Transcripts
1. Intro: If you're a hand-letterer who has a hard time drawing
anything but letters or if you're an
illustrator who has a really hard time
with hand-lettering, then this course is
designed for you. Hey! I'm Shea. I am an illustrator and graphic designer from
Atlanta, Georgia. I studied graphic design in college at the
University of Georgia, and I have worked in the
creative industry for over ten years now at
animation studios, design firms, and
now independently as a freelancer. Over the
course of that time, I've also developed a
signature illustration style, which is primarily
character-based. I had struggled to find a way to combine those two skills of graphic design and illustration in a unified, seamless style. But I recently cracked the code, which is to combine hand-lettering with illustration. It's also super marketable
to be able to do this. Think book jackets, art prints,
stationary, murals... There's totally a
market for this and you're going to
set yourself apart because you can both illustrate and hand-letter. In this course, I'm going to share steps
with you that will make your letters and
your illustrations feel like they live in the same
world and that they were drawn by the same person
in your own unique style. A small disclaimer here that there will be puns
and plants involved. So if you are not into
either of those things, this class is probably not made for you because
there's gonna be a lot of them going on because I
am "frond" of a good pun. Also, it's not necessary for you to draw digitally
to take this class. The same concepts will
totally apply to you if you're drawing analog
with a pencil and paper. However, I will be
using my iPad Pro and the Procreate app to walk you
through the class project, which will be in
the next section. So, let's get growing!
2. Class Project: We're going to come up with a short plant-related phrase and then draw some plant-related illustrations to pair with it. Why are we doing this? Well, combining a
hand-lettered phrase and illustrations will A) add depth and visual
interest to your piece because we have
illustrations and letters and B) it's really going to
help tell the story of what that phrase means and
give your viewers a quicker "aha!" moment. If you're a beginner,
you're totally welcome to mimic my designs and my illustrations
just for the sake of learning in this class. But ultimately, I really do want you to be able
to come up with your own clever phrases and draw them in your own unique
illustration style. All that to say though, this
course is pretty dense, we're going to be
covering a lot. So take your time and
go at your own pace. There is no rush. You can always pause. You can step away. You can marinate. Really just take
your time and do whatever works best for
your learning style. But before we jump
into making anything, we do need to cover some illustration and
typography basics. If you're a beginner, this
is going to just give you a really good foundation
to cover the basics. And if you are
intermediate or advanced, it's just going to be
a helpful way to jog your memory on things that
you've previously learned.
3. Typography - Pt. 1: Typography could totally
be its own course. But for the sake of this
class and the project, I'm only going to talk
you through some of the very basic
fundamentals that will specifically apply to
your hand-lettering and will help you to talk
smartly about letters. Alright, we'll start
with the basics. So a character is a single unit, like a letter, punctuation mark, or a number. Typeface
versus fonts. So these terms are often
used interchangeably, but they are technically
different things. Designers get a little
bit hoity-toity about it. And I don't personally care, but I figured I
would just talk you through the difference in
case you wanted to know. A typeface is a complete set of characters that share
common design features. A typeface is made up
of a collection of fonts that vary in weight, style, condensation, et cetera. Okay, moving on to
leading. This is the vertical space
between lines of type. And so you can increase or
you can decrease the leading. And then tracking is also
known as letterspacing, but that is the average space between characters
and a block of text. And you can either increase
it or decrease it. The next one on the
list is kerning, which is a little bit
different from tracking. And it's the horizontal spacing between individual
letters or characters. Sometimes we just
need to go in there manually and adjust
the space between the letters either
wider or smaller to make the word look more
optically balanced. Next, we're going to
move on to the baseline. The baseline is the
imaginary line on which the majority of characters
and the typeface rest and the cap height is the
height from the baseline to the top of the letters in the uppercase letters of a font. The descender line defines the bottom of the
lowercase letters. The x-height is the height
of the lowercase x. And it's basically the height of the lowercase letters except for ascenders and descenders. An ascender is the stem of lowercase letters that
ascends above the x-height. And lowercase letters with
ascenders are usually b, d, f, h, k, l, and t. Then on the opposite
side we have descenders. So that's the stem of lowercase letters that
descends below the baseline. And lowercase letters with
descenders are usually g, j, p, q, and y. Okay, so last but not
least is my very favorite, which is the ligature. They are super pretty
and ligatures combine two or three characters
into one single character. I'll be sure to include all these graphics
that you've seen in the Projects and
Resources Guide so that you can
reference them later. So we're not quite done talking about typography yet (sorry). But the next section
is going to be really fun because
we're going to talk about typography
styles which will come in so handy for your
hand-lettering.
4. Typography - Pt. 2: I'm going to give you
a super broad overview of the different styles
of letters you can draw. I'm just going to
give you this big picture so that you can know what styles there
are out there and how to describe and
distinguish them. Let's start out with the serif. So the letters in serif
fonts basically have some little feet attached to the end of the stroke
of each letter. And these feet, or
serifs, can look different by the way that
they attach to the letter. So we've got old style
and transitional serifs, and these have a little curve, also known as bracketing, that are attaching this
serif to the letter. There's the modern
serif which has little or no bracketing
on the serifs. Next up is the slab serif. And these also have very little or no bracketing and there's usually no
contrast in the stroke weight. Then finally we have glyphic, which has triangular shaped serifs that pinch very neatly. Let's move on to sans-serif. So there's a lot of nuance little categories
within sans-serif, but we're not gonna go into those in this class because what you really just need
to know is that sans-serifs don't have serifs. Some sans-serifs can have
no contrast between the strokes and others can have high contrast
between the strokes. The next style is one
of my favorites to letter, which is scripts. So there are formal
scripts which looks super fancy
like what you would see on a very uppity,
fancy wedding invitation. It's very precise and each letter
is very carefully measured. You might have some fun
flourishes that you can add on the capitals or the
ascenders or descenders. And there are thick and
thin strokes applied to the letters to sort of
mimic writing with a quill. You could go a little
bit calligraphic, which is the next category, and that's just a
little less formal. And it feels a little
bit more hand done and imprecise and has a
bit more personality, but it also has this
thick and thin strokes. So let's say that you use the same letter like a
lowercase e multiple times. The e doesn't have to match the exact same way as
it would in the formal. You can play with the bounciness of it a little bit more in
the calligraphic style. There are blackletter scripts which are super old school. Something that you
would see in say, an illuminated manuscript or think about the letters
in the New York Times, we've also got handwritten
scripts which feel more handwritten like how somebody would write their to-do list. And then the last in this
category is monoline scripts, which had the same line width
throughout the entire word. Our final type of graphic
style is display, and this style can vary
widely in appearance. They are designed for
headlines and titles. They're not necessarily
made for the ease of a lengthy read
and they can get super funky and fun
because legibility really isn't a requirement,
essentially their decorative. So to recap, we have serifs, sans-serif, script and display. In the next section, I'm going to share
a little typography exercise to help you practice
with all of these styles.
5. Type Practice: So now you know the
basic typography styles. Yay! To get even better
acquainted with them, I would recommend that you
copy already existing fonts so that you can learn from them and understand how to draw letters. Tracing over them will help you understand the
anatomy the best. So take a look at
some fonts from each of the type style
categories, serifs, sans-serifs, scripts and display and copy
them from A to Z, uppercase and lowercase and extra credit if you do
numbers and punctuation. I'll include a
little guide sheet below in the Projects and Resources section so that you have something to work with. Think about it this way, in
the same way that it really helps to understand
how to draw a human realistically
before cartoonizing or stylizing them or
simplifying them. It really helps to understand how to draw letters
the way that they're supposed to look
precisely and accurately before you start bending
and breaking the rules. And the reason that
we do this is so that you can really have a good, solid foundation
and understanding of how things are
supposed to look, so that when you decide
to break those rules, you're doing it smartly
and intentionally. And this is key to making
your work look pro. Feel free to take your
time with this exercise. I know it's a pretty
dense typography exercise and it probably
seems like a pain. But it really is going to help you if you just sit with it and practice and take the time before moving onto
the next section. When you're ready to come back, we will move into a
hand-lettering exercise.
6. Hand-Lettering Exercise: Start with your handwriting. Nobody has the exact same
handwriting as you which is super cool and unique. Just write a couple of lines of text in just your
handwriting and then analyze the
way that you have been writing or basically
drawing your letters. Do you draw them
in a bubbly way? Is your handwriting angular? Is it really loose? Is it script-like? Just take a look at the way that
you're forming your letters. Then take a stab at drawing the first
letter in your name in all of those
different typography styles that
we talked about. Remember when you traced directly over a font in
the last exercise? Well, don't do that here. Freehand it in a
loose, confident way. Truly, don't worry about making
it look perfect because the point of hand-lettering
is to look hand done. And you can go beyond hand-
lettering just one letter. You can draw the
entire alphabet. You can do some
punctuation and numbers. Honestly, it's however much
work you want to put into it. Whichever typography
style feels good to you, let's go with that one for
your plant-related phrase. You can combine type
styles in a composition, but if you're a
beginner, I would recommend just sticking to one. It will be a little bit
easier to tackle and it'll also just be more
visually cohesive. Essentially, we're just
trying to find out what feels most comfortable and
natural for your hand because this is
also going to apply to the way that you
illustrate objects, which we will cover
in the next video.
7. Illustration Exercise: In this exercise, we're
trying to figure out how your hand naturally moves
when you put pencil to paper. A good exercise for this is to get a giant sheet of paper and just doodle abstract lines and shapes and see what comes out. Don't even try and draw
a specific objects. Just doodle, see if your doodles are seamless
and loopy lines. Or maybe you're just
drawing solid shapes, or maybe you draw really
angular and choppy, but just draw in a way that
feels loose and confident and expressive. Rather than
trying to fight the way that you draw and look
like a different style, just draw what feels natural to you because it's
going to feel better, and more unique than something
that already exists. What we're trying to do is
figure out the commonalities between your lettering
and your illustrations. So for me as an example, with my letters and the way
that I write my handwriting, I have a very loopy script
like a cursive look, but I also have a couple of sharp angles that I
get in there too. And it's the same way
with my illustration. I do a lot of S curves
and loop de loops. But then I have some of those pointy sharp angles
that come in there. So I want to make sure to identify that and
bring those together. Again, take your time
with this section and you can always come back
and hang out later.
8. Picking Your Phrase: Now that we've found what
feels comfortable and natural for both your lettering
and your illustration, it's time to pick out
a punny plant phrase. For this class, I
would recommend doing a super short phrase. So something around
one to five words, it will make the piece look
a little less visually overwhelming because there's less information on the canvas. And it will be a
little bit easier to tackle from a
creation standpoint. Pick a phrase that
will pair nicely with what you're
excited about drawing. So maybe you are really good at drawing
flowers or leaves. Maybe you're better at drawing inanimate objects like a
shovel or a gardening hat. Maybe you like drawing
big scenes that have a big landscape or open sky. Perhaps you like
drawing creatures like a bumblebee or hummingbird, but maybe you really
like drawing people. So you want to include a head or a hand or some kind
of a human element. You want to make sure that the illustration
actually relates to the phrase because
it's really going to help tell the story
and the message. If coming up with a phrase is overwhelming to
you, I've got you, I have an entire list of punny plant lines
that you can use, so those will be included in the Projects and
Resources section. If you're torn between different phrases, that's totally okay. You don't have to choose yet. We're actually about
to go digging for some visual inspiration and that might give
you some clarity.
9. Gathering Inspiration: Okay, so let's say that you have picked out a phrase or two. What I would recommend is
writing out the phrase itself and then underneath it, right out some illustrated
objects that you would want to draw and that might
relate to the phrase. Why are we doing this? Well, sometimes a blank
canvas can just be the scariest thing and this will help to just
nip that in the bud. Pun intended, puns will
always be intended. Take your time with
this, maybe set aside about 30 minutes and just write everything
out that comes in your head. Next step, collect
some font references. Myfonts.com or Adobe Fonts always has lovely
fonts to look at. And basically you can type out your phrase in that
font style just to get a sense of what type style is really going to work
nicely with those letters. Write them out in all caps, do uppercase and lowercase, all lowercase and just see how your letters are
interacting together. Maybe it's way too busy
when you choose a script, but maybe it's way too bland when you
choose a sans-serif. Maybe it feels really
balanced with all caps, but maybe it's more
interesting when you have the variation
between the uppercase and the lowercase
so that you can see those ascenders and descenders
in the lowercase letters. But maybe you really
want it to be super condensed and
narrow or expanded, or really heavyweight or
a really lightweight. You're just going to
learn a lot by just typing it into these
type specimens. You can get a sense of what
you like and take note of any red flags before you
actually start creating the art. Now let's get into some
illustration reference. If you're drawing a plant, look up that plant itself and draw it from
different angles. If you can find it out in the real world,
that's great too, because you can just
go take a little walk outside and be one with nature. I personally enjoy using Pinterest to gather
visual inspiration from color palettes to photography to
illustration styles, both modern and vintage. I also like to skim through Instagram to see
what's trending. Sometimes, however,
as we all know, social media can get
really overwhelming and the comparison
monster is a real thing. So to avoid this, when you're looking
at the pieces, really deeply analyze what's working and what's not working. Take your time with that piece. Don't just mindlessly scroll.
Really intentionally look at every visual
piece that you're seeing. And an important thing
to note is don't rip any of this off as your own. Just log away a
certain technique, a color palette
that's successful. And then because you'll be
finding other sources of inspiration and
you're going to be using your own unique phrase, and only you can draw like you, you're going to be
eventually doing your own thing with it and
it will become original. But don't copy other
people's work and pretend it's your own because
that's very much not cool. Once you've gathered all of
your visual inspiration, it's time to start drawing some rough sketches in
the form of thumbnails.
10. Drawing Thumbnails: First, you need to decide
what orientation you want this piece to be based off of the product that you
might want to put it on. Portrait, landscape,
square, circle, what have you. If
you're hoping to have this art on
multiple pieces, I would recommend
not drawing illustrated elements that
are bleeding off of the edge of the paper or
that are anchored onto the edge of the paper
because it will make it a lot easier for you to resize and reformat your piece. I've lovingly made some thumbnail templates
for you so you can access those in the Projects
and Resources section. So when you're doing these,
I like to set a timer for about an hour,
light a candle, get some good tunes going, and then just see how many thumbnail sketches
you can come up with. If you can get somewhere between five to ten thumbnail
sketches done, that is perfect. If you need longer,
that's great. If you don't need as much
time, that's fine too. Whatever time works for you. Try not to get too
fussy with these. The whole purpose is just to get the idea out of your
head and onto paper. So just keep them rough and
loose and let the ideas flow. In the next section,
I'm going to share some of my thumbnails
with you and I'll explain different
ways that you can combine your letters with
your illustrated elements. So you might want to check that out before
you start doing your own thumbnails because it might spark some ideas for you.
11. My Thumbnail Process: So I finished my thumbnails and I did seven different
thumbnails with seven different phrases because I couldn't narrow
it down myself. And this was the
best way just to get the ideas out of my head. I'm going to talk you through each phrase and why I
made the decisions I did. The first phrase I wanted to
tackle was "Frond Regards." I have ferns growing in my yard, so I went outside to study
how they look and try to figure out ways to
potentially simplify them. A script made sense
for this phrase because the tone
is sort of formal, like how you'd sign
the end of a letter. Using a script also
lends itself to being able to draw the fern fronds
growing out of the letters. I'm totally okay with some
wonkiness and bounciness, but I also want to find a balance of making it
still feel legible. So I used some
straight guidelines to try and keep my letters
somewhat aligned. I also want to avoid
trapped space, which is when there's an
empty space that's trapped inside of shapes
or blocks of text. I can extend some of the letters and ferns to take care of that. The next phrase that I thought would be fun to letter was "Oh So Rosy" and I really wanted to explore an Art Nouveau style. This is kind of an ornate style which can get busy really fast. Using bilateral symmetry
will really help balance everything out between
the roses and the letters. I used two different type
styles keeping "Oh So" as a simple sans-serif and letting the "Rosy" text be more
of a show stopper. I started going
back in and adding a little more detail
to the roses, styling them in a way that
mimicked the "rosy" text. This layout as an example of how the plants can
surround your letters. For the next rough sketch, I liked the gentle
and encouraging tone of the phrase "Branch Out." I started wrapping the
branches around the letters so that the letters became the
negative or empty space. It fit the theme and the
ethos of the phrase because the branches are literally branching out from the letters. Having the letters be a bold
sans-serif and all caps works the best for legibility since there are a
lot of branches. And because there are
so many branches, I thought it could be fun to add more visual interest
by adding in little Easter eggs like
birds or leaves or berries. I think ultimately I'd have the branches take
up the entire page, but I got the idea down, which was the important thing. For my next rough sketch, I wanted to find a way
for the phrase to fit inside an illustrated object. "Seeds the Day" seemed like a perfect opportunity to draw a little vintage seed packet. In this composition, the plant is separated from the text, which feels very orderly. This could also be such
a fun series because I could substitute the strawberries
out for other plants. Next, I wanted to
try coming up with something that was a
play on the word "peas." This one took me a really long time to try and figure out, and I honestly spent way more time on it than I needed to do. But the phrase "Yes Peas" made me laugh, so I
kept trying to make it work. One thing I noticed from
drawing different parts of the pea plant is that there were a lot of waves and tapers. So I tried mimicking that in
these funky block letters. I wasn't sure if it would be successful for the peas
to surround the letters, like pea confetti, for the
letters to be made up of peas, although that started
looking way too busy. Or for the peas to be a decorative inline kind
of like marquee lights. I was getting stuck. So I started drawing
some pea filigree, which was a little
more liberating. It gave me the idea to
do a script and to have the pea plant filigree
surrounding the phrase. This was starting to feel
nice and loose and organic. Using a monoline script
lent itself nicely to letting the text to be made
up of a dotted line of peas. The next rough sketch
took me a lot less time. I wanted to use the
phrase "Dig It" and place the letters inside of
a shovel silhouette. None of my previous
sketches used garden tools or portrayed
an actual scene, so I wanted to try this out. In this composition, the illustrated elements
are taking up a bit more real estate and the letters are a
little more secondary. However, the letters are
centered in the piece, so they still will
catch your attention. I saved my favorite phrase
for my final thumbnail, which is "Oh Snapdragon!" I also just love the snapdragon flower shape
as well as its colors, so the phrase was
checking all of my boxes. However, the word "snapdragon" is super long in comparison to "oh." I thought putting
it on a wavy line could help crunch
the line length. I also liked the idea
of turning the S into a dropcap to give the
piece a vintage feel. I used some grid
lines here to help make sure all the
block letters would be approximately the same width and height and rest neatly
on the baseline. The S was feeling heavy, so I made it an outline and added decorative touches inside. The whole piece was starting
to feel really unbalanced. So I tried filling in the
space with the S more, plopping snapdragons around, but I was just not feeling it. So I started over. I stuck the word snap
on top of dragon, and I made the letters
bouncy and bubbly and energetic so that I could
fill the space better. Since the letters
are really dense, I was able to get away with having some of the snap dragons overlap the letters
without losing legibility. Adding in some sparkles
gave it a disco ball field, which adds to the funky vibe, and I am here for that.
12. Cleaning Up Your Sketch: So after looking through
all of my rough sketches, I think I'm most excited
about the "Oh Snapdragon!" one, so it's time to clean it up. Using your rough
sketch as a guide, start a new layer or get a
piece of tracing paper and start really finessing exactly how you want the
letters to look. This is now the time
where it's okay to become a little bit of a
perfectionist because this clean sketch is going to be a guide for when you
create your final piece, so it's pretty important. You can either do
this as an outline or you can fill in some of the letters if that helps you understand the density
of everything. But I would recommend doing everything in gray
scale for now and not focusing on color just yet because then that way you can see exactly how the shapes are playing together. Anytime that I use color in this section, it's just to be able
to see what I'm doing, but I'm really not
trying to think about getting a perfect
color palette just yet because it's
mostly important to figure out is the
piece feeling balanced. And if it works well in
grayscale or black and white, it's going to look
really good in color. This is feeling good! I think it's time to pick
out a color palette.
13. Choosing Your Color Palette: Hooray! It's time to pick
out a color palette, which is going to be so
much fun because color really will help convey
the emotion of the piece. That being said, I
actually really prefer a limited color palette.
Because we're using hand-lettering and
illustrated elements, I think having a more limited
color palette will help to refine this piece
because there's already a lot of
personality going on. Pick out a color palette that really goes with the
mood of your phrase. So if you chose a really cheeky, happy-go-lucky kind of a phrase, you can get away with bright,
bold, saturated colors. If you chose more of an
encouraging chill phrase, then maybe you could go
with some more muted, less saturated, more
tranquil calming colors. A great way to get
your palate started is to start looking at
some photography or found objects that
really resonate with you or that makes sense
with what you're drawing. So for me, I was
drawing snapdragons, so I really wanted to look through all the
different photos of the colors of snapdragons and the ones that I was
most drawn to word, the peaches and the corals and the tangerine, kinda yellow. That color palette
really resonated with me. Also because my phrase, "Oh Snapdragon!" is a
play off of "oh snap!" it feels like funky. So maybe looking into
some retro wallpapers, 70s style that might also
help really tell the message. So use all of those colors at a starting point and
then start overlapping the colors on top of
each other to see how the colors interacting and
playing with each other because you want to make
sure that they're not going to be vibrating too much and hurting somebody's eyes (unless that's what
you're going for). But this is just a
good way to see how the colors are interacting
with each other. If you're torn between
a few palettes, you can always do some
rough color studies similar to how we were
doing rough sketches. If we were torn between
different phrases and just see which ones are actually going to work on your piece
and feel the best. But maybe you've already
found your perfect palette, but you're not sure which
colors are going where. By doing just a really
quick, rough color study, you can just get a loose idea of where things are going to go. Quick color mockups are
really going to help you out.
14. Let's Finish This!: So it's time to start really
finishing up your piece. So pick a favorite
color thumbnail and you don't have
to be married to it. Just use it as a very
helpful guide for yourself as you start to
really build this thing out. Find a brush that feels
comfortable for you to draw with. I personally have really
been enjoying using the dry ink brush that
already comes with Procreate. It's found in the
inking section. It helps me stay loose and it has just a little
bit of texture. I do have a bunch of other
brushes that I really like using that add
some texture, ones that I've purchased, so I can include the links
for those below if you're interested in knowing which brushes are my favorites, but yeah, just pick one that feels comfortable
for you and that you feel like can let you draw
fluidly and do your thing. So get in there and start
finishing up your piece and I will share a time-lapse
video of me finishing mine.
15. Parting Thoughts: That's it! Thank you so much for taking the time to take this course. I loved teaching it. Please add your work to
the project section. I am so curious to see what you make. If you have any
questions at all, just ask them in the
comments section below and we can just
have a conversation. If you would like to learn
anything additional from me or you have any other classes you'd like to take for me, also let me know. Even though it's super
weird talking into this camera by myself in a room, I would do it again if this is a helpful
thing for you all. So let me know what
you want to learn. If you want to see all the
things that I'm up to, you can follow me on
all social platforms at Designed by Shea. Stay sparkly and have fun
creating lovely things!
Shea O'Connor, Illustrator & Designer
