Transcripts
1. Introduction: Project, Tools, and Template: Do you want to
learn how to create beautiful lettering
composition pieces like this? Hi. My name is Niko Nang. I am a lettering
artist, designer, and educator based in Manila. I have been lettering
since 2014, and throughout the years, I have helped
creatives learn and improve their lettering
skills through my courses, my workbooks, my analog
lettering tablets, as well as my
digital brush packs. In this class, I'm going
to walk you through the steps on how to create this beautiful
lettering layout from start to finish from building our
guides to sketching our letters and
all the way up to refining them and inking
our finished final piece. So if you love drawing letters, and you want to learn how
you can arrange and design each word so that you can
achieve a cohesive piece, then this class is for you. Using my ultimate learning
toolbox for this class. But don't worry
if you don't have this pack because all
of the guides and design assets that
we'll be using in this class will be available
for you to download. So make sure to download those before you start
the first lesson. I'm super excited to work on this beautiful
learning piece together. I'll see you in
the first lesson.
2. Building Your Lettering Layout Guides: I All right, make sure you have your
template imported. But if you have the ultimate learning
toolbox, the ink pack, you don't need the
template because the layout guide and the paper textures are
going to be there. So for the paper texture, let's just hide that for now because I don't
know, for me, I personally prefer sketching without any textures because I find the textures
a bit distracting to my sketching process because I'll see
like little specs, little dots, and I don't know. I just feel like
it I don't know, I just get distracted by it. So I'll remove the
paper texture. And for the layout guide, if you have letter the
ultimate lettering toolbox, you can go to your brushes
and go to that brush pack, the ELT ink lettering pack, and all the way down, you have the
composition template. And these are like, basic templates because I know if you have a
composition layout pack, you'll have a lot
of options, right? And sometimes sometimes it
can get a bit overwhelming. Even for me, there are so many different
layout shapes that you can choose to use for
your learning composition. And I don't know, I
sometimes end up spending so much time deciding on
what layout guys use. And that's why I added these composition templates,
these basic, simple, focused composition
templates so that just start with this and
you just sketch the other things that you need. So yeah, if you have this sack, you can go ahead and select the arc focus grid, and
then just stamp it in. You'll have something like this. So let me just switch
the color to black. So you'll have
something like this. And what I really like about
this focused grid is you can just focus on the shape for the important
words of your quote. So we are working on or creating the quote Take a
small step every day. So with learning composition, you want to have hierarchy
to your quote, right? So you want the key
words to stand out, and then the less important
words to be supporting. And yeah, you just
have to, like, pick the words you want to
emphasize and just assign, importance to your quote. So as you can see,
from this one, the quote is, take a
small step every day. I chose to emphasize small step. That's why it's really, really big because I feel like
that is a word that holds the meaning of the code. So it's like the main message. So I'm going to
emphasize or highlight small step and put it in
this art layout shape. And then for the word every day, it is also important, but I want it to be slightly
less important than small step because every day is also like one of the
keywords, right? So it's still going
to be big but not as big as small step. And we want to keep
the least important, even smaller so that these smaller words are
going to emphasize or are going to support the
keywords of our code. Okay, so that is
the reason why our explanation why I chose to highlight small step
and then every day, and then leave take A as these important words or
these supporting words. Okay, so for me, I really like to sketch the
layout guides from scratch. So for this layout guide, we're just going to bring
the opacity down just low enough so that you can still see the
grid in the guide, and then we're going
to create a new layer and use a drawing brush, maybe something like this
fine manliner brush. So if you have my brush pack. You'll notice that
you don't have this fi monoliner one
and graphite liner one. You only have fine monoliner
and graphite liner. That's because as I sketch
or use my own brush set, I like to tweak the settings
a little bit all the time. So I just like to duplicate and then adjust that rather than adjust the original one because I don't want to
touch the original one. And yeah, I just want
to experiment a bit. That's why I duplicate
it so that I don't destroy or modify the main brush worry if you don't have these
because these are you don't need those when I use that
for a different project. I feel like I just want
to extend that a bit. Anyway, I'm using the
fine mod liner brush. So basically, it's just any
simple drawing brush, okay? So for the word small, let's just draw and get
this art right here, this curve hoops and
make it a bit bigger or thicker. Loops. Okay. So since we are going to sketch
the layout symmetrically, instead of sketching
this like that, I'll just turn on the
drawing guide with symmetry. So whatever I
sketch on one side, it's going to appear
on the other side. So again, make sure
you choose symmetry, and then make sure that the
layer has the word assisted. So wherever you
draw on one side, it's going to connect
to the other. So I'll just draw this
curve right here, hold a pen, and
edit it as an arc, something like
that. There you go. And then I'll just foot that, move that up here. And just Oops. I'm going to use my eraser. I'll just go to my ink pack
and then select a brush, maybe white flat brush. Us as my eraser. So I move it to the second
grid and then cut it here, like two grids there. There go. I feel like that looks good. Okay, so that is going to
be for the words small. And then, let me just
double ate that and then flip that and bring it down
the original one papajyds. So this is the space
for the word small. I want it to be like that,
like arcing outwards, just to make our important words or key words look more
interesting. So there you go. Let merge that. So
that's going to be the shape for the first one. And for the second one, I'll just take this bottom half, duplicate that using
three fingers slide down. I'll just bring it down here. And then I'll just draw like a horizontal line like this
a little bit below this. You want some space between
the first two words, right? And then let me just
hide the guide again and then merge all of
these. Then just gass. Oops. Yeah, erase this. Since this layer is assistant, so it's going to
mirror like that. There you go. We now have space for our
first, the keywords. Now, let's bring this back. You want to create a
simple rectangle guide for the word take up. So let's just go to our pen, and then from here to here, let's just draw a
horizontal line. Can move it around maybe here, just slightly below the top
guide, then draw another one. There around. We'll be here, with some space like that. Okay. We now have our guide
for the word take. Okay. And then for the last
for the word every day, it's going to be in
a circular guide. So let's create a new layer, and let's draw circle,
a big circle like this. I'm using my finger to
locks circle like this, and I'm going to use
my finger to lock it at a circular shape. Then I'm going to move it to the vertical center like this. So that's going to be
center and move it down, increase this a bit. Yeah. Maybe like this big, okay? And then we're going to
duplicate that transform. Make sure uniform is selected, and then we're going to make it small like this
and center it. So we want two units, a little over to two
boxes like that. So that's going to be the
height of our word every day. And then I'll just erase that and click on drawing assist
so that when we erase, it's going to apply
to both sides. Let me just increase
the brush size of you. So let me erase the top part
of our circle like that, and then maybe Okay. There is it until it. There you go. I'll
hide the layout guide. We now have our
final layout guide for our lettering composition. So I always like to start
with this because I want my letters or my words
to be aligned and clean. And one way to do that is to make sure that our
layout guides are perfectly aligned and centered because if we don't
have any layout guides, our words are we don't have something to follow that will keep everything nice and clean. If our guides are not
aligned perfectly, then your words are going to
end up looking a bit wonky. Okay? So you want
something like this, okay? Just a little note, since we want to emphasize
small step, right. So make sure that
these are bigger than the next words,
which is every day. And then this has to be
bigger than the words, sorry, this has to
be bigger than for our least important words
or our supporting words. So that's one way to check whether you sketch
everything correctly or not. So, yeah, we are done
with our first step. Let's move on to the next step, which is quick
sketching of our words.
3. Quick Sketching the Words: Okay, now to our next step. So I'll just merge everything to one layer so that my layout guide is just
in one layer like this. And then I'll remove
the layout guide from the stamp that we did earlier because we
don't need that anymore, okay? So let me make this smaller because I find it a
bit too distracting. I always struggle with
resizing this reference box. Anyway, yeah, I'll
just keep there. So I'll just hide it first
because it very distracting. And also the line in the middle, I feel like I don't
need that, so I'll just remove the drawing
guide like that. So it's just this one. Okay, so create a new layer because that is
where we're going to quickly sketch our letters. So the goal of this
is to do a quick, rough sketch of our letters with thickness so that
we can place them here easily and neatly so that when we start to
draw our letters later, we already have the spacing
and sizing guide ready, which will help us sketch these words beautifully
and cleanly and correctly. Let me hide the
layout guides first, and then on a new layer, you want to turn back or
bring back the drawing guide, but you want to edit it because you want the
two D grid like this. So you can make the size
smaller if you want to. So yeah, maybe like
51 pixels so that it's not too to I mean, when we sketch our letters,
it's not going to be we don't need a huge space. So make sure you're
on your layer, and I'm still using
F on the liner, but I'll just make it a bit
smaller like that, okay? So we're going to
sketch our words. So the first is T A, right? So I'll just draw a
rectangle like this. So this is going to be
like the base of the and then I'll just do a quick
sketch like this. T. So this box right here, the guide right
there is going to be the guide our
thickness for letters. So we're going to use
that so that we know how thick we need to
draw our letters, even if it's just
a quick sketch. So next is letter A. So
I'll draw like a triangle like that and quickly draw
the serifs like that. And then K, you want it
to be the same thickness. So quick sketch like this. Like that for K, and the thickness, this has
to be thick as this and this. Like so basically this is just like a super rough
and quick sketch. You don't need to spend
so much time on this because these are not going
to be our final letters. This is just going to be a
super quick tide right here. Take the Okay. So after you've done
your quick sketch, if you want to adjust
the spacing a bit, now I do so. I feel like A and K can
move closer together, so I'll just nudge
that like that. So yeah, this is the quick
sketch I'm talking about. I feel like this A is narrower, so I'll just select that. And using freeform transform, I'll just make it
wider like that. Make sure the space is okay. I feel like the space is
too far away or too close, feel free to adjust
it. Like that. So yeah, this is the quick
sketch I'm talking about a super quick sketch just to help us space and size
the letters correctly. Okay, you can work on the same
layer or use a new layer. It's up to you. I want
to create or work on a separate layer so it's
easier to move things around. Next is small step. So I use like four
boxes as height. You can do that as well. Or you can create
something bigger. It's up to you. Try
something bigger. So for S, I know S is a
bit hard to sketch, right? So I'll show you my trick. So with S, you're
going to start with a larger oval and a
smaller oval right there and make a diagonal
block like that. Then just connect it. Connect them like that. Okay? So normally
the S is like this, but you can sold a bit if you want something
different like that. Something. Let's
just try like this. So it's gonna look a
little bit different from the example earlier. So that's going to be RS. You can use your eraser if. If you want to clean
things up a bit for you to see the letter more
clearly like that. So it doesn't have to be
a perfect sketch, okay? At this point, we don't
need a perfect sketch. So next is letter M. So
M. So M starts with, like, a thin line. And then you get
a thick line and thin line up and sign like that. So just a super quick
M. Next is letter A. Letter A, like before, we're going to create a triangle and then just add
some thickness. Then add the serif
and the cross block. L, L, L is super basic, right? Right now, like a variable
bar and the horizontal line, and then the serif bottoms
and top like that. Then if you want to
style this a bit, so let's curve this. Let's maybe curve it like that. So feel free to experiment. Okay. And then let's
fix the spacing. I feel like S is
spaced too far from M, so I'll select everything
and move it a bit closer. Like that. Okay? If you need
to adjust the other letters, feel free to adjust
it at this stage. So I'll erase this. So I'll be left with
the word small, like a quick sketch
of the word small. Next is the word
step. So same thing. I'll try to draw two ovals
and the bar like that. Then just connect the
curves like that. Then the little detail
at the endos. Okay. Again, discussion doesn't
need to be super clean, but I'm just clean this
a bit so that it's easier for you to see
what I've sketched. The next is right? T is that B. The next is E, the vertical bar, serve there, serve there. Again, just a super
quick sketch, but make sure you draw
the weights correctly and the letters are
proportioned like that. Okay. So T&E looks far away. I'll bring it closer
E and P as well. Oops, and S and the To
brr closer to like that. Okay. And then the last set
of word which is every day. So every day, yeah. Like that E. So I want
to make it thinner. Okay. X is V. V is gonna
be like that. E again. So this is actually a very good quick practice on sketching the words
consistently like the thickness. So just use this to try to sketch it consistently
in terms of thickness. But don't worry
if it's not very, very perfect because this
is not the final sketch. We're just going to
use this to help us space our letters. But the weights, I'm going to show you a different
trick later on. Tmax is R. Do you see
that wider? Ever B. G A Every day I, Okay, let me just fix
the spacing of it. DNA so far away, so I'll bring a bit closer A and Y slightly
closer like that. Bring the R closer to Y, bring the E closer,
the V as well. Okay, right back. There you go. So this is the quick sketch
that I'm talking about. As you can see, it
is not perfect. Let me just remove the
drawing guide first. So as you can see,
it's not perfect, but the spacing is I mean, we worked on, like, the thickness
and the spacing because that is going to be super
helpful in our following steps. So you should have
something like this. It doesn't need to look
exactly like this. Your words or I mean,
your letters can be a little bit more
deforg or Wong. It's totally fine
because this is just the quick sketch
part of the process, which looks like really, really rough, but it's going
to be super, super useful, which I'm going to show you in the next step where
we are going to apply these to our layout guide.
4. Fitting Your Sketch: Okay, now to our next step, which is inking the no, sorry, applying to our layout. We're going to apply
our quick sketches to the layout guide. So let me just group these and create duplicate
just as a backup, okay? So you don't need to do this if you don't want
to keep a backup, but for me, I like to keep
backups of my sketches. Okay, for that, and then let's just hide everything
except for take off. So we're going to warp
everything one at a time. So let's bring the
opacity of our layout guides down so that
it's not too, like, strong in our face, so that we can
still differentiate the two layers because they're
both color black, okay? So first is take up. We're going to fit it in here. So just move it down. It's on free form. So just try to, like, fit it to the guide. Then bring it to the
center. There you go. So as you can see, it's
now what do you call it I We have the guide on how
to sketch like how small, how big, how wide, how
thick we need to sketch our letters to fit
in our layout shape. Okay. Next is the word small. So for small, this
is going to be a bit trickier because we're going to fit it into this arc
shape, top and arc bottom. So to do that, let's
just lock it in. Mm hmm. Okay. So we want our letters to the maximize
stretch it to maximum, and then we're going to use
warp and then push it so that our letters are going to stay along that arc
beautifully like that. And the top as well,
bring it down like that. See? Next is step, step using free form, we're going to put
it here, right? Put it inside Yeah, within the shape. And then since the
bottom is an arc, we're going to use
warp to try to put everything nicely like that. I feel like I want to make
it wider, a bit wider, like that. Perfect. Small stuff. Then every day.
Okay, for every day, this is going to be a
bit trickier, okay? So you want to align
it here and make it taller so that the letter is going to be, what
do you call this? It is going to be it's going to touch the top
curve and bottom curve. And then let's just center
that a bit like that. I feel like the words are
too wide to fit in here, so you want to make it a
bit narrower like that. Spring it back to the
center like this. So what we're going to
do is we're going to take each letter
one at a time and try to warp it or position
it along the arc. So let's start here. So I'm going to use
free hand because it's easier to select that. And then we're going
to hit Transform, and I'm going to switch off
magnetics because I want to be able to rotate it freely without log in to
specific angles. I'm going to bring this
up. Make sure we add space because these are two words, every day like that. And then we're going to
select the last two letters, A and Y, do the same thing, rotate it a bit, then try
to fit it into there. Next, the last letter, the Y, rotate it a
bit and fit it here. So as you can see, we've
positioned them to touch the top and
bottom part like that. Next is this part. We're not going to
touch it because Y is like our middle base point. So we're just going
to choose here. So as you can see, I'm
starting from the center and then working on one letter
at a time near here. We don't start with
the last letter or the first letter, okay? Rotate that. Let the
justice rotate it a bit and position it such that it touches the top
and the bottom. It doesn't need to touch
exactly because we can always sketch it
correctly later. This is just as a guide, so rotate it. Like that. So we're going to use this as spacing guide as well
as the thickness guide. Okay. There go. Rotate it a bit. Like that. And the E, the first
letter rotate it a bit position it correctly. I got. Okay. I just want to take this a little bit
and move it. I just a bit. So that is not touching
the word step too much. Okay. There you go. So that's how you apply the quick sketch to
your lettering layout. And as you can see, you have the sizes and
spacing all set up. The next step is to
ink our letters. So with this guide, don't have to worry about sizing
and spacing anymore because we just need to follow the guides of our quick
sketches as well as the layout guides so that we'll be able to correctly draw
our bladders. So
5. Inking the Final Letters: Now to the next step, which
is inking our letters. So let me just merge
everything flatten, and I'll just delete my backup. So this is my backup.
I'll just delete that. No, I want to keep that. So I'll just flatten
this and hide it. I just like to keep
backups. I don't know why. But anyway, I will
reduce the opacity so it's going to be
super light like this but still readable, okay? And then maybe increase
the opacity of the layout dide a bit more. So what we're going to
do is we're going to use these two guides
simultaneously. So we're going to
draw the letter T following the position of our quick sketch and
then make sure that we fit it perfectly along the
top and bottom guides, okay? So and create a new layer on top of everything except
for paper texture, and then we're going to
use a thick flat brush. So if you have my brush pack, it's this wide flat
brush like this. I like it because we can get
like consistent thickness. So if you drew it at an angle,
straight horizontal angle, the thickness is going
to be consistent because that is what we
want to achieve here, okay? So So I'm using this. If you don't have
this brush, you can use other flat brushes, and then you can I mean, if your brush has some sort
of opacity or transparency, just keep on duplicating it later just to make
it solid like this. So, no Bi. And then we're going to
draw it like that, okay? But as you can see,
it's not thick enough. So let's just increase
the brush size, make it a bit thicker like
this, which looks perfect. So we're going to
draw the thick parts, just the thick parts
for now, okay? Because we're going
to do the thick and thin one at a time. So it looks weird, but trust me or
trust the process. So this is going to be thick. I'll just draw, like, a
vertical line like this. This one is didinol
so draw like this. Can adjust Okay, right now, I am not touching the edges first because we're going to use the fine moonliner later, okay? So next is K. N this
for cloud space here. Move it, position it correctly. Like this. So don't draw it
really big like this, okay? So you want to make
it small. Like that. You don't want to cross
the other lines of our letters because it's
going to be I mean, we're going to have
to add another step of erasing later on. You can do it, but you just
have to raise it ther on. So E is that bar there. The next letter A, another diagona like this. So I'm making it into
a line by holding like pencil a bit longer so I can edit it a
little bit more. Okay? So that makes sure you got
all of the thick parts, okay. Once you're done, you can bring the brush smaller for
us to draw the thinner. Parts. So for the
T, this is thinner, and I want to make
sure that it aligns with the horizontal
bar like that. K. Next is the A. It's going to be thin like this, and the cross bar as well,
is going to be thin. For K is this diagonal
arm right there, and then E, this is top
bar and this bottom bar. Okay. Then a diagonal
A like that. I forgot this middle
bar right here and then this I'll bring
this up a bit. There you go. See
that? Easy, right? Then next, I'm going to
switch to the fime on the liner and start
sketching the serifs. If he needs serf like
this. There we go. Then I'll just add
the serf below. Does it have to be perfect? Because you want to
because the goal is to create a laying piece that looks like you sketch it on paper, which are going to have so many imperfections
because on paper, you can't sketch undo or you
can undo your sketch, right? So, yeah. Anyway, I'm
just adding serifs. As you can see, I'm
sketching along this layout guide because we want our layers
to look aligned. Okay? For the k, you're going to add
serif here on top, aligning to the layout
guide and here as well. Make sure you add to
both sides, okay. For this one like that, it's okay if they touch,
it's totally fine. And here, let's just can connect it like this or
leave a small gap. I prefer leaving a
small gap like that. And for the leg of the K,
it's just on one side. The surf is just on one side. Next for letter E,
I'm going to add a serf here, as well as here, then the upper right corner
and the bottom right corner, and then both sides on the
little bar like that. Nice A. We're going to add a serf
there on both bases. T we just add a
little bit here on one side. There you go. Take as you can see, when we use the layout guides as well as our quick
sketch guides, it's super easy to sketch something
really nice and clean. And if you use a brush
with a natural texture, like the white brush
the white flat brush. We have something like this with all of these,
imperfections, which makes it look a little bit more natural and organic, which is what we are after. So we're going to do the same process for
the rest of the words. However, we just have to keep on changing the sizes
because we need bigger brushes for these
more emphasized words compared to the smaller words. So let's go ahead
and do that now. And we're going to start with a difficult letter to sketch with, which is a letter S, but don't worry, don't panic. We're gonna do it
together one at a time. Okay. So we're going to switch back to
our wide flat brush, and we're going to resize our brush until we
get the right size. So let's try this. This still
too thin. This too thick. So maybe about 27%. Yeah, I think 27% looks right. Okay. So for the spine,
we're just going to draw, like, a small data like that, a K, just like that. Then for the M, we're
going to draw like a vertical one here. Like that. Make sure it doesn't
touch the top and bottom. And for this one, we're not
going to go all the way here, maybe somewhere here because
we don't want to erase. We just want to add in later on. So again, we're
going to start with just the thick parts of
our letters like that, and L is here, a straight line, here L,
again, straight line. Oops, let's move
back to the left for a little bit. That, okay? Since we want these two to have the same thicknesses
because they're both the emphasize words
and in the same style, so I'll just use
the same thickness. So go ahead and do that. Sing here with a
spinefllS and then T, the whole vertical
bar, E, as well, a whole vertical, a
thick vertical bar, and P here, as well as
just a little bit here. Just give us or help
us with a guide on how thick this bowl
needs to be, okay? So, make sure you have some
like this and you don't miss out on the other thicker parts. Otherwise, you need to look for the exact same
thickness, which is 27. Okay? Once you've covered
all the thick parts, you can now switch to a smaller brush for
the thinner strokes. So I think I'll keep it here
at seven. Yeah, like this. It looks nice. Okay.
Now for the S, let's start with
the S because it's the hardest one, okay? So from the top curve, we're just going to
curve it here like that. Curve it to the side and then make sure you
connect it smoothly. Like that. You see that? Next is from the same point
or that curve it. But now to the other
side, which is here, you can edit the arc to make the curve smoother, like that. Okay? Simply for the
bottom part like that. For the bottom curve, you can move it a
little bit beyond that because this is a curve part and you want to overshoot
that a little bit. Then from here, curve it back to the other
side like that. Thank. And then maybe curve is a little
bit more from here. Just use as guide, okay? There you go. Here now
have your letter S, and you can just fill
this in like that. G. Okay. So as you can see, you don't need to sketch it, like shade it in,
and you still get that nice natural texture. Okay? That's how
you do the letter S. For the M, it's quite simple. Just draw, like, a thin
vertical line like that. Then create like a V.
Then you can always edit So I want to align
it here to this curve. But, it looks weird,
but trust me, we're going to fill that in
later on with a one liner. For this one, this
diagonal is thin, so I'll just draw a
diagonal line like this. I'm holding the pen so
I could position it nicely. And then L. So you want this to
follow the curve, okay. Follow the curve. Make sure it follows
a curve here as well. See that. Okay. Now to the S again, same thing. Curve it from the top to one
side of the thick spine, then to the inner spine, then here from the bottom, curve it up, to connect it here. Edit that arc, just
for it to connect more smoothly. There we go. Easy, right? Like that. Then let's just connect
the curve like this. Curve like this so that we
have a nice smooth curve. So I'm always using the smart shape feature just to help me draw it more nicely and smoothly like that. Okay? Next is a T. So we're going to draw a
horizontal bar here on top. Make sure you align it
to the layout guide, K. Next is E. We're going to
draw horizontal top here. Edit the loops, draw that again, lock it to horizontal.
****, like that. And for the bottom part, we're going to follow the curve arc. It's not going to be horizontal. It's going to be slightly
angled like this. Okay. The middle var,
don't forget this. And for P, can start with, like, a horizontal here
on top, like that. Then from here, we're
going to curve it. Or you can just curve
up to half like this. You can edit the arc so
it connects smoothly to top bar and to the other side. Then we're going to
curve it like this. From the same point on top, we're going to curve it to
the first side right here. Curve it that here. There we go. As you can see, we use this bar right here to help us with the
thickness of our letter. We're done with our weight guys. Oh, forgot here. I mean, I forgot here. So let me just
draw it like this. Oh. Nice. Okay, we're done with using the
wide flat brush, so we can now go back to our fine model liner brush to finish the design
of our letters. W S, it's going to have
something like this. Going to connect to the end, then just sketch
to fill that in. Drops. What happened? My palm always
undoc the sketches, which is kind of
annoying, anyway. I'm just going to
add, like, a sharp, thick swirl there, like
that in here as well. I guess. There we go. S is done. X is M, and have a serif here. Just make sure you follow the
guide on one side, the k. There's no serif
there. For the M, the bottom part, both serifs, make sure you follow the
guide as you can see. I try to keep it in
the guide there, and let's make this sharp and then serve on
this upper right, one side for this upright
corner, none here. And for the bottom
part, we're going to add serves on both. Since you want to achieve the hand drawn effect, it
doesn't need to be perfect. Keep that in mind, okay? But try to follow
the out guides so that you're going to get
a nice clean sketch. So this one, I just
want to add design the sharp curved end.
Let me see how it looks. Let me just fill these gaps. I think that looks nice, right? And I kind of want to add
a serpie on top as well. But that for the L, both sides. For the top form, make sure you follow
the guides about that. For the bona part,
there's a spear. Oh, no, I think my palm unduedT
I hid this. So annoying. Because I'm filming with
daylight here, harsh daylight, which I think I need to adjust the brightness or the
lighting of the camera. That's why my screen is
very bright and very hot. That's why my palm is sweating. So you need serpar for the L. I serve here too, and serve you on the other side. I'll just smooth it better. There though, small.
In step, same thing. You want to add, like, a curve, sharp round curve here. Shade that in. You don't want to
collar fill it, okay? Don't collar fill it because
you're not going to have that my natural texture. So I'm gonna curve this
so that I can curve it back like this and
sketch or shade the inside. Then tea, while the surf here. So as you can see, learning compositions like this
take a bit of work. But if you have set up
the guides properly, then you don't need to worry about so many
things going wrong. It takes a little bit of time, but as you can see, it makes
the process so much easier. Next is E. You need
to safe on top, this corner right
here, here as well. Okay. The bottom part, make sure you follow
the layout guide. There's another E. Like that. Okay. And for the P, I one part of the P. Then I have in both sides.
Make sure that align it. Oops. There you go. Take a small step. Now for the last word, which is every day or
last two words every day, go back to our wide flat
brush and then resize it. Maybe a little bit more. If this is too thick. So maybe 13 is enough. Okay, so, same thing. We're going to sketch
the thick parts. Is that E and R, we're going to have three thick
parts, the vertical stem, this one for the bow, and then another
one for the leg. For Y, we need two for the bottom part and the
top part like that. D had this for Y, two more. Okay. Make sure you get all the thick parts
before you resize your smaller ver size
to maybe about four. Yeah, four. Okay. So the E, the bottom part, and then align it to the
curve guide right here, as well as the top,
the middle bar. Okay. For the V, it's just diagonal line. Then for E, we're
going to align it to the top and bottom
curve as well. That for the R, okay. We're going to create
a bowl like this. We're going to edit
that and move that so that it's going to
touch the top guy, as well as the curve like that, the guide for the curve. And we're going to do
the inner curve as well. A fill that in. We
can leave it there. We're going to fill
that in later on. R is okay. And for the Y, this is the only thin
part, the diagonal. And for the D, we're going to curve it
like this with an oval. Just try to make sure it touches the top part and it
follows the guide. Then the inarcurveEd
the arc. Like that. Seal that in. And
for the letter A, da line there, and for the Y, a diana line here. Okay. I feel like the word d is
a bit too widely spaced, so I'll just select these two and move it a
little bit there. Like that every day. Anyway, when we're
done with that, I'll switch to our
fine monoliner again and then start sketching the serifs or
finishing the letters. E, you're going to have
the top and bottom part. And then this top, the
middle part has two, and the bottom part just
has one. E, there you go. I feel like the V is so close, I'll just select it, then move it a little
bit to the right. Just a little bit. Since there's a circular
guide that we have to follow, we can't move
things so far away. So serve here, right,
and serve here. Then let's just make sure the
bottom part looks nice and clean and touching the
base guy right here. Nice is E, serve
there, serve here. Just close the gut,
serve on both sides. Serve here and serve here. Next is R. Okay, let me just select this and
move it up a little bit, so that it touches the curve
for where we add the serif. We're going to close it nicely, and it's going to touch
that curve right there. Gonna create a serif
here at the bottom. Then leg as well, like that. And curve like that. Yep. Here for the Y,
curve at top left. And the top right, and
then the bottom part. And for the, the D, you serve pair
serve here as well. Okay, I forgot the bar, the crossbar of the letter A. Let's just redraw that
and try to give it the same thickness.
Yeah, like that. Then why serve here
and here, as well. And the bottom There you go. Take a small step every day. We're now done with
inking our letters. So if we need to
adjust the spacing, feel free to adjust it now, but this is kind of it already. So the next step is
going to be adding some details like
the inline details and some line shadows.
6. Adding Inline Details and Shadows: Okay, now we're going to add some inline details.
So we already have this. Like I mentioned before, if you need to adjust
certain things, feel free to adjust
it now, okay? So let me just hide everything except for
the lettering layer, which is one, this one. So like that. Okay, it looks
really nice, right? So let's now start to design the letters and add
some decorations to finish this piece. So the decorations
that I like to add are inline details
and line shadows. So a new layer. And then for the inline shadow,
I mean, inline designs, I'll just shift graph to white, and then I'm going to
change to shaky liner. I really like this
rush shaky liner. And then I'll just draw
like a straight line. It's like a super
simple decoration. Just add, like, a line inside the thick parts of our letters. It's a super simple
and easy way to just add some depth and make your letters look
more interesting. We'll do that for the for
the words that are not going to be highlighted because we're going
to do something different for the
keywords of our cut. So like that, just
straight lines and curve lines for curve parts like this ball of the letter R, then straight again
for that leg. For the Y, it's going to
be two straight lines, one diagonal and
one straight down, for the word D, just
straight line like that, and curve like that. Two more, this and for the Y, a gaginal one, and a straight
line. Like that. Okay. Easy, right? As
simple as a line, it adds so much depth
to your word already. Okay. So next is
for the word small. Okay. So for this one, we want to create a.in the center and then
some line in line. So I'll just create
a new layer and quickly draw like hoops, draw horizontal line in red. So I know where to put the
dot or position the dot. Just align across the middle
of these two. The line. It doesn't need to be perfect. Reduce the opacity,
tease as guide. Then go back to the layer
where we're sketching the inline designs and
switch wrap to white. So for here, we're going to
draw a super simple boots. Like a simple circle and then shade it in for the thick parts. So you want the circle to be
more or less the same size. But I feel like that's a bigger. It's okay. Imperfections
are welcome here. So just add, like, a
circle and shoot it in She that in Shade that in. And then, same thing, we're going to add an inline. So this is going to be curve. So I'm using smart curves
again to help me with this and holding the line
to make straight lines. So instead of just one line, the inlines are
going to be broken in the middle by a dot. Small. Okay. Nice
step, same thing. Just draw like a
circle, shade inside. I'm using this brush
the same brush, shaky liner because it adds, like the really nice and rough. Oops. This is what I hate
about my sweaty palms. It keeps on undoing. So annoying. But anyway, circle the shade that in
doesn't need to be perfect. So when I create on paper, I like to add the designs using a white paska
over my black ink. That's actually what
I'm recreating here. Okay. It's still based on my actual analog
lettering style. So straight line straight line, straight line, straight line. Straight line, splits straight line and curve
line. There we go. Those inline details,
though they are simple, it adds so much, right? So I'll just delete
the red guides. There go. And then I also
like to add line shadow. So I'm going to use
the same brush, but make the size bigger. Oops. And then I'm going to change it to a different color, and I'm going to draw
it on a new layer, create a new layer, and I want to color it into a
flat gold color. So I have the color value, so I'm going to select color, then just double
tap that to know. Raise that and then it's B six, eight F f two. Yes, this flat
goal. There you go. I'm going to increase the
size a bit to, I think, 4%. Then I'll just add that we shadow to the lower right
side of my letters like that. So it's like the layers are casting that shadow to the
lower right. There you go. So I'll just apply this to
the keyword. To the keywords. This has a curve, so you need
to curve that. Like that. Yeah. Sometime I
just free hand this. I'll just do all the
bottom parts first. Can be. So I just I usually free hand everything except for the longer straight
lines like this. Oops, I hate this. Curve like that.
Curve like that. It was here. Okay. That's it for
the first summer. Next is S. So we're
going to curve the inside, the outside as well. Just make sure it doesn't touch that and try to give it like
more or the same spacing. So like this and
you don't want to make it really close there. You want the spacing
to be more even. Like that. I'll just do
the bottom part first. That E and P. So there's
gonna be a straight line. And I'll just curve
this a little bit. Yep curve this right here. Is to be a straight
line, a straight line. Another straight line,
another straight line, another straight line, and
another straight line. I'll just add some
horizontals to that. Perfect. Straight line, straight line, the curve a little bit. Then for the P, the
boll is going to be curved like that. There you go. A simple line shadow. It makes the keywords
pop a bit more, right? So if you want to add it here and here,
feel free to do that, but I'm happy with just
that because that's what I really want to
emphasize for this quote. So we are done with
step five, I think. We're now ready to move
on to the next step, which is adding
decorations and texture.
7. Decorations and Paper Texture: Okay, so we want to add
some floral decorations at the bottom half and add
some sparkles and dots. Let me bring out my reference again by going to Canvas,
hitting on reference. So this is what we
want to achieve some simple leaf illustrations and sparkles at the top, okay? So let me hide that
reference again. You can keep that in there
if you need reference. So I want to bring back this
layout guide right here. Okay. I'll just hide
everything, like that. So I'll just create a
new layer on top of it and create some
sort of guide. So I'll choose black again. Just some guide for decoration. So maybe, like, a circle. Draw a circle. I'll just
bring it to the center. Bring my lettering
designs back up. Okay. Like this, maybe near
the almost the same as the last word right there. I'm like, a bit smaller. Then I will select
one half of it and move it like that. And then bring opacity down. So that is the space or the area where we're going
to add some decorations. So leaf decorations down
and sparkles on top. I'll remove or I'll hide the layout layer and
create a new layer, maybe below our lettering. And then I'm going to use
let's use a different pattern, maybe the nozzled fluid. I'm going to make it
really small like this. Yes. It has a nice solid shape, then we just fill that in. Ta. Okay? So we're going to start
to sketch our leaf guides, and we want to have,
like, a foto point. So in the middle, so all the leaves are
going to flow outboard. So we're just going to start
with like a curve line like this and create some pointed
leaf or leaves like that. Like that check. You want to addre to smaller
bone. But still pointed. Make sure you close
of the shapes because we're gonna color
fill this later on. We want here outward, right? Liture. Everything's outward.
You don't like that. Just try to create big leaves and try not to touch your
leggering designs here you go. That is our first design. Next is smaller
leaves, maybe here, longer and rounded like that. So just try to fill in. There's no right way to do this. Just try to fill in
the empty spots. Since we want this to
look more organic. So we don't need to,
like, count the leaves. Just make sure it
flows naturally, like outward from the
keyword of our lettering. And make sure you close it. And you can have some
floating leaves like this. Just try to keep it inside
the layout guide, okay? Or the decorations
guide or boundary. There you go. Then also adds some dots, like sets of thts. So you can just use your
pen to draw dots manually. Or if you have this pack, you can use this
space dot liner and make it smaller Oops. We're going to add something
like this, but nicer. Neta and then just try to, like, sketch in NCTA. So just look for empty spaces. It'd be go Okay. Here team. So dots like that
here as well. Maybe here. And then let's go back
to our drawing brush, a solid drawing brush. I think we use the
nozzle fluid ink. And then if there are any
empty spaces here like this, I would just draw in
some loose leaves just to further fill in
the empty spaces. But you don't want to
make it look too tight. Yeah, I think this is enough. Maybe one more? No,
that's too much. Okay. I made a mistake. It
needs to be gold, right? So just select the gold
color and we're going to recolor everything to gold
by tapping on the layer, selecting Alpha lock,
and then fill layer. Here we go. Okay.
Let's just cover. Let's fill that in. So we're going to
create a double Kate and on the top layer, I mean, on the bottom layer, let's remove the Alpha lock, and then let's color drop
into the empty spaces and click on color
filling so that you just tap in to fill everything. My God. Easy, right? Is that okay. Then
when we're done, it doesn't have that really nice and organic texture, right? So you want to go
your eraser tool and select the where is it? Fill brushes, the
clean shading eraser. Then just sketch it. So do you see that
before and after? Now, it looks like you manually
shaded everything, right? If it's too light for you,
you may want to apply it one more time, like that. Beautiful, right? And then let's just add
some tiny details. So let's go back to our graphite liner with black and create a new layer on top of your golden leaves. Then just add like a
hoops silo line swoosh. So for the pointed leaves, I'm making one below and on top. Bit. These are just like little details
just to add depth. But for the rounded
ones, it's just one. Just a depth. Just a little bit of depth. It's not too flat. This doesn't need to be perfect. You can do this quickly,
like what I'm doing here. Just make sure you keep
it inside the leaves. Just like that's just, like, some little details that. Okay, I think I want to
add, like, a.in the mirror. All these big putted leaves
just to add some more detail. There you go. You're
now done with the leaf decoration
now for the sparkles. So I'll just create a
new layer on top of everything and draw a sparkle. So to draw a sparkle, just create a cross and then just you like this. Perfect. Like that. And then, oops,
I'll just multiply this duplicate it a bit and merge it because it's too,
what do you call this? It's too light. And then I'll just color fill. Oh. Do I still have
any reference? No, there's no
reference. So I'll just color drop and
use the threshold. I just a threshold
to make sure that I cover everything. Here you go. I feel like that's too big, so I will make it smaller. And then I'll scatter this around make it smaller,
scatter that around. I'll keep on duplicating
the original, okay? Maybe I'll flip it a bit. Just scattered it around three
big ones and smaller ones. Food horizontal, maybe
here. Maybe here. Fic maybe here. Merge all fills and I'll
create even tinier. Sparkles like that. I'll
duplicate that several times. So it's going to be filled more color fill that.
Now I'll duplicate that. Flip that and just move
it around maybe here. Doblic that and flip it. You got it here, double k, flip it, maybe here, and lastly, double Kate
and flip maybe here. Then I'm going to merge all
of my sparkles together. And before adding any new layer, I'll just use the same eraser because it's completely
filled, right? So I want to add
some texture to it. You see that before and after. So I'm using the same
eraser, clean shading. So if you don't
have these erasers, I forgot to mention,
you just need to manually shade the colors. So I'll just erast
it again like that. And lastly, on the new layer, I want to add some dots. So I'll just use the dot liner, increase the brush size a bit, then just add some dots randomly but making sure I keep everything
inside the lines. I remove the guide,
there you go. You know, have oh, sorry, I'll just use the eraser
again because it's too solid, just to see bit, add some natural
looking texture. And then speaking of texture, the last part is to
add your texture. So this pack already
comes with I mean, the template already comes
with the paper texture. So you can just show that and bring the opacity down a bit to make it look more
realistic So, we have 36. But if you have this brush pack, you can switch back to black
and scroll all the way down. You have a lot of different natural realistic
papers to choose from. But, yeah.
8. Final Project & Closing: So here we have
our final project. At this stage, you should now have something
that looks like this. It's a beautiful lettering
composition where our words are laid out
correctly and they are aligned, and you sketch your
letters consistently, like the thicknesses
are all inconsistent, something that looks very, very professional and
something that looks very, very correct and really nice. But you still have those
really nice, natural, shaky textures that you normally get when you
sketch on actual paper. And then, yeah, a beautiful
and simple design or decoration that still
elevates your entire piece. So hope you are able to follow along and you enjoy
creating this piece with me. If you have any questions, feel free to let me
know in the comments. I would love to
answer them for you. And if you want to
share your work, I would love to see
what you create. So feel free to share it. I'm not sure if you
have to post it in the project section or in
the comments or in the chat. Just feel free to tag
me if you want to share your work with me.
I would love to see it. And yeah, if you want some helpful pointers or
some feedback from me, feel free to send me a
message or share your work, and I would love to help you further improve your
lettering piece. So yeah, Thanks again
for joining me. And, I have a lot more lettering
workshops to share with you, so please all to follow this, and I'll follow my
announcements for more amazing or for more really interesting lettering workshops to come. So yeah, thank you
again for joining me. I hope you learn so much like the process that you'll
be able to carry them or bring them when you create your other lettering
composition projects. So thanks again. Hope you have a great day and have a
creative week ahead. Bye bye.
Nico Ng, Lettering & Design
