Hand-Lettering Basics

1. Intro: Hi, I'm Danielle. I started my hand lettering company Marmalade Blue in 2008. I fell in love with hand lettering because it allows me to mix my passion for graphic design with my background In illustration, I believe anybody can learn to hand letter in this class. I will teach you the basics. First, I'll show you how to hold your pen. Then I'll show you how to make strokes and letters and have a stack braces. By the end of this class, you'll be able to apply your new skills to create personalized items such as note cards, cake toppers and Waller. Okay, let's get started. 2. Supplies and Setting Up : before we get started, I want to ensure you have everything you need. So let's go over supplies. I like to use grid paper. Everything is outlined and keeps my stroke straight. My pen of choice is a Tom broken. It's a brush tip, which allows you to get beautiful line variation. It also has a felt tip pen on the back to adjust any strokes that have been squiggly or messy, and use a pencil to chart out everything on the final project to ensure that I have everything straight and in frame and could be confident with my strokes, I choose Bristol Board to make our poster. It's a soft, smooth paper that allows the to go on beautifully quickly and drive fast. We'll also be using a ruler in order to ensure everything is straight. For the most part, Washington will allow us to keep our paper confidently stuck to the surface, so it's not wiggling around as we move. Should you want to opt for something other than a poster, you can feel free to have colorful card stock on hand to make beautiful cards. Okay, that's all you need. Let's get started way. Get any actual lettering when I want to do is show you how to set up a space so that you feel comfortable and confident in your strokes. I like to use graph paper and I prefer to tape it down to the surface. I find that it's easiest if you tilt the paper away from your natural dominant hand. My hand is right, so I'm going to tell the paper to the left. This will allow me to have a nice, lively end. Interesting stroke. So all of my lines aren't straight up and down. I'm going to secure the paper with washi tape there. Perfect. When I work off of my grid paper, I've noticed that my letters look best with around 11 squares. So what I'll do is use this ruler and my trusty pencil to mark off exactly 11. The grid paper that I use works with giant squares in the giant squares are exactly one inch. This will help me kind of set a baseline for my larger letters, and that'll make a 2nd 1 for my lower case letters. Now that we have our space set up here, it would be best to move anything that's within elbow reach. You want to make sure you have plenty of room to move about the cabin, your arm is going to be used in its entirety. We're gonna want long, smooth, elegant strokes. And so you're gonna need to be able to be on par with the table in just the right position so that you can hover over it without running your elbow into anything. You'll also feel free to stand if that feels more comfortable for you. Me? I prefer to sit down. Now it's time to pick up our Tom bow. I like to use this brush in particular because it is almost like a paint brush. The other end has its lovely felt tip that you can use for fine details. But for the most part, the strokes that we're gonna make to make our hand lettering will be used with this. The brush itself has some really interesting little tiny hairs on it. So even though it's wet, it's gonna make really textured and beautiful lines. They won't be perfect, but that's OK. So now we're gonna talk about how to hold this pen when you hold your pen, you don't want to be up to far near the tip. You're gonna need this room to ensure you get lovely, beautiful, high contrast ing strokes. So you're gonna choke back a little almost to the center of the pen so that you have enough room. Now, here's the scary part. Before we get started, we're gonna make a tiny little mark on the paper because it's easy when you're working with something like this to feel like it has to be perfect, but it doesn't. It's okay to fail, and in fact, we're gonna make a ton of strokes. We're gonna mess up a little bit. We're gonna have a couple little failures. But the important thing is, we keep pushing through that, and I know you can. So what I do to keep myself from being intimidated and scared by such a large piece of blank paper is to make a little dot corner there. Now it's a mess. And now we can begin in terms of your body positioning. It's important to just feel comfortable for me. It's often sitting and eventually leaning over the table a little bit to get at the furthest strokes away. I find for some people they'll be standing up on both feet, hunched over, sometimes wrapping around almost like this kind of caging and holding everything in whatever feels comfortable will translate into the way that you draw. 3. Practicing Strokes: Now we're gonna talk about strokes, but before we do, I want to remind you that everything is going to be okay because we are going to make some mistakes because we're working with our hands. Nothing is ever perfect. So don't feel intimidated or nervous. If you don't get it the first or third or 10th time perseverance will make this project work for you. Right before you put your pen to paper. It's important to remember that you're not gonna put as much pressure as you think when you're starting. Beginner mistakes are pushing really hard, moving around really fast. It looks like a scribble, and we need to be delicate with ease. The pen tip will push and move as much as you want it, Teoh. So that means you need to come in very gently to start. We're gonna make a stroke, and the stroke that we make initially is going to be very, very soft. So let's get started. We're gonna make a very delicate line, very little pressure, and you can already see that I've messed up a little bit. The line variation is not consistent, but that's all right. Do another one and you can see how it's kind of tapering a little bit of the end. That's based on the angle. I'm holding my pen. We're gonna increase a little bit in the amount of pressure that we use very gently and you'll see right here is a moving I'm working online line parallels. I want everything to be about the same height and about the same wit until we increase our pressure. Keep moving, adding a little bit more pressure at a time, and you'll notice that the line is not completely perfect. That's okay, and it's also more common when you push less. So as we start to increase, you'll see them. Tip of the pen is really working for us. This time. The strokes are starting to get more confident and more consistent. Feel free to start pressing a little bit harder. Even you can almost hear the squeak as it moves down the paper. You can also notice that I'm using my entire arm there, so this is a great way to start kind of getting out a little bit of the nerves and you can see that we've moved from very, very thin to very, very thick So when we're looking at making strokes, we're trying to practice things that were going to mimic when we make actual letters and then actual words. So the curtain that I choose to use right now, it's one that it's a stem, which means that it is the long part of almost any letter that has a straight line. Ours D's bees A's Almost everything in my alphabet has this. And so it's important for me to be particularly proficient in it now because we're practicing. I'm not going to measure out the rest of this. We're just working on lines. I find that when I make these strokes, it's important for me to start out really soft and an increase My pressure. We're on very slowly, and in this case it's OK for me to lift my pen off of the paper because I'm getting ready to move around into a softer, a more gentle curl curl up like that and when I finish this curve like to push down really hard to get what we call contrast contrast in letter forms is the thickest part versus the finished part of the letter. Usually the thicker something is versus health in something is the more elegant it appears to be. This one looks pretty good. It's not perfect, but we're gonna try again. So again, coming over and allowing plenty of room, we're gonna gently touch the pen to the surface and we're gonna start increasing our pressure as we move down. Gonna lift slightly, possibly giving ourselves some breathing room right here. Gonna go around very gently, and then you hear the dragon the squeak as we make it thick could make a bunch of these if we want. And you'll notice that the variety changes because again, this is by hand, that one's a little thicker. By doing these over and over again, you're deciding exactly what you want this to look like. I don't know if I necessary, Like like this 3rd 1 is thin as it is. And this last one I did is just a little bit too thick. Only by doing this and trying over and over can I determine if this is something that I like and what I want my forms to to emulate. So while I'm thinking about what I want, my letter forms toe look like I'm thinking about words in my mind thinking about long and thin and round pretty Kirby. And when I think about them over and over again it helps me to come up with a proper stroke . We could do this all day, but now we're gonna look at Rounder, slightly C shaped girls. These kind of line strokes are used to make those sees aids. Lots of lower case letters. You'll use them often. We're gonna drop down a little bit further right here. We're gonna start with a very gentle touch. Gonna thicken our stroke, possibly lifted, needing Teoh and then come back up again to make something thin. You can see how here, if I did want to finish it in in a I could just make a thick stroke and swash off. If I wanted it to be a C, I could curl around and finish it that way. Do some more of these. And at this point, sometimes the lines will get a little bit thinner. Sometimes they'll be a little bit thicker at the bottom. You're lying is change based on what angle? You're holding your pen so you'll see down here on this 4th 1 that my line got a little bit thicker because as I was moving, I didn't adjust my wrist to finish it off. It's very, very slow. The slower you are when you work, the more time you have to think about what you're doing. It will help you to make less errors, kind of like that last one I did and how angled it was coming up. But then again, this one might be my favorite, too. It changes. You can see what the variation I have here that I now have an opportunity to make a decision about what I want my letters to look like. When I look at these, I think either the second to last one for the very last one I did is something along the lines of what I want. I like how we've got very round shapes but their terminating or finishing in these very slight angles. It's more consistent and less contrast, which I think looks good, and I feel confident in my ability to do it over and over again, another kind of stroke that will be using a lot of would be an M curve. It's also used for curse of ours and for ends. So I thought this would be a nice one to try. And it's one of my personal favorites. It doesn't ever not look good. So what will Dio We're gonna take our pen. We're gonna very jumping touch the surface of the paper. We're gonna come around the curve and we're gonna apply some heavy pressure. Then we're gonna lift very softly. But I need to pay attention to on my next one because I have grouped this up already is I need this little area down here to be smooth, much like the top of the stroke getting a really nice transition. It's almost seamless. And so I want to try to echo that. The next time I do this, it's gonna try again. There we go. That's much better. I like my m and my end strokes to be very dramatic. I'm sure we can work this in on our next video. When we start working with actual letters, do you feel more confident you'll notice the my strokes have gone from being very wiggly to now more sophisticated and better handle. I think this happens to everybody. Got a warm up a little bit where you can really hit the groove Catch your stride. There's also something very reassuring about having the paper start to fill up in front of you. Makes you feel like you've accomplished something. And you have because you're trying something new that looks great. This set of strokes for the oh, they're a little more uncommon. There are only used for uppercase owes and up our case cues. But because they're a little bit more intense like to go over how we can make those today The very first stroke that I'm going to make is the outside one. Because my owes loop around into a bull's eye, We're gonna start just off of center of what we think is going to be the top of the stroke . We're gonna come around really hard pushing, pushing with a lot of pressure, and then we're gonna lift up. We're gonna come up much, much more gently, almost looking like we're gonna continue, though instead we're gonna drop down again like that. Now you can adjust how much overlap you want as you go. You'll also notice that your pen makes different strokes as it goes up and away from you and down and towards you. I find that my strokes air most confident when the pen is moving down towards me because I've got the full force of my pressure. So therefore, I usually have more confident strokes going down as the post to going up. Everybody's different. However, you can use this pressure to your advantage when making strokes could make for much more interesting letter forms, something we want to stay away from when we're working. It's trying to make everything look perfectly uniform letters or such complicated things because they not only look beautiful and creative, but there's almost a science to them, like how closely does a K resembling age. They're really, really similar, but they're handled two totally different ways to make some more those even though this one wasn't what I intended, I kind of like how it's thin up top and thicker on the bottom. There we go. Well, those are fun. I think this one, the very last one, has the best shape. It's long and thin, like I'm like I'm liking. It has a little bit of an angle on it, but it's still pretty round. So now let's look at one more stroke. This is the one that we would use for our EMS and our ends. We're gonna push really hard initially, come up very gently and then almost do some sort of soft wiggle into a softly rounded point . This one is one of my favorites. You can also, if you like the idea of a P with a curl on it. This is a really nice way to do that. You pushed down really hard and again. I'm thinking all the time about what kind of shapes I want pushing really hard here. You can hear how hard I'm pushing that little squeak. And then I finished very gently right there. This is a good time to notice. This area isn't quite perfect. You can see where I lift it off to make a new stroke. So I'm going to take the felt tip end of the pen. I'm gonna just fill that in. Do that over here too. Can also use this if I want at a delicate little curve right there to curl the stroke a little bit. So we'll do this again. I can make this even a little bit bigger. I want to Let's start to notice that I'm feeling more confident. I'm getting better arm movement. If you're having trouble with wiggling, feeling like you're strokes aren't thick enough. We're confident enough it could be because you're too far away from your paper, in which case you want to lean over or bring it closer to you. In my case, I'm noticing that I'm doing better down here, so I might have to adjust how closely my paper is oriented to me. This is a nice start, so it looks like from here we're ready to try making some actual letters. I know. At least I feel more confident and I hope you do too. 4. Capital Letters A-G: Now we're ready to conquer actual letter forms. We're gonna be more thoughtful about the way that we set up our space this time because we want to ensure we're gonna have enough room for everything. We're gonna work on capital letters just to kind of get a feel for the additional strokes. There are a lot more involved in lower case. So we're gonna use our ruler. We're gonna use our pencil, and we're just gonna mark out the proper heights. My ex height, as mentioned before, is close to around 11 blocks 9 10 left. So I'm gonna mark that out just here on my grade paper, and then I'm gonna use the ruler just to make additional light dots. You could make a line all the way across if you'd like. Just because this is practice and it is okay if you extend beyond either direction, this is really more so a guide. We're gonna leave ourselves about three blocks worth of room and we're going to prep for the next row. Gift ISS 33 Great. There. And I tried to keep everything pretty even by block. Makes it a lot easier than doing half blocks for you. This might be slightly large, but for me, I find it get better lines if minor somewhere around 11. I think when you start to get into capital letters around six blocks big, it becomes almost too small, and your pen almost has a limit as to how thick or thin it can get. So be mindful when you're plotting this out. Probably somewhere around 8 to 12 squares is a healthy amount of space. We're going to start off with our A. I like to make my eyes using 3 to 4 strokes. I find that when I put pressure down in the first stroke, it's at an angle about 45 degrees, and it's very light at first. It's a little heavier I can lift up here if I feel like I need to move on a just very lightly, make my way around and drag it down really hard to get a nice fat curl. The next stroke is light pressure consistent and then it terminates into a very light. Even stroke can use the end of my felt tip pen to go back in, smooth everything out actually appear to. So we've made the crossbars the drag, this beautiful line right across to finish our A. Now you notice that these are not connected. They don't have to be unless you would like them to. In which case you can add a little curl or a little swoosh. Whatever feels natural and you think looks good. So let's make another one really quickly. That was a little different, but it's not bad. This is nice practice and we've made our first letter. So let's move on to be Herbie is very similar to the A in the sense that they have the same first starting stroke. We're probably not gonna curl up, asshole, I as we did on the A just so that we have enough enough space to throw in the beautiful be curbs. We're gonna start again with very light pressure, and we're gonna give ourselves plenty room to do this. We're gonna thicken up and then start to release. By the time we got to the bottom coming around and again making our fat girl, this would be a good time. If you'd like to adjust any of the line quality, I find that it's best to fill in any inconsistencies as everything is still wet, I find that the Tom biomarkers over time become translucent as they dry. So if you go to adjust it later while it's dry, it's going to show up a little. So now we're gonna start on our beautiful Be gonna make a very soft, gentle curve here, bring it around. But it touches the top of the stroke, and I'm thinking narrow letters. It's very narrow. We've got this really beautiful line quality then this guy right here on that, because that's fun. So there's a lot of room within the letter forms to play. You can feel free to add embellishments as you'd like. We're alter things. I find it's important to think before you put your stroke down to really commit to it in your mind. It's almost like a guide for where you want to go. When we move on to the project, we're gonna take some time to lightly sketch with our pencil to find the right line, so there's no pressure going into it. I don't want to scare you right now, however, we're practicing, and so all of this is gonna be free hand. As for finding our way and learning our voice. Gonna see if I can fit the sea on here It's gonna be a little tight, but I think we could do it. Sorry, We're going to start a little bit lower, Kind of anticipating second, half of the curve. And sometimes if you see me doing this, I'll be checking where I'm gonna be going. Just kind of visually before I go, that's OK. It's not a bad idea to know what you're gonna be doing before you get when we started off very gently. It's very heavy stroke. And then you can either leave your seat like this or for me. I like to curling around, but a fun little swash on the end of it, which we can talk about a little more later. And now we know our A B C's. So now we're gonna start hitting the DEA's. Even though my name is Danielle, desire a little challenging for me. There's almost some pressure behind them because it's the first letter of my name. So if I wobble on this one, I'm sorry. So the stroke for the D is going to again be very similar to both the A stroke and the B stroke. We have ourselves a little bit more room. Very gentle, very heavy pressure room. Start picking up her pen right when we get to the bottom. Still following our guides we made I'm gonna make a tinier loop, but with a similar girl, you notice that all the measurements here are not perfect. Such as? The curl on the B is a little bit shorter than the curl on the A, but they look the same. They have a similar consistency of stroke. And so they look related. We're kind of going for that kind of, um, relatability with our letters. We want them to look like they belong together without being exactly replicating. So with our d here. This is kind of the scary part. Got to make a big, huge curl around to finish it. You start here very little pressure, and then we're gonna pull it and really hard. Very strong stroke, then finished gently on the other side. This guy, I'm gonna go back in to my original line. I'm gonna add that in. No, it's gonna take my felt Tip fix Any imperfection? Rigidity. It looks nice. Gonna do it again. They're aspects that I like about both of these. I think I prefer the way that the girls started here in the stroke here. But I like the thinness of the first T. That's OK, That happens. And over time, if we wanted to do more of them, we could get closer to how maybe a more idealized version of these, But we're pressing on because these are a lot of fun. So we're gonna start near the very top of the first curl of the letter gonna do a beautiful hard stroke like this going to continue on little more gently into a loop. We're gonna start applying hard pressure here around the round, this part less pressure. And then finishing this big, beautiful, thick girl. I like really curly, swoopy, elegant letter forms like this because even though they're a little messy and a little jittery, they're still really beautiful. So now, with E f. This one's one of my favorites, and we're starting with our beautiful curl, going to bring this up and then dramatically kind of down. It's got this big, beautiful top to it. We're going to make a similar stroke like this one and this one, it's gonna be a little shorter. And then we're just gonna fit the little crossbar right in between. That's he would get to these in here. There's yes, beautiful. So we've got a lot of variation going on here. This last step is not exactly the way that I but I would have liked. But I think that if it ended up on a poster or on a card, I would be okay with it. It's a little bit harder to imagine how these letter to work together when they're separate like this. So if you're starting to get discouraged, give yourself a little bit of grace. So now we're gonna move to G's. We're starting to get into letters that run underneath of what we call the baseline. It's going to extend down as a descend er and have maybe a little loop on the bottom. Whites have ease some Z's, and so we're gonna account for that. And how high that we make our letters. I'm in fact going to make a little notation 123 years. The first line I made is where I'm guessing the loop is going to be formed in The second line I made is where the G is going to connect to the stem, which I'll show you in a second. So the G it starts like this, we're gonna bring it around gently. You bring it up like that, then we're gonna make a stroke very similar to the other ones we've been making. But it's not gonna be nearly as long. And then it comes around like that. Still something then. And as you'll notice some of the strokes and letters that are making now very from even the document that I've made this class That's okay. As long as you're learning between each of these, every time you make a letter, it will be different. But hopefully it'll be better. 5. Capital Letters H-Q: ages, Air kind of extravagant creatures. They take up a lot of space, but they're really beautiful. We'll see here. We've got another curl. It's around. We're gonna start to apply pressure not at the top, The apex of the Strip But right after came this nice, long, thick, beautiful line. We're going to push more. So with tip of our pen around like this, we want to leave enough room so that when we loop this large stroke around, there's gonna be enough space between here so you can see the white. We're gonna come down like that and just finish it up. It's lovely. Then we're going to do another one. There we go. Eyes are going to utilize the stroke that we have not practiced over and over again. And you're going to see that as you move through the alphabet doing this, you're gonna become more and more confident. By the time you come to like L M and Opie. We start to hit this. This very obvious familiar stroke will become more and more confident, kind of make you wish you had all that confidence when we started. But that is what we practiced. We're gonna hit this curve again. We're very familiar with it. That and with an eye, we're going to make almost like a pie shape coming up like this. Apply a little bit of pressure once we get to stroke, when it crosses over and finish it delicately like that. There we go. We're gonna do it again. Nice. We're almost halfway through now. We're about to get into the jays. We want to be careful when we do these to ensure that the top of the J is not terribly long or it might look like a tea. A lot of times length in strokes is what differentiates certain letters from other ones. So we want to be really distinct about this. I find that sometimes to help offset length and possibly getting a little bit too free. With that, I'll point things down. As with the top crossbar on this Jay, I'm gonna come in from where, plan to attach it first. And then I'm gonna add in my stroke that were so familiar with by now and then on I think I'm gonna make a loop live bigger this time. So even start here. Here we go. That looks like a fun way to me. It's an out of the K. We're only gonna do a little curl that leads up to again are familiar stem stroke bringing it down around the squeaky drag with me upper arm of K, applying light to medium pressure group around, but the bottom stroke fall a little heavier. Like this case or some of the harder letters for me. I think everybody has few that they gravitate towards. As I said, I like the really loopy ones home. Just run that right back in there it is. Okay to go back through and just add in a stroke confidently. If you feel that it wasn't your best go the first time Like even on this K. I'm going Teoh here. I feel that looks a little better. All right. So on to l l is my favorite this wonderful? No, actually, that was correct. No, that whole stroke right there was very light and pressure because right here is where we're gonna drive it down really hard. Can a very soft finish in our hard and squeaky little stroke here. We're gonna curl around gently and you can even reinforce the stroke by moving down towards your body the second time. That looks pretty good. We'll do the same here, leaving ourselves enough room. Do a 2nd 1 light pressure around. And if the stroke disconnects while you're while you're working, it's not the end of the world. Can always go back and reinforce anything. Come in here with her. Find tip. Make that more consistent. There. It looks good right now. At this point, this is a little too close for me, so I'm going to move the sheet up a little bit. There we go. There. Now I feel like I have a little more room. We're gonna go into the EMS, which are very loopy. And that very last stroke we practiced in the last video. We're gonna utilize it right now. Really thick application. Very light coming all the way around this really graceful sweep. You could see I got a little bit of drag here on the pen, but it doesn't look bad. It's what brushes dio. I'm OK with this. Come up almost as high as the first drug, but not as long as this. As long as the 1st 1 on the bottom to create the first Lupin RM and then one more time playing heavy pressure until the very end and the weed lube up in this nice elegant we'll finish do one more time. I love this town that the pen makes when it drags. You don't have to push that hard. It's just something that I like to dio come. It feels natural to me. And as you practice this, you're going to find that certain movements are more natural for you. You might have a lighter hand in all cases. By all means. Feel free to to use that now the end Very similar. It's basically half a nem. There we go. It was pretty easy. We've done that one before already. All right, so now we're onto are those which we already practice and should feel pretty good about. We're gonna start at the out most stroke just a little bit further in in center. And then we're gonna instantly by a lot of heavy pressure on this until we get to the bottom. Gentle pressure up, then heavy pressure again. And you can feel free to finish that out if you need to, because it was kind of wiggly gonna go back in and fill it in. What you should start to notice by now is that the alphabet you've made should start to feel pretty consistent, which means it should feel like it all belongs together. If it doesn't, that might mean that you're burying your your strokes a little. Um, your hand might be moving around. You could be having some issues with maybe how hard you're pushing down. But in general, all of these lines here should look like they're pretty much going the same angle. Everything should feel like it's about the same thickness and thinness as you look from letter to letter and your curls and finishes on each stroke will also help reinforce that this belongs as an alphabet. It's not a p Very light pressure, initially sweeping up towards the top on the heavy pressure here, and it can curve a little bit. I like mine to Kurt Light coming out heavy and you can choose to connect it or not. I don't necessarily like mind connect all the way. She can see. I'll just let it sit. There you go. Queues. What? I'm gonna dio Let's count up three squares just put a little line here because the queue has the same as she was the G. It's going to be kind of round and kind of large if we make it exactly the same size as thes other letters and it's gonna dwarf everything else. So what I'm gonna do is essentially make my, oh, going to start at the top again, flying heavy pressure here and then instantly using up at the bottom, slow around and then heavy again. But what will make this different from an O? I'm going to gently continue this around, girl underneath and lube it like that. That's fun. We'll do it one more time and it looks like we're gonna need some more paper, which is okay, a light touch light to medium. Here we go. Now the papers full. We're going to swap this out really quickly. 6. Capital Letters R-Z: so we're gonna get to work on the are We are is very similar to the P. It just has a little curly loop, and then a finishing stroke used to really struggle with these, but they're becoming fast. My favorite again. We're gonna come up like we did with P. You make a very confident stroke. We can reconnect this one. We're going around it out. So and instead of finishing it, we're going to this down medium pressure than light and then curl into our favorite really loud, very thick girl. That guy's fun. We're gonna do it one more time. Very heavy pressure here around. Yeah. Have to go into a just refined some of these lines. There we go. Now it s my ass. Is air always tilted? I find that makes it easier for me to make the curves makes sense, like throwing a little squash on there. And I usually you would think that with your s is that you would continue all the way around with the same amount of pressure. But if you do, it's gonna look really funny. So the biggest thickest stroke is actually not on the ends of the s where the roundness parts are. It's in the middle and you taper out and make your way around like so her Linus Cool, jagged again. That's OK. Kind of like him like that. The nice thing about this particular stroke on the S is it allow you if you have, say, a tea with it, S and t often go together in words. It'll allow you to extend that out and make that cross bar of your tea. That's what we call a ligature which will get into a little bit later, another s back and fix that part. I'm around it. All right. You know, just a just a just there. Yes. Gonna cut down here to the next line. Think that's we're not gonna be able to fit both teas. So with tea, make a swash like this almost like 1/2 moon. We drag him out a little further than you probably think is comfortable and make a loop. When you make the loop, we'll see him kind of turn into that very familiar curve that we've been doing. You can see how it's similar to the J from before, but it's not quite. It's enough that, especially with an h, it will read perfectly as a t do this again. Two medium pressure here. Then out around which keys push harder all the way down to the bottom in. Nice. All right, use have a beautiful fix. Stroke. I love these guys. The narrower they are, in my opinion, the better. This really beautiful line again. Almost like the M that we practiced. Except instead of finishing it, we're gonna bring it up like that. And we're not gonna go up quite as high as on this loop. We're gonna maybe come down at a block, wiggle our pen so that the softest point of pressure is up here. Then make a very thick, confident line terminated in the M stroke that we made in the last video do the same thing again. This one's a little bit narrower, which I like. Yeah, that was much better. The key on these it's similar to the EMS. In the end, you want to make sure that this little connecting line is really clear and that it meets not quite seamlessly but close to the next stroke. Now for these these are very similar. Think initial stroke on very thin line into something like this. The notice that the stroke thickness is a little funny on this guy because we were going away from ourselves. See if we can squeeze this one here too. Yeah, those guys look great. We're in the homestretch. If you want to take a moment to shake out for a little bit, feel free to do that. It's important to stay loose and limber. So now we're gonna work on our W's, which we should feel more confident in because the use and the V's are very similar. Same idea. Get this long, beautiful stroke here. Almost like on the M, except we turn it out, make a thin line of connection and then we start, say, about three blocks down from the tallest part of the W. Make a similar stroke. Well, it around like that. And then I'm going to connect like that, using thick pressure and then finishing in something thin. This guy is also kind of big, So consider that when you're planning for your lines, don't you? That one's a little thinner. It's more so the look that I'm going for Baxter goes in this nice. That happens, stick with that one. Here's our X got this beautiful thick line here very thin and then a thicker stroke. We bring it up almost like the U. But then we stopped. So, like the u gonna make this thick stroke here very soft and gentle, coming around a little thicker. And instead of finishing it off with another stroke, we're gonna stop. Add in dinner slightly shorter stroke, which will start down about four blocks, start from the curving from the other direction. It will be much better. That's a good X. Do that can something you want to consider. When you're doing strokes like these, you'll notice. On this last one on the last X, I added what we call ball terminal. It's where it just kind of ends in a little round point, and that could be a nice way to add a unique touch to your work. You'll notice that on my larger curly's washes, I ended like a squarish, um, heavy kind of hand, and that's fairly distinct to the way I do things. But again, if you're looking for ways to find your own voice and personality with your letters, that's one way to do it and do it well, we're down to our last two letters. So now with the why we're going to do the same thing we did for the G, we're going Teoh, move up about three squares and make a little notation with our pencil just so we know where to cut it off. Start with thicker stroke around gracefully like we have with all the other letters before cut up with a soft one, then hit down. And I'm gonna extend a little bit past the baseline that we made for ourselves because you can. Why not? You can with a couple small adjustments, we finished the why and now to the last letter. Let's get that Z So Z, it's gonna start here, do our typical swoop. Except we're gonna cut over to the far right and then make a long, dramatic stripped down around and finishing a curl back, thinking that up a little bit from the very first stroke. It's very dramatic, a perfect way to end the alphabet and with a couple small adjustments there, that's the end. So we've made it through all of our upper case letters gonna continue quickly to lower case and show you how all of this can work together. 7. Lower-Case Letters: way completed are uppercase alphabet. We're going to continue on with the lower case. I encourage you to keep the upper case letters still on hand just so we can ensure that the letters we make now look like they belong with that particular alphabet. I've already made some outlines on the paper designating where we're going to be putting our strokes. I have marked off for me. I like to use about four blocks to accommodate the X height, which is how tall letters are on sees ease, esses things of that nature. But I have here an additional line on the tops of each of my rose, about three blocks tall to accommodate larger letters like Bees D's efs. And because we've had so much practice with these letters, I'm gonna just cut right into it. You can adopt my paper again. I'm gonna add in the A and I'm going to keep in mind the fact that my initial alphabet was really narrow and kind of tall. So for the A, I wanted to have that narrow, tall feeling going around it like our practice stroke in the first video. And then I'm going to have just a tiny little swash right there to finish out the step. It's pretty cute. Can using light pressure. The important thing is to make sure that on all of these smaller case letters that you're giving enough space from where it the round part ends to where the stem begins that will make it look like it's finished and a little bit more elegant. We're going to continue on with our be stroke, just finishing out really quickly, keeping in the same principles of narrow because a lot of the first letters in the lower case alphabet er the same. I'm going to blow through these as we've already made many of these same strokes before with these guys, it can feel like the pressure is on because they're all fairly similar in size. But when we actually put them into phrases, we can be a little bit more free with how they relate to each other and maybe a little bit less perfect about size and height. Now we're gonna move to the F start that one a little bit lower, like a block down, because it goes underneath the baseline very slow. Please think stroke terminated just below maybe add a little ball terminal. It's to make it feel fancy. So what the g I'm gonna move up just one one block that we have enough room here. All right? Not age. Very long stroke. We heard the top part here, just in case. We want to add a loop on the back and using our mark up here. Use that beautiful curve that we made in the practice. Come there. I am of the opinion. These would look better with a little loop. Throw that in Right there. Thanks. Now on to the I very similar to the practice stroke we did before. Very straight forward light pressure than heavy in late again dot Right above, and it doesn't have to be perfect, but if you want to, you can go in and just adjust it as necessary. J similar just a little bit longer. It's like this. Fix those dots. Que is very similar to the age of sense that we start up really high. Long, heavy stroke. No man is beautiful Kurd. That echoes some of the capital letters that we've done. Bring it down and loop it up a little bit. I can tell while I'm working here that my pen is starting to break down a little bit in terms of the sharpness of the point. If you noticed this happening, you could do one of two things. You can either go with it or you could switch out. Your pen is almost like an O doesn't start around all the way, then agenda loop. Think so. I m in the end or just like baby versions of the larger ones, maybe less Luby. Special attention toe where the strokes connect to each other, usually the thinner those are the more legible, especially at small sizes. Do the end just very similar? All right, so let's take a moment to shake out a little to feel loose, I noticed it's around this point where I start to feel more comfortable. Continue into my O. Those are very small for this particular apart. So you might have to be more gentle about how all of this curbs together. I'm just a little bit wider. Do you think you need so they look open like that? We're on two peas look very similar to the grown up counterparts. All right, we're onto the queue just very similar shaped p Who got this beautiful opportunity here when we get underneath to bring it up, make a fun little curl, do that again starts got a little close there, but it's nothing terrible. In fact, I can thinking this one up a little bit. Bring to the are it's pretty easy. It's almost like an N or a M that you only finished 1/4 of the way like that little s Is there hard? So this one doesn't turn out right for you. Totally understand. Hard to get such a Christine little stroke on something so small. So essentially you're going, Teoh make a stroke almost sideways like you would be making. Here we go. The larger s wonderful. Our tea. We're going to start it two blocks from the top, typically or a little bit shorter than higher loopy letters. It's very similar to the are in the end in the m stems, just a little crossbar and then the use very similar their taller counterparts. Same idea. Light pressure. Heavy pressure in a very thin line between another thicker stroke. It's part of the office. That's a little easier because you've already done most of these before W's, they're gonna very just a tiny little bit. But you can do this. It's gonna start in like a very you. We're going to drop down just a little bit, just a block. Bring it around, keep thin pressure up until the top, and then make a little wing. In fact, we're gonna fix that here. We're gonna do it again. I hope you're feeling more confident with your brush. Now, take a little bit of getting used, Teoh. Important thing is not to fight it. All right, baby X Got three letters left You similar. It's Dad Tiny for to take the felt tip here. Go through and fix anything you were dissatisfied with because we're getting into very small strokes and small strokes could get a little wiggly. You know, the why can hold these air very similar their larger counterparts. We're about to do the last one. Don't hold your breath. It's almost done. You've probably done great. Quick. See then pressure until you hit the heavy diagonal. And then you can adjust here with a little tail because that's fun. And there we go. We got the whole thing. So now you have a collection of letters. Letters by themselves are wonderful, but they can be a little bit difficult to maneuver with because we're used to them in context. So now we're gonna learn how to put these letter forms together into phrases, how to orient them on the page and how toe adds washes. 8. Writing Phrases: We've learned a lot of things today. We've learned how to make strokes, how to translate them into letters, inform alphabets. And so now we're gonna take those letter forms. We're gonna make beautiful words out of them so we can see how they interact with each other and maybe make more sense because we're getting into a little bit more complicated ideas. We're going to use a pencil first, just a very roughly sketch everything in so that we don't have to feel uncomfortable and can go and confidently with the brush pen. Have opted for the word cheers to start out with. I'm gonna make my C. And again, this is gonna be very rough. Can I just follow the Ark? And I'm not worried about the baseline at this point. I'm OK. Some of these things not lining up or being even. Here we go. So now that I've marked this word in with a pencil, you can see a couple things. First of all, I've used a couple alternate letters with every alphabet. It's likely that you're not going to have two different letter forms connecting in the right way. If you're going with the alphabet we created earlier. So sometimes you'll have the opportunity to adjust. For example, I like to use a lot of cursive style. Ars and S is when I work and I'm employing those here. I'll show you how to do those as we go over things with the pen. You also have an opportunity here with the sea in the age, this h is begging for a loop. And so what? I'm going to dio stick my pencil loop around and create a ligature, which means a point at which two letters connect. So now the sea is connected to the age E. R s is connected at the end of the word again. This is very rough. You can see where I've screwed up a little bit, just trying to get the idea down. But because I've done it with my pencil, it's almost like I've proven to myself that I can do it with a pen and you can too. So now, in switching, gonna move to our brush, Ben And again, this is still practice. So gonna dot up in the corner just so I feel a little bit of the pressure being off, and I'm gonna start like I did before, with the height of the sea creating the first stroke and again and constantly keeping in mind what I want this to look like. Thinking about adjectives, I may go back into thinking this up. I'm gonna wait until I get a little further. Start with her age again because we're using actual words. Could be nice to go in and kind of a just the way that things end Stick a nice little curve on the end of this stroke. Gonna go up and and in the age I can choose to connect these they don't have to. Right now I'm going to confidently follow my line connecting the sea to the H, using very light pressure. When adjusted, you feel any spot with a felt tip end, like on her e before add some heavy pressure unless you can see how the letter forms have a little bit more life now because they have a context, they're kind of relating to each other. That's nice, I think just looking at the letters I have so far, I will go back and adjust the sea to make it just a little thicker. Here we go around that out. These are all decisions that if you're feeling a little hesitant about making you can always make a smaller sketch in the corner. But I feel confident and comfortable making these decisions on the fly. And I think if you take a little bit of time to think about them, you will, too with the are gonna make a very strange stroke, pushing away from myself and then reinforce it using medium pressure. Then right here at the top of the arm, gonna lay into this, making a nice all shape and then heavy pressure, like our stroke that we've been using for ours. EMS and ends. Gonna continue again with this very thin pressure pushing away from myself and then heavy pressure at the top of the s around into my fix squeaky stroke. Then we're gonna add an exclamation point because those air fun and every cheers deserves an exclamation. So this looks really cool. You're a couple other things we can do to this to make it look a little more special. For example, we can choose to add in some swash is or flourishes just to fill the space. You can see that Because the baseline under here is uneven. This is a really nice spot to just put some sort of little got a swirl like this. And if you're not confident to just do so on the fly, it's okay to go in with a pencil, maybe go over it a couple times. You can add an additional pieces if you like. They don't have to be perfectly similar. They just have to look like they belong, like looking at Thies, too. Now that I've done these two ends look way too similar. So I'm gonna actually not do that. Finish it like that. It feels more balanced to me. And over time, as you play with these things, adding in little different flourishes here and there, it makes more sense. It feels you kind of understand the rhythm of how to make everything feel cohesive without putting a bunch of lines into the space. It's OK for this phrase to breathe a little. So now I'm gonna follow this carefully, could push hard at the beginning and then let up a little push hard here, push hard here and see if it looks pretty close. It's nice to have a guidance pushing hard here. You'll notice that the angle of my pen hasn't adjusted all. It's been the same every single time. Because of that, strokes are all looking nice and consistent like they belong. So now gonna race this. The nice thing about these pens is that they don't smudge because they dry so quickly and they allow you to erase and still get a penny pencil. So it looks like you did eyeball it. And that's great, because I want you to look good. All right, so that's one word. So now what do we do when we have to? Because not every phrase, though exclamatory and awesome like this, is so short. Instead, we're gonna try, Stay awesome, because you are awesome. We're gonna switch back here to her pencil, and we're gonna start with our largest word. When you goto orient a word onto a piece of paper, you can measure it if you think you know about how much space you're going to use or you can adjust and try to use the largest, Most important word is your guide in this case, awesome is mine. So I'm gonna shoot for a margin, right about here on the grid paper. In fact, it could bring this one over a little bit. And I'm gonna mark in my first A. That's a little narrow, but it doesn't matter for this. And you can see here I'm setting myself up to make a ligature between A and W, I think, and this is all very, very rough. Thing is you can fix it. You just really want to get yourself a guide. And I'm not uncomfortable with a baseline being jumpy because I think it gives it a lot of energy. And who doesn't want that? All right, it's about that really nicely into our space. We can even up to put an exclamation point here, but I don't think we really need it. So instead, we're gonna add the words, Stay. We're gonna come up here. This is about the center of the words. I'm just gonna market lightly with a pencil. The S looks like it's gonna fit really well right in this area. I'm just gonna pencil that in very lightly. I wanted to sit, gonna assume it's gonna squash like that. And then earlier, when we were talking about the tea and the s possibly being able to join up together. We're gonna do that right here because I know the why is going to take up more space on the bottom, purposely going to jump it up higher, like so that when it comes around, make sense. Just bring that in there. I can even move this em down. If I need Teoh to ensure I have enough space there, it looks pretty good we can adjust this. Of course, I find that with swash is especially if you're going to add in different things like this little feel, agrees and such that you might want to wait until the very end to do so because you might find that the space doesn't need it. So we're just gonna concentrate on the basic letter forms right now. But we're certainly gonna add in our ligatures because that's how the letters connect and will need to make that decision. As we're writing, we're going to start with the S. We're gonna hit hard stroke, really hard, heavy pressure. Please switch. Sometimes it's nice to do that, to switch the direction of the pen that makes it changes. The balance, like with every other Matt S I've made today have gone up this direction and then cut down to make a really hard curl. But you don't always have to do that. It had some sort of personal touch when you adjust the way that you make these lines. So now I'm going into my tea very much, like everything else has been doing today that it's not as unwittingly as I would have liked. But that's good. And I'm going to actually hit my A before I cross off the tee because it's more important at this point that I have and a here on a fancy tea again going back in adding in any adjustments. You know, there we go, going to hit the why were coming over a little bit further, but that's OK because we know we're doing. We mapped it out so we'll just move everything over a little my here, lift up her pen just to get our bearings. But I'm actually gonna leave that for now until I figure out if I want to do this little curl. The way that I have it penciled in here, we'll put the rest of the word and see how we feel so now to our A very heavy stroke round very lightly. We're also working a little bit bigger than we have been, which will give us much better movement. The bigger you can work generally, the easier and more comfortable. You'll feel like a character in there that's still fun. These lines are connected. So after filling in a little bit with the pen, go back into her. E cool thing is that r E on this word look similar to the ease above on the 1st 1 It's a good thing that means that we're developing a style to the S. Not everything has to look perfect or exactly the same. But when it does, it's really satisfying because you realize you're making decisions and you're making them confidently enough that they're consistent. Style is really a syriza calculated error because everybody could do something by the book , but it's not as fun go into her. Oh, heavy stroke here lighter and then heavy again and we're actually going Teoh, make a ligature here where we cut up from the end of the O gently to the top of the new M, being careful about how much space we have here between the strokes on the M could fill those in. Here we go and using those points, making them with more consistent. We've got one more letter. Are is a little close here. So we're just gonna move out a little knowing full well that we can. We're going to replicate it, following out the stroke as we drew it there. We have our E. The last thing we have to do is to decide how we're gonna finish this. Why? I think I think this can finish simply. So we're gonna kind of follow what we did here in this in the sketch. But instead, we're gonna make it just a little bit bigger. But that should be enough. We're gonna come around. So just like that a little bit longer. This guy happened here. We're gonna pick something like that. In fact, we can hook thes two up together. We figured out where we're going to put these flourishes. So we're gonna quickly add them in with the pen determined this guy and this guy could be friends. And this one there, after a couple adjustments here and taking our eraser to the project just to clean it up a little bit. I think it's time for us to feel awesome, because this looks great. So now we're gonna take our newfound skills with putting together phrases, making them look complete and finished. And we're gonna attempt a couple projects. We're gonna start with a poster, and then I'll show you a couple other options for either cards or cake toppers. 9. Putting It All Together: we've learned how to make letters and create layouts to using our hand lettering. And now I'm gonna show you how to make a cool poster that you can use for wall art and some other great projects that will talk about later chosen. The phrase live creatively. So we're going to start with the biggest word on our piece of Bristol board. And the way that the paper takes the ink is a little bit faster and smoother It Then we had on the graph paper, and I think you'll notice the difference is we work. So because it is a little bit unusual compared to all the other papers we've used, we're going to start out in pencil. So what I like to Dio is take my ruler and I'm just gonna mark in a quick guide in this case about we'll do about it inch and 1/2 on either side. There we go, and we're gonna start with the word creatively because it's long and I want to make sure that fits, especially considering we'll put it in a frame later. We're gonna start with the sea we're gonna use my alternate are and again this is very, very quick, very sketchy. You've done this before, so we're just throwing in the letters, kind of trying to make sure everything is evenly spaced, but that it's snug and fits. And again, the baseline we're not super concerned with. We want it to be fun and look lovely. Couple adjustments here. I'm looking for an opportunity to link up and ligature any of these letters. Got a couple ligatures happening on the I V E. That all Why the c r E To some extent, I'm going to try to do an interesting one appear on live. I'm going to start up a little higher now that I kind of know where this is going to make a little mark for the middle. And there's a big open space right here. The c r e a t that just needs and no And again, if you're using your pencil, she feel confident because you've made all these strokes before. Actually that over. Yeah, you've made all these strokes before, and if you've made them in pencil, then you can most certainly make them in pen. The pressure is completely off, even though this is a little more permanent. We're going to Echo. Actually. Go that way. Cool. And it's okay to erase. Here we go. We're gonna echo the same ligature what we have here. I'm gonna take some of this out so I don't get confused. If you end up putting in a bunch of lines, feel free to just lift some of that out with the eraser. Don't worry at all about it being perfect, but just make sure you know where you're going that parts more important, we go throw in a couple, he's one of these and again, it looks great. So we've quickly mapped in what we're gonna dio. It's a little off center, but that's OK, because that's what hand lettering is all about. Slightly off kilter, but it'll look awesome. So now we're gonna go in with her pen, and this time we're using a blue one for contrast. And just because I like it, it's fun. We're gonna start with R l. We're gonna start at the top and make a really thick stroke. And then we're in a loop. This guy about I'm adjusting. My line is, I go because I see. Did you get more confident you can adjust the stroke as you move. Here we go. And I'm going to bounce over here, and I'm going to wait to finish off this ligature just because I want to ensure that everything is gonna match up. You want to think about these moves before you make them just so you don't Bruin the piece that you're doing Now that that's done, I see that I is up kind of high just a little bit. I'm gonna bring it down a hair and come up to make the B. Now is the time to come in here and fix any inconsistencies. You're smaller pen before it drives, but you notice it's hitting the paper very quickly. Um, the ink is drying very fast, E Like we've done before. And I'm gonna wait until I attach all of the end here. I dot Here we go. So right now we're living. Let's get to creatively start with R C, which we've made quite a bit already. The heavier stroke. Hear that drag? I'm going to started the top this time. So now we're gonna continue the ball terminal on our all of the stroke again. We're thinking very tall and narrow. Oh, my contrast on this to be particularly high. But I do want there to be some A at this point that should start feeling a little more familiar. You don't have to have it all. Exactly. Doesn't need to be perfect. But I hope at this point you feel more comfortable into our tea. I tend to make my tease very, very long even do that in my handwriting. We'll wait to add that on. No, I I hope this is moving more quickly for you. It certainly is. For me, that's a practice will do that. Come on. Just here. Adding in a little bit more. The felt tip coming in with L being careful not to sideswipe e its like the hardest part of all of this is trying not to run into other things. It does happen, though, so don't feel bad that happens to you because it most certainly happens to me why we're on the last letter Stroke coming down very dramatic. Not all the way down right here are you Stick to thin line and finishing off in a very thick stroke. Now we're gonna come back up here and revisit our T crossbar. Just gonna follow the line. We've said. Looks beautiful. We're gonna finish our E and being very consistent. Man, we're going. Teoh, come over here. Wish this and then along the bottom, There we go. Actually, this looks pretty good as it is, so I'm not gonna touch it up very much. And instead come in and start racing something really nice about doing hand lettering for yourself, as opposed to getting on Pinterest and printing something off. We're grabbing a bunch of thoughts. Online is the sound of it all. But not only are you are you seeing the pen going on to the paper and producing something. But you're also getting this wonderful rubbing with the eraser. When you're getting the squeak of the pen, it's it's kind of fun sitting here and working with your own hands. So I hope that you've enjoyed this as we've learned and tried something new. This looks great. So now this is ready to frame, which you could do like this. So, as you continue to practice, this will look more like something you've created and less like mine. And so as you continue to grow and try new things. You'll develop a style and eventually do something all your own. You can also take hand lettering to new levels. For example, you can try out new styles something a little bit more quirky in clever, something slightly more elegant, putting them to use with note cards, giving to friends and family working with lettering doesn't just have to stop a paper, either. My own brand marmalade Blue makes beautiful three dimensional typographic treatments, used food and objects, and I photographed them. And always the underpinnings of everything I dio is hand lettering. So I'm happy to work with my hands in making these cool pieces, and maybe that's something for you to explore as well. But whatever you do, I hope you look beyond just paper, just pen and just what I've shown you to find your own voice in your own personality and your work.