Fun With Letters: A Beginners Introduction

1. Intro: Are you ready to have fun drawing letters? Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm an artist and designer. And in this class, I'll show you my process for creating a thick sans serif script lettering. We'll start with lettering basics. Then we'll learn how to draw script lettering and some thick sans serifs. Next, we'll talk about composition and word hierarchy. And for our final project, we will hand letter our favorite quote or phrase. All you'll need for the class, just some plain paper. Any pencil you have lying around and your creativity. So grab your paper and pencil and let's get started. 2. Downloads: Before we begin, I'm going to quickly show you where to find the downloads. And something important to note is that you will need to be on a web browser and not the Skillshare app to be able to download the worksheets. So right under this video, you will find some tabs. Go to the Projects and Resources tab. And to the right side of your screen. Under resources, you will find the worksheets to download. And there's a script and the san serif lettering worksheets. Now that we have our worksheets, we're ready to start. So I'll see you in the first lesson. 3. Lettering Guides: In this lesson, we're going to learn about lettering guides. And lettering guides are so important because they help her let her stay consistent. I always draw a light set of guides before I begin my lettering work. So I'm going to start with a baseline. And he baseline is at the very bottom. And that's going to be for all your letters will sit. Then we're going to draw a cat Pi, which is at the very top. And in x-height. And an x-height can be anywhere in between the baseline and the cap height. I'm going to put mine slightly below the middle. And this is, this will be for all your letters intersect, such as a, B, F, G, and so forth. So let's start by drawing an a. And we'll start at the very top and come down till we meet our baseline. Then we'll cross r a right on the x-height. Now let's move on to a, B, a, G, F, and API. And as you can see, all my letters cross on the same x-height. But we can change the look of letters by moving our x-height around. And I'll show you. So again, we're going to start with a baseline, the cap height. And this time we're going to add our x-height way up at the very top. And I'm going to draw the exact same letters starting with an a. But this time we'll cross it at the very top. I'll be HE, S and a P. And as you can see, we vary the look of the letters by simply moving our x-height around. Now we're going to sit down guides for lowercase letters, and it's going to be exactly the same. But this time we're going to add a descender line. And a descender line will be for all your lowercase letters, hang down like g, y, q, and so forth. So we're gonna do the exact same thing. We're going to start with a baseline. We'll add our cap height or x-height. And this time we're going to add our descender line. And the descender line will go just below the baseline. Now I'm going to draw a G API. And as you can see, they hang down and just stop right at the descender line and a y. And again, you can vary the look by simply moving the x-height and your descender line. And I'll show you that. So again, we're going to start with a baseline, the cap height, or x-height. And this time we're going to bring our x-height hopefully up. We're going to move our descender line up as well. Now let's draw the exact same letters, but G, API, Q and a y. And again, you can see the variation in letters simply by moving our x-height and descender line around it. Here's some examples of why lettering guides are so important. As you can see, you can change the shape and the possibilities are really endless as long as you have your lettering guides to stay consistent and straight, you can make your words into any kind of shape you'd like. If you are only going to be working with uppercase letters, you do not need to add a descender line. But if you're gonna be working with both uppercase and lowercase letters, then I'd include your cap height, your baseline, your x-height, and also your descender line. So for your assignment, get comfortable with lettering guides, play around with your x-height, move it around and see what variations you can come up with in your letters for your lowercase letters with your x-height descender lines around. Then practice writing uppercase and lowercase letters together. And in the next lesson, we'll be talking about monoweight script lettering. See you there. 4. Mono-Weight Script Letters: In this next lesson, we're going to be talking about monoweight script lettering. So what is monoweight script lettering? Well, it's a cursive type lettering that we add thickness to, but all the line thicknesses will remain exactly the same. There are no variations throughout the entire lettering. Whereas classic calligraphy, all your upstrokes will be thin and all your downstrokes will be thick. So let's practice drawing some letters. I'm going to start with a simple. So I'm going to write in a, in a cursive style. And a good tip that I learned was pretenders, tiny little marbles on the inside of your life. And keep those all the exact same size. And do that along the edge. And then we're going to connect them all together. And then we can just color in the inside. This really helps you get your thicknesses all the same size. And once you do this a lot, you get really comfortable with your thicknesses. But at the beginning you can just add a very light set of little circles on the inside if you need help, keeping your thickness is the same. There's an a and we can do a C. And again, we're going to add tiny little marbles on the inside. Don't add thickness to the outside like this. Because as you can see, you go outside your guiding lines. So you always want to stay on the insight. Adding thickness to the inside of your letters. Add some little marbles on the inside, and then connect them just like that. And then we can shade in the inside. And you get a very consistent looking letter with the same width all around. Now let's draw a G. So as you can see, I have my guide here, and this time we're going to use our descender line. So I'm going to start with a CI. And I'm going to bring it down till we hit our descender line. And I'm going to add my tiny marbles on the inside. And for the little stem, I'm not going to add them to the outside. I'm willing to add them to the inside. We don't want to mess up our spacing for our next letters. All thickness is stay on the inside. And once I have that, I am going to connect them on the inside site that and then we're going to fill it in. And once you finish filling in your letter, if you see any spots that look off or need to be fixed that's in, you can just go and fix it just like that. So how about now if we try writing a word, we're going to do just the classic word hello, and I'm just going to start writing it in cursive and then we'll add thicknesses. So I'm just going to write the word hello and make sure you give yourself space in between the letters. Don't smoosh them all up. Okay, now, have my word hello. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go and add my tiny little marbles. And you can do these tiny little marbles in a very light pencil. Or if you feel you can do this without the guides, go ahead and add thickness without them. Whenever you feel comfortable with. This was just a very helpful tip. I learned when I was learning how to draw this monoweight script lettering. So I'm just going to go all around the word, adding these tiny little marble circles before I connect everything enough thickness. And then I'll fill everything in and then we'll finally, we'll adjust everything at the end. So I'm going to do that. And you can watch me work while I connect everything. And then we'll come back and I'll show you how I adjust everything once I'm done, adding all my thickness and filling in my lettering. Okay. Now that I finished a shading everything and I can go back and adjust some small things I see, like the eight right here, I'm going to add some thickness. And we can also erase if we don't like something. If you're doing this on just a piece of paper with a pencil, I would add all your thicknesses in with a light pencil. And if you're going to fill it in with marker or watercolor or ink, I would first get all my outlines exactly how I want to before I shaded in. But if you're doing this on the iPad, we can easily adjust things and move them around. So you just adjust it or erase it. You don't like something and just like that. So to recap what we learned in this lesson, start with a wireframe. Write out your word in a wireframe cursive style, and then add some thickness to your letters. Pretend you have a tiny small marble or a zigzag on the inside of your wireframe. And this will help keep all your letters consistent after you've done that, fill in your words. And to help him practice this style lettering, I have a worksheet under the class resources of this style lettering that you can trace over on your iPad or directly on the page, or using trace paper. Practice writing out individual letters first. And once you get comfortable, you can start practicing with connecting words, adding thicknesses, and then filling them in. So for your assignment practice using the worksheet. And in the next lesson, we'll talk about sans serifs, thick letters. I'll see you there. 5. Sans-Serif Lettering: In this next lesson, I'm going to show you how I draw a thick sans serif. But first, I'm going to show you the difference between a serif and a sans serif. So a serif is a slight projection attached to the end of the main stroke of a letter. While I said serif is a letter that has no accents or projections attached to the end of its letters. And a san-serif literally means without a serif. And as always, we're going to start with the lights set of guides. So I'm going to start again with a wireframe. And this is very similar to our script lettering, but this time we're going to be doing everything in uppercase letters. So I'm going to draw in a. And now we can add thickness. And again we can use our little marble trick and we'll start adding small, little marble circles along the edge of our wireframe. Now, I am going to connect everything. And then we're going to shade it all it. And now after we shade everything in is the time we can make small adjustments. If we see somewhere we don't like or need to add. And there you have a thick sans serif. Now I'm going to show you how I draw this style without guides. And I'm just going to draw a wireframe be. So I'm going to draw my b. And this time I'm going to eyeball it. So I'm going to just stay consistent with my thickness. And I'm just gonna see how he others. Ok. And then now I'm going to fill it all it. Now we can adjust any parts. We don't white part right here on the beam we're going to smooth that will make this top part slightly thicker. And there we have our B. Remember whether you use guides or decide not to use guides always stay consistent with your thickness. Now I'm going to show you how to draw the letters that sometimes are a bit more difficult, like S, j, and u. And we're going to start with an S. And how I start that is we're going to draw a small snowman. So we're gonna do, we're gonna draw two circles. And the top circle is going to be slightly smaller. And the bottom circle, he's going to be slightly bigger. Kind of like an eight. Now I can go and draw my S right above my kids. Just like that. And then I'll add my small little marble guides. And we're going to draw these on the inside of the letters for the top portion or not going to add little guides to the top because it will go over our our lettering guides. Uh, so we're going to stay inside and I'll show you how to connect them in this middle portion. So now we're going to connect the inside. I'm going to stop right there. And then we're going to do the same thing to the top. And to connect this middle piece right here, I'm going to come slightly above that center part and I'm going to bring a line down to I connect my guide and I'm going to do the same thing to the top part. Then I can shade everything in and then we'll adjust everything. And now that I filled it all in, I'm going to add. Little bit of thickness to this bottom piece right here. It's this room piece of very tonal. And now we can erase our guides. I'm just going to pull any race, right? And just like that. Now let's draw a j. And this time we're going to draw a small circle at the bottom. So draw a circle. And we're going to draw a stem from the top till we meet our circle. And then I'm going to follow my guides around the circle. Then I'll add some thickness to the inside and connect everything will just fill it in. And then well, it just everything. Some thickness to the side right here and smooth out the bottom part. Now, we will erase our small guy here in the middle. And last, we're going to draw. And again, we're gonna do a small circle at the bottom. And this time it's going to be like the j. But this time we're going to add two little stems, one on each side of our circle. Then we can add our guides and connect everything. Now we'll shade it all in. And then we can make any small adjustments. We need to just smooth out the bottom portion of this, you an analog quickness. The two sides, then we can erase our guide right here in the middle. Just like that. Remember, if there's a letter you are not comfortable with or find difficult. Take it one step at a time, at a light set of guides. Then draw a wireframe, then at your thickness and then fill it in. So to recap what we learned in this lesson, we're going to start with a wireframe. Then we're going to add thickness to our letters. Remember to keep all your thickness consistent and the same. Then we'll fill in our letters. So for your assignment, download the thick san serif lettering worksheet and you can practice on your iPad or with a piece of trace paper or directly on the worksheet. Practice drawing individual letters. And once you get comfortable, practice drawing boards. And in the next lesson, we'll learn about lettering composition. I'll see you there. 6. Lettering Composition: In this next lesson, we're going to learn about lettering, composition and word hierarchy. So the first thing we're gonna do is write down some quotes we really like. And this is just a regular handwriting. We're just going to write down some ideas of quotes we may want to use. So here are three I wrote down that I'm interested in using. So the first thing I'm gonna do is look at my first one. Be strong and courageous. So just by looking at it, I know I want the word strong and courageous to stand out when I letter this out. So I'm just gonna put a circle around my word strong and my word courageous. So now when I go to start refining the sketch, I'll know that the words b and add will be much smaller than the words strong and courageous. And we can do that with the next one. So love is patient. Love is kind. I want the words patient and kind to stand out. And love is, will be smaller. The last one in hell, courage, x healthier. So I want my courage and fear to stand out more because when I'm doing this, I wanted to look as if courage over fear for it to read that way. So inhale and exhale will be smaller in our quote. So any words you want to emphasize or bring attention to those will be bigger in the final lettering piece and words like and that is, are the secondary smaller words will be smaller in our quote. So we'll keep that in mind. And that's why we're just kinda brainstorming right now, circling the words we want to emphasize. So then we'll move on to our next step, will have that in mind. Now that we've established what words we want to be larger and which ones we want smaller, we can move on to our next step. Whole will start planning out exactly how our lettering piece will start to look. So we're going to start with this quote, inhale courage, exhale fear. And this next step we're going to do these little boxes and they're called thumbnail sketches. And it's nothing fancy. This is just the brainstorming process where we'll just keep it loose and messy. And I did too. So you can kind of see where we're going and I'll show you how I did these. As you can see on the left, right here, the two bottom little thumbnail sketches. I started planning out kind of the way I may want to do the lettering piece. And keep in mind, you can do as many thumbnail sketches as you want. This is the brainstorming part. This is the part you want to explore and experiment with different compositions and may be different shapes that you want the letters to be in before you move on to your final step. So here to the right is just a blink little thumbnail square I left for myself so I can show you how to do this and we can work through this together. So as we know, we're going to have the words inhale and exhale smaller, encourage, and fear larger. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to start setting down just some rough little guides. We're not going to worry about any wording or lettering at this point. We're just going to start setting down the shapes and our Small guides. So I know I want inhale to be here at the top. I'm just going to put like a little box right here. And then I don't know, I want courage to be bigger. And underneath it I'm going to keep the peace all Street. And then I want exhale smaller and then fear. I'll pick thicker. And I'm liking the way that looks. So now I'm going to add in my words and there's not any fancy lettering or anything. We're just going to roughly write it in. So I know I want my word inhale to be our thick sans serif. So I'm just going to write in heel in the small box. And then courage, I'm going to want it to be R script lettering. So I'm just gonna do a loose kind of handwriting style in this bigger box. And then exhale again our san-serif. And then fear. I want that to be our script lettering. And I'm really liking that. So I think I'm going to go with that one. But as you can see, we can look at all our sketches once we have a bunch of thumbnails and kinda see which is our favorite. We picked the one we really like and that we can really refine it in the next step. So now we can do one more for some practice. And here I have love is patient, love is kind. And as you can see on the bottom left, I was experimenting with some ideas and we're going to do the same thing now on the right, we're going to do one more and just kind of play with this quote. And patient and kind will be our larger words. And love is, is going to be smaller. So again, I'm just going to add some little boxes for love is and our patient will be picker. And then again lobe is smaller and then will be thicker. And now we can add in some lettering or they are placeholders so we can kind of get an idea of how the lettering will look. So I think I would wanna do love is in script. So just roughly we're going to write like a cursive style of his. And then patient will be in our thick san-serif. So patient. And then love is then kind. And remember, don't try to refine this or make your fancy, just write it in roughly so we get an idea and then we can start kind of seen how we want it to look. And as you can see, it gives us a very good idea of what the final piece will look. And once we pick the one we want or the quote we want with the composition we want. Then we can move on to the next step and start refining this. So for your assignment, write down a couple of quotes. You're interested in lettering. And then in each one of those quotes starts circling the words that you want to emphasize or the words you want to stand out in your final lettering piece. Once you've chosen the quote, you want a letter, you're going to move on to some thumbnail sketches. And remember you can draw as many thumbnail sketches as you'd like. Play with that until you're happy with the layout. And once you've got that, you move on to our next lesson. We'll, we'll work on our final lettering piece. I'll see you there. 7. Lettering The Quote: Now that we've decided on our final quote and the layout, we can begin working on our final project. And I'll keep my thumbnail sketch close by as a reference while I work on my final lettering piece. Before I begin, I always like to write out my quote in a very light pencil at the edge of the page, just to make sure I don't have any misspelled words in my lettering work. And then I'll place my lettering guides. And this is going to be kind of like a time-lapse style video. And you'll see me using all the steps and techniques we learned from our lessons. So I'm just going to go ahead and letter the quote. I'll meet your right back at the end of this lesson. Right. Now that I've finished lettering everything, we can erase our guides and we are ready for our final step. And in the next lesson, I'll be adding lettering, embellishments, and finishing touches. I'll see you there. 8. Finishing Touches: Now that we finished hand-lettering our quote, we're gonna move on to letter embellishment and final touches. And as you can see here, I have a few examples of some lettering embellishments. And you really can do anything you want. The possibilities are endless. These are just a few ideas you can do. Just a line on the inside. You can do small dots. You can even do some florals on the inside of your letters. It's really up to you and how you want to embellish your final quote. So I'm just going to keep it simple and we're just going to do us a thin line on the inside of our fixed sans serif letters. So now we can just finish up the piece and I'm going to add in my thin line inside all my thick san-serif words. So inhale and exhale. I'm just going to go and add a thin line on the inside of the letters. Just take your time with this and it doesn't have to be perfect. You're just going to go and fill it. How did we added our lettering embellishments? We can finish it off with adding a few little sparkles and dots and you can't really add any detail. You can leave it playing, you cannot stars, you can add dots, squiggles. It's really up to you. I'm just going to add these little like sparkles. And they're just super easy to do. We're just going to happen wherever you feel. There needs to be filled in some space. So right here in between courage and exhale, there needs to be some feeling. So I'm going to also add some dots. So I'm going to leave some space for my dots. Now we can add in our dots. Again, wherever I feel there needs to be a fill space. I'll just add it in like that. And that's it. There's our final and illustrated hand lettered quote. Remember the more you practice, the easier it will become. So give yourself grace and just take it one step at a time. There are no rights or wrongs. Your creativity is limitless. And in our final lesson, I'll be giving you my final thoughts. I'll see you then. 9. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for watching and being part of this class. I hope you have as much fun drawing letters is I have had creating it. Don't forget to post your work in the project gallery so I can see your amazing drawings. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.