exactly how to apply each skill. You will get the most out of this course if you are already familiar with the fundamentals of brush lettering, such as thick down strokes and thin up strokes, as well as how to use and hold a brush. However, if you are a complete beginner, I do encourage you to take this course because I do go into quite a bit of detail about the elements of letters. If you've been following me on social media, you should know by now that I take a ton of other people's courses on skill. Share, too, increase my own knowledge base about hand lettering and other forms of art. Something that I have found super helpful when taking these courses is to create a resource sheet about things that I have learned so that I can look back that later I would highly encourage you to do the same for this course. And if you're feeling very ambitious, I would invite you to create a project for this course where you write your name or somebody else's name in the center of the page in one fund, and then write different descriptor words or things that that person loves surrounding that name in different funds. So I'm very excited that you'll be joining me today in this course, let's get started.
2. Supplies: There's a very large variety of brush pens out there, and the brush pens that you choose toe letter with will influence the types of styles and fonts that you can create. And that's because each type of brush pen has a different brush nib or tip longer and more flexible brush tips will allow you to create wider strokes. Whereas brush Nibs that are shorter and less pliable cannot create as thick of down strokes cuts, they are able to create a more fine line. Let's just take a quick look at the brush pens you'll see me using throughout this course for the larger brush nips, I'll be using Tom Bo Dual brush pens as well as artists loved dual brush pains. Thes two types of brush pens have very similar barrels and nearly identical brush tips in terms of length and flexibility. I'll also be using equal line of brush pens, which have a ridiculously flexible freshness, which is great because you can get a really thick down stroke, but you don't have as much control over the thickness of your strokes to demonstrate the smaller brush pens. I'll be using the hard and soft tips of the Tom Bo food and no Sasuke. I think that's how you pronounce it. If I'm not pronouncing it correctly, just let me know. In the comments of this course, these fresh friends have a much shorter barrel than the dual brush comes, and they can create very fine lines because of how small the nib is. And for the medium sized brush pens, I'll be using paper Castells, which I just love their amazing. They have quite a long brush nib in comparison to the smaller brush pens so you can create this a really nice contrast between the down strokes and the up strokes, which I just love. They're not able to get as wide of a down stroke as the Tom bows or ICO lines, though. Feel free to use whatever type of brush pens feel most comfortable for you. But regardless of what type of brush pens you do choose to use, the type of paper you choose is extremely important. In order to preserve your brush pens, you want to keep your brush nip from fraying, and the best way to do that is to use on Lee the smoothest paper you confined marker papers a great option, as well as HP premium £32 paper, which is nice and thick so that the ink doesn't bleed through. And if you're lucky, you might find a nice journal that has super smooth paper like this one, which I used to practice my own hands. Lettering oh so smooth. I love it. Watercolor paper and mixed media paper are quite coarse and can cause the brush nips to frame or quickly. But there are a great option. If you're going to be doing a lot of blending with water, I would highly encourage you to print the PdF forms that are available as resource is for this course. There are lined sheets of different sizes, perfect for lettering with different size brush Nibs. And again, make sure you print these pages on the smoothest paper you confined like laser printer paper. All right, let's head into the first lesson of the course, where I'll introduce one of the fundamentals for creating different letter shapes
3. Downstroke Curves: in this lesson, we're going to be exploring the different shapes of down stroke curves, so the first basic shape is a straight line. The 2nd 1 is a C shaped curve in this direction. The next curve is shaped in the opposite direction, and the last one is an s shaped curve. So first, let's take a look at how thes curves can apply to a letter that has an A center like this h here. I'm gonna take the letter. L two uses their example just because it's the simplest one. It just has that one down stroke. The first option would be to just make a straight down stroke for the L. Okay, so then the second basic shape would be to write your L with a little bit of a curve like that. So it's not quite a straight line anymore. That's number two. We can also make the third curve shape for now, which you can see here. It's not a very common shaped foreign l, especially if you're writing in script and using loops, but it can be done, and I would not do an s shaped curve for L because it would just look like it s so we've got kind of three basic options for this l Let's look at how we can make more variations of the second curve shape. For example, I can write the letter with a curb at the top and then make it more straight towards the bottom. And here's what that would look like if I drew it with a Luke. Another option would be to do straight at the top and then more curved towards the bottom like that. And if I were to add the Luke, it would look like that. And then we can make an L where the entire down stroke is rounded and we can make the rounded shape to different degrees, for example, really subtle, like this one, or even more rounded. Keep in mind, though, the importance of readability. We don't want our readers to think that we're writing a C instead of an L. So we've broken down this particular curve shape a little bit, but we can actually make even more variations of it. Let's take, for example, the letter H. You can do the different variations, like I mentioned before to different degrees. For example, we can make the top like that words very curved at the top and then straighter at the bottom. Or we could make a much smaller curve at the top and have it be straight at the bottom. But you can still see that there is a curve at the top. Likewise, if we want to make it straight at the top of the down stroke and then curved at the bottom , we can make it a small curve at the bottom. Or we can make it a very large curb at the bottom. Just be mindful that the more you make a curve to this down stroke of the age, they're stretching the boundaries of that age. Just make sure that it stays recognizable as an H. I think it's worth noting that you can make the down stroke curve of that. A thunder in the letter H going in this direction as well. You can use option number three here with the H. I would probably not doing H like that. That's very strange. Um, but then again, I don't want to give you guys any rules about how you can make your letters. This is about you finding your own style. You may find it helpful to choose one or two of these a center letters and see how many different ways you can write them. Now let's take a look at letters like this. Why that Have a D center line? Let's take the letter J as our first example. Option Number one would be to make a relatively straight down stroke way. Can also use the third curve shape for the letter J, and we can do our S shaped curve, which I really loved. You'll notice that I didn't do Number two for the J because Jay's just don't have that type of curve. And that also goes for G and why. And it's because this upstroke comes around here and just as we did with the A sender Down strokes, we can do different variations of thes curves in our D center down Starks. So, for example, let's break apart this'll one here so I can do rounded at the top and straight at the bottom for straight at the top and rounded at the bottom. Or we could just do rounded throughout J. And just as we did with the eighth Center letters you can make. This is rounded as you want, just as long as it still looks like a J. And if we're doing the s shaped curve, you can make it very subtle. Or you can make the s shaped curve even more dramatic. I'm gonna use a G as an example because it just looks more natural with G than it does with Jay. He is a letter that you can make the down stroke go straight, of course. And then, in destruction or destruction, you do. 1243 I have not tried it with an s shaped curve. A little weird. I think it still reads like a P, but it's very stylized. And the letter Q really only has the option of making a straighter down stroke or it can be number two. And with these down strokes, you can make them very rounded. You can make it more rounded at the top and straighter at the bottom or straight or at the top and more rounded at the bottom. The's down stroke curve shapes also apply to the down strokes of capital letters, so you can do a straight down stroke. You could tell I'm really used to doing curved down strokes because I tried to start off doing a curve there. You can do a curb in this direction. You can do a curb in the other direction, or you can do an s shaped curve just like that. Let's apply what we've just discussed to the word get. I'm gonna write this in a few different ways, taking into consideration the shape of the down stroke curve in the D sender off the G and the a center of the T. So first, let's write it with just as straight of down strokes for those two elements as I can make it. So that is one look, making the down strokes as straight as I could possibly make them. You can see from this example that just by changing the shape of the curve for our A centers and D centers way can create several different styles. I would encourage you to pick your own word that has a center and D center in it and see how many different ways you can write it. Taking into consideration everything we've discussed in this lesson.
4. Small Downstroke Curves: So we've discussed longer down strokes such as a senders and D senders. Now let's talk about these shorter down strokes for letters that have an oval shape poor that have a down stroke that's preceded by a small upstroke like these. The curve of that down stroke can either be somewhat straight, or it can be any variation of curved number two. Pay attention to the different ways I can make that curve. You may notice that I can make the curve more or less surrounded at the top or more or less rounded at the bottom. The small down strokes in thes letters such as the stem on the M and A and A, could potentially be written as a straight line or curves two and three. Let's see how that would look if we take the letter n and change the curvature of the stem . The letters B and P have a very similar small down stroke, and this small down stroke can take the shape of a straight line like number one, or it can be written as curve number three in a variety of different ways. Our last group of small down strokes includes thes second down stroke of the letters H m an end as well as the third down stroke of the letter M here with the letter N. I'm writing that second down stroke with a straight line. Next, I'll be making a down stroke like curve number two. And then finally, you could make that curve like number three, and I ended up drawing that curve shape a second time just to make this example a little more obvious.
5. Upstroke Curves: the same four basic shapes for the down stroke curves. Also apply the upstroke curves. You have a straight line, have a curve going in this direction, going in destruction and an s shaped curve. So first, let's talk about how the supplies toe letters that have an acute angle starting from a down stroke like this that would include he and P C way have that down stroke. And then there's that acute angle right there going up. So we're gonna be looking at that lobster specifically. Same thing with key. In some cases, not everybody writes it that way. It also applies to K. If you write it like this, where you have that down stroke and then the acute angle right there going into the upstroke as well as a visa, and then you have H I. M. And end all having that same angle. So let's take the letter B, for example. So with the letter B and most of these letters, in fact, you're probably only going to see this upstroke here be written with a straight line or curve in this direction. So, for example, if we were to do a straight line, it would look somewhat like that if we were to do it in this direction. There's a whole bunch of different options based on how rounded we want that curve to be. And you can really feel free to play around with the shapes of these curves and try see what shapes of the down stroke curves you like with the shapes of the upstroke curves. I also want to mention that this s shaped curve can sometimes be used. Or at least I've seen it. With letters like This would be, you might see someone do something like that if it's very stylized. If it's in the context of a word and the rest of their letters are somewhat stylized in this way, then it's a perfectly good choice as long as it remains readable here. I've taken the letter n and written it in six different ways by using different curves of the up strokes. Can you see the shape of the curve for each one? Now let's take a look at a different group of letters. This time we'll look at letters that have a smooth transition between the down stroke and the upstroke. There are a whole bunch of letters involved in this particular group that have this shape. You could see the a c D. Etcetera. They all have this down stroke followed by an upstroke, and there's a smooth transition between. So here you can see what it would look like if I made that up stroke relatively straight, like the first option here. And you can do this third option. And there are different shapes that you can use to make that curve, which will go over in a minute. And you can even make an s shaped curve. Although you have to be really careful that it still looks like the letter you're trying to write. So, as promised, we're gonna break down these curves a little bit more to get a little more systematic about it. And we're going to use the letter A for this part. So for this first, a drawn the oval with an upstroke that has this shape curve and then this next upstroke in the Oval is going to be just a little bit less rounded, like you can see here and then this 3rd 1 here in the oval, the upstroke is even less rounded. So I'm making the shape closer and closer to a straight line. This next one here the upstroke is a straight line, and then the final two virgins are s shaped curves. And here's how all of them look when I add the stem of the A. Now let's take a look at how this would work in a word here I've taken the word bag and you can see I've changed the curvature of the up strokes. So in the first version, they're pretty rounded. And in the second version, I made the up strokes more of a straight line. There are a few letters that have strokes that are horizontal meaning. Instead of going up and down, they go from side to side. For example, with the letter T, you can see the horizontal stroke right here. Here I've written that stroke is a straight line, but there are other options. For example, you can make it shaped like a wave or an s shaped curve on its side, and you can do that in either direction. You could also make it a U shaped curve or an inverse U shaped curve. Horizontal strokes for the tea can be very curved around it for a very curves and rounded. So, for example, this one I'll do very subtle. I think that and this one I'll do more dramatic, so you'll really see it's quite around it. And of course, you could do anywhere in between those the letter are also has, ah, horizontal stroke, which you can write us a straight line or you can make it curved and same thing for the letter e. You can write that horizontal strokes a straight line, or you can give it a bit of a curve.
6. Loops: alright, it's time to talk about loops. Loops are so much fun and they add so much character to your letters. So let's dive right in. We'll start with our lovely A center letters here, which I have not written with Luke on the A center, and that's a perfectly fine option. You do not have to use a loop, but I'm gonna go ahead and show you what they would look like if they did have groups. I haven't written the letter T with a loop, but it can be and I'll show you guys that later the loops leading into a center down strokes can be altered either vertically or horizontally. If you haven't noticed by now. I use the letter H quite often as an example, because it's probably my favorite letter to an 11. But here I'm just going to be making the loop shorter and shorter as I go along. I can also change the loop by keeping its height consistent but just making it wider and wider as I go along. And if you thought you could do the same thing with the sender loops, well, you were right. You can make them shorter or longer or thinner or wider, something that I love too Dio, with my DIY centre loops like these is to make not just a regular oval shape like what you see here, but to actually make us somewhat special shaped by changing the direction of the curve like you'll see me do right here. It's really meet, and again it is always okay not to use a loop. Sometimes less is more. In addition to the A center and D center loops, there are a number of letters that are often written with their own special groups. For example, the letter B has a loop that's often used leading from the small down stroke you to the exit strip and you can see it's optional. You don't have to use it, and then when you do use it, you could make it a variety of different sizes. It can be really small, or it can be quite large, even to the point where the loop crosses over the long down stroke. Like you see me having written here, Lukken go below the baseline like you see me writing here, and it can even go below the baseline and then come back up and cross through the long a center downstairs. Just like that, the letter P has an almost identical loops that could be written from the short down stroke going into the exit stroke. And you can see I've written it with a variety of different sizes here now onto one of my absolute favorite letters to use loops with the letter O. So again, you don't have to use a loop, or you can use a small one for slightly larger one or an even larger one. And another cool thing that I like to do with my loops is to kind of cross it over the initial down stroke like you see here and you can go really wide with that, or you don't even have to connect the loop at all to the initial downstairs. I also love adding loops to the letter are you can add a small loop or very large loop, just as long as the reader still knows that it's are the loop that is often used with the letter s leading into the exit. Stroke is basically the same as the loop used for the letters B and P now that we've looked at some of the most common letters that are written with loops. Let's take a look at the rest of the alphabet and see what other letters can be loop ified . I don't think that's a word. I am making that one up. That's a cool word. I've gone ahead and grouped together letters that have similar types of loops. This group Here are letters, facts. You can basically make a tiny little loop before a down stroke. So, for example, if I were to do the letter I it would be a little loop with the down stroke like that. And all of these letters here have that similar pattern with em. And they have that Luke. Why, you etcetera things next Group of letters, basically all have this oval shape, and they have a small loop going into that, and then you can connect whatever down stroke you want to it. So it's a it would look like this. The letters F K Q. Confronts really interesting tonight. Love to use these loops in my own hand lettering. You just have to make sure that it remains readable. Sometimes people see these letters and no idea what they are. What you can see is that there's this extra right here as this upstroke comes across this'll long down stroke. So we have a down stroke and then, let's say fourth E K typically would come like this. And then once this down stroke meets this point here, it would come back out instead. We go the rules, the down stroke and making way. Do the same thing for the f here. Come down like that instead of bouncing out when it meets the down stroke, it goes faster, like Thetis, and we do the exact same thing for the letter. Q. So we make our D center down stroke. And then instead of bouncing off of that down strip, we go through and create that Luke. Both V and W can be written with a loop going from the final upstroke of the letter into the exit stroke. And finally, we've got the letter P, which kind of stands alone here in that you can after this down stroke instead of bouncing back up, you could just move around right there. I hope you are just a Z excited to loop. If I your letters now, as I am
7. Angles & Tilt: the angle at which a stroke is oriented is another important elements of letters. Perhaps the most obvious example of this would be with a Tallis ization for each letters drawn it a slam. You may find it helpful to use the PDF files I have provided, which have parallel lines drawn at different angles so that you can practice different degrees of italicize ing your letters when you're choosing to write your letters at a slant . Typically, down strokes are all parallel to one another, which you've been practiced like I'm doing here. And once you feel comfortable drawing down stocks by themselves, you can work your way up to letters and words. Writing the letters of the word at a slant is certainly an elegant style, but there are many other options as well. Let's examine how we can change the angles of diff'rent strokes within letters to give each letter a different style. We'll start off by looking at horizontal strokes, for example, in the letters R and E. Here, I'm drawing the letter R with a downward horizontal stroke. This next example, the horizontal stroke is parallel to the bottom of the page or straight across and another fun option is to make the horizontal stroke go at an upward angle. The horizontal stroke in the letter e can be written at various angles as well. We can also write down strokes at different angles to give letters, different styles. For example, here I've written the word hand in three different ways, and all I've done is I've altered the angle of the small down stroke so you can see here. What I've done is I've made my down strokes pretty much up and down. In the second version of the word hand, I wrote the down strokes angling from the right to the left and in the final version of this word. I've written these small down strokes oriented in the other direction so that they go from left to right as they go down. So now, looking at all three together, the difference should be more obvious. Changing the angle of the stem on the letters you and why gives the letters a very different look like you can see here, you might find it useful to pick a word for simple. I chose the word mum and play around with how you can make the angles of your down strokes . So in the first version, I made my down strokes pretty much up and down. Now what I'm doing is for my smaller down strokes. I'm tryingto orient them so that they go from left to the right as they go down and then in the last version, tryingto orient my down strokes so that they go from the right to the left. We can also think about the angle of our up strokes, for example, that little upstroke after the a center stem. In the letter H, you can see I've drawn that upstroke at different angles, and it gives the letter a very different look. And here's what that looks like if we add a loop and a bit of round in this to that, a center stand with the eight and the same principle applies to any letter that has an upstroke. Let's take a look at this example. Using the word blink, you'll be able to see that I've written the up strokes in each version of the word at a different angle, and just changing that one detail makes each word look a little bit different.
8. Stroke Thickness: Let's take a few minutes to talk about stroke thickness. What I was taught was, when you make a down stroke, you make it thick, and when you make an upstroke, you make it thin. But what does that mean? Because if you think about it, I should theoretically be able to make many different wits of a down stroke. For example, I can really hold my brush, been far down on the barrel and press down quite hard and get a very, very thick line, and then I can make a little bit less this'll less. But all of these you could consider to be the down stroke. They could all be thicker than the upstroke. That's really the only requirement of having a thicker down stroke. And I can make very fine lines with the tip of this, especially if I hold it somewhat more perpendicular to my paper. And I can also make very, very thick lines. So the difference in thickness between my down stroke and my upstroke could theoretically be that big. And I could also make a piece where the difference between the thickness in my down stroke and my upstroke is extremely small. so maybe a down stroke is like that thick and then an upstroke is that thing. Here's an example where I used the Tom Bo few day with the hard tip to write the word upstroke in three different ways with three different wits of the up strokes. First example at the top has the thinnest up strokes, and I created that by using less pressure as I made my UPS trucks that I was able to achieve a very thin line. For the second example here I used the same amount of pressure for my down strokes as I did for the first example, but for my up strokes, I used a little bit more pressure, so they're a little bit thicker, and this last example has the widest up strokes of the three because I applied the most pressure to create the up strokes. I think it's a little bit easier to see the difference in this close up view. I did the same exercise with a Tom Bo dual brush pun, and because the Tom Bo dual brush has a longer and more flexible freshness than the tumble a few day fresh burn, I was able to get more variation in the whip of the up strokes. Something else to keep in lines when we're on the subject of stroke thickness is that we don't have to make our down strokes and up strokes even throughout the entire stroke. I can make a fairly even down stroke like that where the width of the top and the middle and the bottom is pretty much even. But I can taper a bit like that as well, so it can start off thicker at the top and get thinner at the bottom. I can also start off somewhat thinner, get thicker and then get thinner again. So obviously these air not perfect. I'm doing them really slowly right now, and I'm not doing them in the context of a letter, so they probably look a little bit odd. Once you see it in the context of a letter, though, it will make a whole lot more sense, and we'll get to that in a minute. Another option is to do starting sin and then just progressively getting thicker towards the bottom. So I'm going to use the letter H as an example because it's my favorite letters, right and now I'm just gonna try to keep it fairly even throughout, So my down stroke hasn't even with this temperament of tapering. So we start off and then I kind of lift up my pen just slightly. So at the bottom, it becomes a little bit thinner than at the top. And I'll do the same thing for this inverted you like that. Sometimes I'll also do this with the ace under down stroke. Let's see if I can do right now. It's not super easy on command, and then you can always, of course, touch up your letters and then this one. I'm going to try to do this one without using the loop, because I think it's just easier for me to dio without the loop. So So these are all different options that you can dio. Let's take a look at how this works. In several other letters, Letter on the left is thickest at the top, and it tapers towards the bottom. The letter in the middle is even throughout, and the letter on the right is thickest at the bottom. Now I'm going to take the word dark and experiment with different ways to vary the line thickness. In this first version, I've tried to keep the down stroke fairly, even in terms of thickness throughout. And in the second version, I'm tapering it, so it's thicker at the top and thinner at the bottom. And in this last version, I'm doing my best to make it go from thinner of the top two, thicker at the bottom of the down stroke. I would definitely encourage you to choose one or two words and play around with different ways of writing those words by varying the thickness of your strokes. You could taper. You're down strokes like I'm doing here. You could keep your down strokes consistent throughout. You could make your up strokes thinner or thicker. Whatever feels right for you, just have fun with it, and then we'll move on to the next lesson.
9. Height: All right, guys. Time to talk about the one element of letter shapes that, in my opinion, creates the greatest impact in what a letter looks like. And that is a letter height. The simplest way to change letter height is to change the X heights, which refers to the heights of smaller, lower case letters, which you can see I've done here with the word care. I've made different X heights and you can see the letters get taller and taller. Another way to change the height of your letters is to keep the X height consistent. But to change the height of your A center letters like I did here with the word tall you can see I started off really small, got a little bit bigger, really big and even to the point where it looks almost absurd how tall those a senders are . And you can do the same thing by altering the size of your D senders, but keeping the X height the same. So now here's where things get really fun. You see, each letter is typically made up of more than one stroke, so we can actually think about changing the height of the beginning and end of each stroke within each letter, it gets kind of complicated, but let's break it down by just looking at one letter. First, we'll start with the letter I because it only has one down stroke. So we have this top point here, which is the beginning of the down stroke, and will also refer to that as the X height as well as this point here where the down stroke ends and turns into the exit stroke. And that's the baseline. If we change the heights of either of those two points were essentially changing either the baseline or the excite or both. Let's take a look at how this works. In another letter, this time to look at the letter you, which has a few more strokes in the letter I here, we're gonna look at the beginning of that first down stroke. Then we're gonna look at the place where that down stroke ends, and then upstroke begins. Then we're gonna look at the place where that upstroke ends, Then the beginning of the next down stroke, and then finally, the end of that down stroke, where it turns into the exit stroke or the upstart. I've gone ahead and given each point a different number, let's start off by looking at number one, which is the beginning of that first down stroke. We can choose to write 0.1 below the X height like I've done here. Or we can make the beginning of that first round stroke above the X height 0.2, or the place where the first down stroke ends and the upstroke begins determines where the baseline is of the letter. So if we change that point, were essentially changing the baseline points three and four are typically written together , but sometimes people will end the upstroke here before they get to the beginning of that next down stroke. Like I've written here, if you are choosing correct point screen for together, you can choose to write them above the Excite or below the X height like I've done here. And I actually jumped the gun here and wrote 0.5, which is the end of that second down, stroke below the baseline on my first attempt. So here I tried to kind of re do it. So now let's look at how we can change point number five, which is the end of that final down stroke where it turns into the exit stroke. I can make 0.5 above the baseline for below the baseline, and then, as I did hear accidentally is, you can change more than one point. So with this one here I changed number four point number four, which is the beginning of that second down stroke, as well as 40.5, which is the end of that downstream. So both of those points have been lowered. I'm not going to go through every letter of the alphabet because that would take hours. But I do think it is important to go through just a couple more letters. We get a little bit more practice, changing the height of different points within a leather in the letter A. The first point is where the upstroke of the oval begins. The second point is where that upstroke turns into the down stroke of the oval. Next we have the point where that down stroke ends and the upstroke begins, and we have the point where that upstroke ends. The next point is the beginning of this down stroke stem and the final point is where that down start ends and the exit stroke begins. Let's look at how we can change the height of this very first point, which is the beginning of that upstroke in the oval. Here I started that point lower than the 1st 1 and now I'm drawing that first point a little bit higher. I can even started so high up that it eliminates the upstroke altogether, and that first point is at the same level as the X height. Now let's look at that point where that upstroke turns into the down stroke of the oval. Here I've drawn that point above the X height, and then here I've drawn that point below the X height, the bottom of the oval, which is the point where it's the down stroke turns into an upstroke, can be written below the baseline or above the baseline and check out how we can change up the height of where the oval meets the stem of the A. And lastly, we can change the beginning and end points of the stem or the second down stroke off the A . So here you can see I've written it both above and below the X height And can you tell how I'm changing the end of the stem of that? A. Now we're going to do one more letter together. The letter M and Adam writing out the letter M. I want you to think about where each point is that we can change the height of so again. Those points are wherever a stroke begins and wherever stroke ends. I found it really helpful when I was first thinking about letter height to label each point with a different colored dot. So definitely feel free to do that. Now, as I go through and change the heights of different parts of the letter M, I want you to think in your minds what parts of the M am I changing and how am I changing it in relation to the baseline and X height? So you've seen what it looks like if I change the height of just one point at a time for the M. But you can actually change two or more points within one letter. Notice how I've changed the height of several different points within this version of an M , and with each subsequent another right try to pick out which points I've written higher or lower. Once you are familiar with how to identify the beginning and end of each stroke within a letter, you can start to play around with height at the word level. Here I've experimented with the word unconditional. In this version, I've lined up each of the smaller lower case letters with the baseline and X height. You can immediately see an obvious change in the style of the word. When I changed the height of some of the points of some of the letters in the word notice in this version of the word unconditional, which letters line up with the baseline and excite and which do not. If we zoom out, you can see how each version of the word has a different end, because I've changed the height of different points within each end.
10. Connecting letters: the ways in which we choose to connect or not connect our letters to one another can also determine what our fonts looked like. For example, we can choose to connect all of our letters together, for you can keep all of our letters separate from one another. You could even choose to connect some of the exit strokes to the next letter and keep some of the letters separate. Let's look more closely at some different ways. We can connect letters to one another. I just randomly chose the letters t and you and basically I treat the exit stroke of the tea as though it's an upstroke within a letter so I can think about the angle of that upstroke. I could think about the curvature of that upstroke for the first version. I made it a slightly rounded up stroke or exit stroke, and in the second version I made it a straight up stroke, and there's a bit of a jagged angle there. But there's another really cool way of treating that upstroke or the exit stroke that goes from one letter and connects it to the next, and that is by bringing it up. Both the down stroke of the second letter and then doing kind of an overturn where it goes up and then back down into that first down stroke. I'll show you a few more examples so you can see what I mean. There are a number of different letters that this technique can apply to. Basically, it works with any letter that starts with a small down stroke or a down stroke that starts at the X height. A common way of connecting thes letters to a preceding letter is to lift the brush pen after making the entry stroke. But the way I'm talking about right now to connect these letters is to bring that entry stroke above the letter first and then go into the down stroke. So I'm gonna take the letter a and then practice doing different ways of connecting it to some of these letters that you can use this technique with, for example, a going in tow. I you can see the two different ways that I've written it. In the second version, the entry stroke goes straight into the down stroke. Now let's see how the letter a connects to the letter and so in this first version, I will lift my brush pen after doing that entry stroke. And then in this version, I'm going to bring in the entry stroke up and over before doing the first down stroke of the end, and they'll demonstrate this one last time using a going into Why. So here you can see I lifted up my brush pen before starting the down stroke after the entry stroke. And then in the second version, the entry stroke goes up and above. The first down stroke up the why you can also play around with the length and curvature of the strokes between letters to increase or decrease the spacing between the letters.
11. Baseline and letter size: there were other ways to create different fonts at the word level, beyond just altering how letters are connected toa one another, for example. We can change the baseline off some of the letters within a word, and some people consider this a bouncy lettering of fact. The first version of the word baseline up at the top has the same baseline for each letter , but the second version here there are different baselines. For each letter, you can see some of the letters have a baseline above the baseline of the letter B, and one letter has a baseline below the letter B. In this third version, I'm doing a different variation with the same word here you can see. I've kept the B A, I and E all at the base line, while the other letters start elsewhere for each word. There could be a lot of different variations of this, especially if there are a lot of letters in the word. What I try to do, though, is make sure that the first and last letter have a same or very close baseline to one another to even it out here. I've taken the word random and made somewhat random baselines. For each letter, you can see the baselines kind of bounce around. They go up and down, but the R and M both have the same baseline. You can also choose to do different types of shapes for your baseline, for example, a circular or arch shape for your baseline, where all of your letters are still oriented upright. But the baseline itself creates a circular shape. You can even write your letters, moving upwards or downwards from one another at an oblique angle. Here's another fun way. You can change the way letters relate to one another in a word, by making some of the letters smaller or larger than the other ones, which you can see I did here with ease. Three different words. Can you see in the right hand column in the word believe how the I and E are small in comparison to the B, l and B. You may notice that in the right hand column when compared to the left hand column, the vowels or letters that have an oval shape are much smaller than the other letters changing the height or overall size of one or more letters within a word can give that word of feeling of fluidity or movement. For example, in the word classy here I'm making the two adjacent s is different sizes. And here I've written the word potter, which has two adjacent tease. One of the tees is much taller than the other one, and this difference in height lends itself very nicely to this curb of the horizontal stroke. And sometimes when you're making a skill share course you gotta have a little bit of a sense of humor. Not only does this word make me laugh, but also it's a perfect example of what we're discussing. The two teas are different sizes from one another, as are the two O's, and it gives the word a sense of character and dimension.
12. Demo 1: "holiday": So now is the time when we're going to apply everything that we've learned so far to a word , the word that I chose is holiday. And so with this one, I'm gonna walk you through my thought process and, um, the choices that I was making as I created each different font for this word. So for this first version of the word holiday, I was focusing on making the down strokes as straight as I could and keeping the letters relatively close together. So they're not spaced out. If you really want to challenge yourself, which I definitely encourage you to do, you may wanna watch this particular lesson on silent and see if you can guess what changes I'm making to the letters with each font. And then you can listen back and see if you were right. If you want to participate in that challenge, I suggest you turn out the sound right now. All right, So with the 2nd 1 you may have been able to tell that I am making the down strokes more rounded. Um, and I'm also doing the same with the up strokes, so it's actually making the letters a bit wider than the first version. So take a look at the up strokes in this third version. What do you notice about them? Are they rounded? Are they relatively straight? What I was attempting to do was making them a little bit more straight than the one I previously made. And they are all kind of sort of going at the same angle. So notice what I do here with this small down stroke of the letter H. It's somewhat angled from the right to the left going down. And then I also made a little loop on the Oh, it's the 1st 0 that I've made a loop on and then watch the down stroke here of this A. So I made that angle a little bit different than the other ones. It's also angled in the same way that I angled the H In this next version, I made the up strokes by flicking the brush pen so they're a little bit thicker at when they start, and then they get thinner towards the end. Um and they're very sharp now. Watch for the Kurds of the up strokes in this one. What do you notice? Yes, so I made them somewhat of an s shaped curve. So here's where the funds can really start to defer cause I'm gonna play around with the X height. So here I have reduced the X height so the letters will look a little bit smaller and you can also see I'm playing around a little bit with angles and the height of the tail on the A. They're the heights of the why you'll notice the more elements that I change. Within the word, the more the font looks completely different from the 1st 1 So going with this theme of X heights, what do you think I did here with the Excite? If you're guessing that I increased it, you're right. I made the letters a little bit taller, and I also kept the down strokes just slightly rounded. And I didn't make any loops on the A sender's. Speaking of loops, I made a really, really wide loop for that H in this version, and I made a pretty big loop for the O. I also played around with the height of different parts of the letters in this version, and I made pretty wide curves for the D and A. This next one here is super simple. All I did waas make relatively straight down strokes. They're not rounded, and I just increased the X height a little bit. So pay attention to the angles of the letters. In this version, you may notice that I'm writing the letters at a very slight slant, and I also kept a bit of rounded nous in the down strokes. This next bond is my absolute favorite out of all of them on this page and, unfortunately, the why I got cut off. So it's a bit of a bummer, but you'll get to see the rest of the word, so you'll notice. I made a very rounded down stroke for that. A sender in the letter each and then I reduced the X Heights. And I'm also playing around with the baseline in this version. So there's different baselines for each letter, and I'm also making the up strokes between the letters, um, different curbs. So there you could say I made a somewhat of an s shaped curve going into the D. And I've also spacing out the letters quite a bit. Another choice I made with this particular font was for the letters I and why? I, um, connected them to the preceding letter by making an upstroke that goes above the letter first and then goes into the down stroke for this next fund. I decided to keep all the baselines the same, but it still has a very bouncy look to the word. And it's because all of the final down strokes of the letters I made them go below the baseline. It also makes the letters look longer and thinner. Um, and then you'll notice how I played around with the height of different elements of the A. And I made that up stroke in the why an s shaped curve. And then I made the angle of that last down stroke of the Why, um, going down from the left to the right and the loop on the why is pretty thin here in this version, I made the down strokes and up strokes very rounded, so the letters air quite wide, and I decreased the heights of the A centers and did not include any loops on the ace enders. I think you'll be able to guess without me even saying what it is, um, that I did to this one. It's quite obvious, but I'll tell you anyways, So this one, My goal was to make the letters at a very, very large slant, so they're all quite tilted. And then my intention for this last font on this page was to make the down strokes a lot thinner than what I had been previously doing, so that there was less of a contrast between the down strokes and the up strokes. I also played around a little bit with the height of my letters so you can see the A that is a lot higher than the oval of the D. And I'm going back in and increasing the stroke thickness of some of the letters in that version because I just didn't like how it looked. So there you have it. 16 different ways to write holiday
13. Demo 2 and Wrap-Up: now here is your opportunity to really test yourself. I'm going to be writing the word confused, which I think is a bit of an ironic word. But I liked that it didn't have any repeating letters. Um, as I write each version of the word confused, go ahead and just think about what it is that I am changing. So we've talked about a lot of different elements of letter shapes. They talked about curbs of our down strokes and up strokes. We've talked about angles of strokes, stroke, thickness, letter heights. We've talked about how we connect letters or not connect them. And we talked about the baseline of our letters and the size of our letters. During this lesson, step into the role of an active observer. Examine each letter critically, using all of the knowledge you have gained during this course. Theo, I want to thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for taking discourse . Ever since the idea for this class was born in my mind five months ago or so, I have been so excited to plan, film and edit this class. I hope that you feel that you have learned something valuable today. And to show off your new skills, create a project for this course using several different funds. I had a lot of fun making this project. And I know you will too. Don't forget to follow me on skill share so you can see when I post new classes. I'll see you guys soon.