Transcripts
1. Learn Brush lettering Welcome : Hi there my name is Nikki triggers of life I design, welcome to learn brush lettering. In this brush lettering class you can expect to learn about all the different tools and tricks that I use to create really great watercolor brush lettering. We'll be using a different style of brushes as well as just a really simple dry watercolor palette. I'll show you what papers work great with watercolor as well as how to create a very nice fluid wash using your watercolor palette. I'll also take you through how to create a modern calligraphy style alphabet using the brush and watercolor as well will create just some bold cool looking different, lettering styles using the brush as well. So this class is really great for anyone who is curious about brushed lettering or perhaps you have some knowledge and wanted to pick up a few new tips and tricks along the way, you don't need prior experience I will take you through how to form letters, how to work with the different colors and tools as well as, maybe putting together a few new projects for you to try and practice at home. So whatever your personal goal is for learning a lettering and using a brush I am happy to share everything that I do in my in-person workshops and you'll hopefully pick up a few tips and tricks along the way. As always I have included a student a handout for you to print and practice with at home it includes a lettering guide as well as a warm-up strokes, so feel free to go ahead and practice along with me as you watch this class. So if you're curious about brush lettering and want to join this class, go ahead click enroll and I'll see you in class.
2. The tools you'll need to get started: Welcome to class. I'm really excited that you decided to join me on this brush lettering journey. I am happy to share with you everything that I do share in my in-person workshops, to help you get started with your brush lettering journey. Before we get started, you need to pick up a few tools. What you need is a brush and I'm going to use a dry watercolor palette for this class to demonstrate with, as well as you'll need some paper. Anything that has a bit of a tooth is great, and then your typical little jars of water, some paper towels for clean-ups, and that's about it. I'll show you exactly what tools I use, and then maybe you can look at expanding what it is that you have at home to use. I recommend getting any size of brush. These brush sizes range from like a number 6 to maybe even a 0. This is a number 1, and it doesn't matter how big the brush is, the bigger the brush is, the wider and fatter your lettering can become, but as long as it's a round barrel, so it has a nice fine tip at the end, you'll be able to still create very fine lettering as well. You can choose what brush you want to invest in, or what you want to pick up once I start demonstrating so that you can see how thick and thin you can get with different sized brushes. Now, what I also like to use is this water brush pen. It is a brush that you fill with water, and it has different types of tips. This one that I chose is a very fine tip brush, and what it does is it allows me to create very fine hairline strokes, as well as some really nice thick ones. Now, I won't get as thicker stroke with this brush as I would with this one, simply because the barrel isn't wide enough. I still will get a nice variance between a thin and a thick with this brush, but if you're looking for some bold, really personality packed lettering, then go ahead and pick up a thicker brush. As long as you have one to practice along with me, that's great. Now, there are different types of watercolor, and I won't go into all of them here in this class, maybe I'll save that for a separate class. I'll be using just a dry palette, this is a primer palette. I'll probably use a few different ones because there are some colors that I have that are my favorites in certain palettes, but a dry palette just allows you to blend and mix some colors, as well as create nice big petals because you want to make sure you have enough pigment before, when you start brush lettering, so any type of watercolor palette. I'll show you another one that I use that is very basic, but again, allows me to create some great colors when I mix them together. In terms of paper, you can pick up watercolor paper. I have a few different pads, and things that I like to use. This is just a Canson watercolor paper pad, it has great texture. Whether it's cold pressed, or hot pressed, it's up to you. I'll talk to you a little bit more about that once we get started, but whatever you have on hand, don't be too fussy. I sometimes use printer paper, so if you have an okay quality printer paper, pick that up. You won't be able to blend the watercolor as well, but again, it's just for practice, don't worry too much. I also have this sketchbook that I use that has a little bit of a tooth, it's a mixed media sketchbook. You want paper that allows you to blend, and that will accept water, or a looser medium, like a watercolor. It's not a thin paper which is nice and it's one again that I can create a little bit of texture with, or pick up the texture of the paper, but one that will accept my watercolor. Those are the different tools that I recommend you have, and of course, grab any jars that you have to put water in. I actually like to use an eyedropper so I can pick up clean water to put in my watercolor palette once I work. Not necessary, but very handy, so once you start using it, you always reach for it because you'll want to add a really nice, generous amount of water to get your dry palette going. Then just some paper towel, and if you want to write the stroke in pencil ahead of time, go ahead and have a pencil handy as well. I like to go right from brush to paper, so again, when you practice you'll gain that confidence so that you can do the same. Those are the tools that you need. Go ahead and gather those, and I'll go in depth a little bit more in the next video to talk to you exactly about the different benefits of the different sized brushes, and how to blend your watercolor together.
3. Learn how to work with watercolor paints: So let's get our watercolor nice and wet and fluid, so that we can begin brush lettering. What you need to do when you work with a dry palette like this one, is you need to activate the watercolor with using water. Which essentially means just getting that top layer of dry pigment nice and wet, so that you can see it starts to pool. I'm going to go ahead and use my dropper. Again, because I just find that I can get a nice generous amount of water into my palette to start encouraging that watercolor to flow. Now the little wells on the lid of the watercolor palette are really great, so I can go ahead and mix some watercolor into the wells if I want to create more of a custom color. Let's go ahead and use this bold red because I really like it. So I'm swirling my brush into the paint. I'm not smashing the tip of the brush, because I want to make sure that I am protecting that brush. So if I go ahead and start painting with the amount of pigment that's on my brush right now, it will create a nice, opaque, very bold watercolor line which is gorgeous, but I'm going to run out of pigment really quickly, if I don't water it down more. So what I'll do is I'll create a little bit of puddle, opposite to that color in my lid here. Just want to make sure that you're able to see that. Go ahead and move this, and I'll go ahead and move this over here. Hopefully that's better. So what I'm doing is I'm picking up pigment with a really wet brush from the actual watercolor itself, and I am creating a nice generous puddle on my lid here. I have different ways that I mix my watercolor using mixing trays. But again, I want it to be really simple for you at home in case you don't have the same tools that I do. So that really nice wet puddle of watercolor will allow me to get a more translucent, so I can see through the texture of the paint to the paper a little bit. So again, the more I continue to create strokes, the more I run out of pigment, creating a really nice translucent wash of watercolor. So that translucency, you can only achieve that translucency with watercolor. Ink, unless you water down ink, you won't get that same effect. Acrylic, you won't get that same effect. But you can actually build the watercolor pigment depending on how much you work at when it's still wet and adding drops to it. So what I love about watercolor too, is I can add a little bit of depth by creating layers of watercolor paint on top of one another. But as it dries, you can see how that pooling create some really nice and interesting texture. So first of all make sure your watercolor is nice and wet. So you can see this one's becoming a little bit dry. If it is thick like a cream versus liquidity like water, that thick cream consistency will create some really beautiful opaque strokes. This is more of a watery consistency that will be a little bit less opaque, creating some beautiful textures. So this is what you want to achieve with watercolor. Some just really nice variation textures. You'll see why because as the paint starts to dry, there is some personality to it. So remember, very wet to begin with, you can see some of the palette has already dried, because we haven't worked the water into the dry pellet. Create a little well, make sure it's nice and wet and you have enough paint, so that you can letter with it. There is a very rough h. That's how you mix your watercolor to get started.
4. Learn how to use a paint brush: Let's look at the different sizes of brushes that you can play around with, just so that you can see the variation in the lines and stroke. We'll use the same color that I created in the previous video. Again, I will show you if I use just the very fine tip of the brush, how nice and thin I can get with this brush. This is a number 8. That's how nice and thick and bold I can create. Let's go ahead and create that nice variation. That's the number 8 brush. I'm going to show you a nice fat one, I love painting leaves actually with this brush, this is a 12. I have to warn you, the bigger the brush, the more pigment you'll work through more quickly because it does soak up that pigment so make sure you do have a nice, generous well of color. You can see hopefully, in this, should give me a second to adjust this. You can see how much pigment it's pulled up. A lot of my pigment's pretty much gone so let me go ahead and create another puddle. The larger the brush, the more pigment it will pick up and use. You want to make sure you have a really nice, generous puddle of watercolor ready to go. I'm getting very messy here. Even with this big fat brush, which is a number 12, I can create some beautiful thin strokes because I'm applying very little pressure on that lovely tip. I apply more pressure and the thicker I can get with those lines. This by the way, is the sketchbook that I'm working in right now, that I would show you that variation. The more pressure you apply on the brush, the more you use the barrel to paint with and the less pressure you apply, the less of the barrel you use, you're really only using the brush, oh sorry, the tip of that brush. That's number 12. On the flip side, I'm going to show you a 0.3. Because it's dry, I'm just going to wet it with some water, pick up some of the pigment, and look how beautiful and fine, going fast so I'm getting wobbly, a line that I can create. But if I apply pressure, look how nice and open that brush becomes. Again, pressure nice and open and beautiful and fine. That's a 0.3. Let's go ahead and use a one. This is one that I tend to pick up quite a bit for when I'm doing some quotes. Again, this is a one and I'm using just the tip to create some beautiful fine lines. I'll load up my brush again and I don't want it to be very heavy or filled with water. You just want to make sure to wipe off the excess if you feel like there's too much, applying pressure, look how nice and thick line I can create. This happens when your brush becomes very dry, so it's running out of watercolor. But look how cool that looks. Again, I love that with watercolor, we can create some nice, opaque, gorgeous lines. But then look at how once it starts to run out, how we can create some really nice texture too. You can see the bristles are starting to splay a little bit, they're not sticking together as they do when they're wet. See that bristles are nice and clean and sticking together. I changed the variation of stroke using my brush as I create pressure and as I release pressure, create pressure and release pressure. One thing I want you to notice too, is that the bristles of the brush or always behind the direction of the stroke that I'm going, so I'm working to the right and the bristles are behind that stroke, so they're left of really where I want that brush to go. I am using the side to demonstrate that. But when using a brush to do brush lettering, you really want to use the tip so that you can create nice stroke and flow. That I think will give you a nice idea of the different size brushes and the thin and thickness of strokes that you can create using those brushes. I'll show you a watercolor brush next, I'll pick up a few to show you. I'll show you a water brush next so that you can get an idea of the difference between using those brushes.
5. Learn how to use Waterbrushes: Okay, these are watercolor brushes, I have a variety here just for you to look at. I'm going to use this one. Again, It is a very fine tip. I'll go ahead and load up my watercolor. But if I wanted to, I could just squeeze and apply a little bit of water into that palette and pull up some of that pigment using my water brush. Now because there's water already in the barrel as I'm working, If I'm finding that I want to a little bit more water what I have to do is give it a little squeeze. You'll see that it will trip a tiny bit. But I can continue to letter without having to reload my brush because there is pigment already left in the brush there, which is letter Hello and it will use this little blob here.There we go. It's very similar in practice. If I wanted to create a thin line, I use the tip of my brush and again, when we're lettering, we want the brush to the upright at a 90 degree angle to the paper so that the brush can flow behind us as we are lettering. Again, more pressure creates some beautiful thick lines okay. I'll be demonstrating using this brush for the class today, but I wanted to show you some variations. This brush is a little bit thicker, it looks like there's green on the top here, is going to go ahead and mix up some of this green squeezing a bit of water, this one is quite a bit thicker. You can see that honorably that's a flat chip as well. You can see how it's flat versus tapered at the tip. We can't create the same thin lines as we can using a tapered, rounded brush. Still possible, but it won't be as easy, I don't recommend it starting out, okay and then you can get large ones as well, this one's pretty fat, juicy as I like to call it, because I can still create those nice thin lines, I like how beautiful, that blue is, it's one thing of watercolor, colors are gorgeous. Really nice, thin lines, but then more pressure. I can really open up the barrel of that brush and create some gorgeous lush declines. Let me do an H here. If I wanted to create a really cool bold H, you would use a bigger brush. Okay, again, there's a ton of variety of watercolor brushes on the market. I'm choosing to go with something a little fine for today. Whether you pick up a brush or a water color brush, totally up to you. I'll demonstrate both for this class and I think it's time for us to start muttering. Go ahead and make sure you have your workbook handy so that you can practice the practice strokes with me as I give you some tips for controlling the brush and the water color.
6. Learn essential strokes to start lettering the alphabet as we warm up: So go ahead and grab your warm up sheet. We won't be tracing this warm up, what we'll do is we'll use it for reference. So I'm going to put it just beside me here so I remember what warm up strokes I gave you and I will load my water brush pen with some water and pigment so we can get going with the beginning strokes. What you'll want to do is make sure you keep your brush at a 90 degree angle from the paper so it straight up and down. I use my finger and thumb to create the movement so that my hand can move freely. My arm is rested on the table and I can actually move the brush, no problem across the page, giving myself support with my left hand. Which you can't see on camera. So creating pressure and releasing the pressure will allow me to start practicing control using the brush because that's what we want with any type of lettering. It's creating the exact pressure that we need to achieve the strokes that we're looking for. So if I wanted to create some thick downward strokes then create an angle here so that you can see what that looks like on the camera better. I achieved that by applying pressure on the brush and releasing the pressure. The bristles again are always following the strokes. They're behind the movement of where I'm going so that it creates a nice, clean start and end to the stroke. So releasing pressure allows me to create nice then upward strokes for lettering, which we will work on because we will do a modern calligraphy style alphabet. So you can see how using a brush allows you the opportunity to do some modern calligraphy style lettering without using a dip pen and nib. So doing the undertone, we're creating pressure and releasing that pressure. So pressure and release pressure, pressure and release pressure. What I like about the water brush is they don't have to reload as often. If I use a traditional brush, I will need to reload probably with every stroke depending on how large or how small the brush is. So applying pressure and releasing that pressure. I'll show you the next one using dip brush. So go ahead and make sure I dip it in some water. Let me move up my sheet here so you can see that. I'll load up the pigment and I'll do the same stroke so you can see what that looks like. So pressure and releasing pressure, actually I'm holding it on a slight angle so the camera can pick up the stroke. You can angle it slightly if you choose, but try to keep it at a 90 degree angle to the paper. Again, nice thick downward stroke and go slow, this is real time. So it'll give you an idea of how slow you have to go. See how I'm running out of pigment there and water, so it's creating a very splaid texturely look. That's okay, these are just warm up strokes anyway. By warming up like this, you'll be able to determine how much lettering you can get with one dip. My bracelets, bothering me there. How much pigment you can get with one dip of the brush. So now we'll move on to circles. Circles can be a bit challenging because it's not always easy to get that rounded shape. If your circles look more like a teardrop to start, it's okay. Again, there are no rules. The more interesting your lettering looks, the better. Like look how gorgeous that looks. So I'll go ahead and switch to the water brush so you can see what that looks like. So if your O's are a little bit more oval, that's okay too. Don't worry too much about the letter form. What I want you to do is really warm up and create that control with your brush. Let's do some underturns and overturns so you can see how the bristles of the brush is flowing behind me. Let's do it again over here. The bristles are flowing behind me. So again, I bit off camera there, sorry about that. Going up, down and up, down and up. So no pressure, followed by pressure, releasing that pressure to create that nice rounded motion there and releasing the pressure. So go ahead and practice as much as you need to those warm up strokes so that you understand how to control the brush, how much pigment you need on that brush so that you can create the strokes that you're looking for. We'll see you in the next video when we actually start to forms some letters.
7. Learn a fun and easy modern calligraphy style alphabet: So what we'll do is work on the lower-case alphabet example that I've given you as part of your student handout. Go ahead and download and print it or have it on a screen for your reference, I will work through each and every letter to show you how to form them and control your brush. I'll just put it over to the side, so I have it here for reference. I'll go ahead and use this palette this time around. I make sure to clean off my brush. I have my paper towel a handy. Get some of that blue off. Again, protect the tip. Make sure you work away from the tip, clearing off as much of that pigment as possible so that you can dip into a new color. I'll use this pinkish red creating a really nice puddle of color. So I've got that two-letter my alphabet with [inaudible] sheet over to the side here. We'll start with the letter a. So our letter a is formed with a ball followed by a little bit of a tail. This is just a very simple cursive alphabet that you can use when you're lettering. Go ahead and create my b. By releasing pressure, applying pressure now, and releasing that pressure. I can form pretty much every letter in the alphabet as we go. What I'm doing is I am reloading each time. I want the color to be really pigmented and bold so that you can see it on the video here. So again, creating that flow with the f. Next is our g. So I don't have lines down, I've practiced a couple of times, so I don't feel like I need it. But if you need to write out the alphabet in pencil first and trace over for it, please feel free, maybe I'll demonstrate that in the next video. You can see my puddles getting a little try here. Let me work with this one. You can see that I'm just free edging this alphabet. I chose to show you this one because it can flow into more of calligraphy style alphabet. Or if you wanted to simplify the letters with the l, it would simply be a thick downward stroke. Here you choose, with the m, you break down the stroke, lift and continue. Try not to go over the same stroke. It can get a little bit messy, and I feel like you won't have as much control. There's our o, and a very simple p. If you wanted to add a bit more personality to that p, you could create that, overturn there. Next is the q, and the r. If you feel like you want to get a little bit more expressive, go ahead and create a tail to get a little bit more fancy with the airbrushed lettering. So the s that I've given you for this alphabet is very simple as is the t, got a little bit heavier there with my down-stroke. But again, it's okay. There's my u, v, w, and x again is very simple thin on the upstroke, y and z. That's how you would practice the lower-case alphabet that I provided you with in the student handout. What I want you to really pay attention to, I'm going to go ahead and try to angle this a bit so you can see how the watercolor is drying. So you see that beautiful puddle there is a little bit more opaque and heavy within the d. I love that that's the effects you can get with a watercolor with brush lettering. You can see the j is a little bit more dry. The j is when I switch to using my puddle of watercolor versus the actual watercolor palette itself. So again, you can get different textures and finishes without even really trying, all I was doing was dipping and re-dipping. Let me show you what you can do in terms of mixing and blending color. If I would go ahead and letter a few letters, try to keep my paint very wet, and then go ahead and grab this beautiful bright magenta purple. Maybe make a pile of it to the side. I can go ahead and add a little bit of that purple to any wet spots that I have in my lettering probably show up with a darker tone. Let's go with this deeper purple so you can see that better. Because the water has been sitting in my palate, it is quite thick. I don't want that for my watercolor, and go ahead and blend this purple here. Then we'll pay attention to how that looks when it starts to dry. But it's going to create a really cool texture and finish to the water. As I'm waiting for this color to dry, you can see I've played around a bit more. I want to see if I can show you how to create a really interesting finish. It's very wet yellow that I am applying, and I'm just in a very simple sans serif easy font that's rounded and fun. Go ahead and use the yellow and I just dipped into my red. I have to work fast because while your paint is still wet, you can apply a nice big blobs of color. I went from very light to very dark and see how your pigment just follows wherever there is water, you can encourage it by pushing it around. If I wanted it to go up to the top of that, be there, as well as the bottom. All I'm doing is pushing that puddle of water. I haven't added any more pigment. I really want to spread that color red a little bit so that it starts to look interesting when it begins to dry. Just get playful with your watercolor. Enjoy the medium. It is a little bit more of a challenging medium to use. But once you let go and just let the watercolor go where it may, it can be a really interesting finish ones everything dries. So have fun with it, play with it, and we'll see you in the next video when I show you another example of an alphabet that you can use with your brush lettering.
8. Learn a second modern calligraphy style alphabet: For those of you who do some calligraphy and want to see how you can create a fun calligraphy style alphabet, I'm going to show you that here in this video. We are just going to load up our brush here and go ahead and start the alphabet again. But what I'm going to do is make it really flowy and bouncy almost by creating nice long tails. Following the modern calligraphy style rules that I teach, I'll go ahead and continue. See, I've got a little bit heavy. I'm going to show you that again. See how there's that big blob. You don't want that to hit the paper because it'll become very blobby and heavy. You want your tip to still be very fine so that you can create your nice thin upstrokes. You can go ahead and release the pigment from the brush. I didn't reload this time, so I want to see how it looks without having to reload each time. Again, don't worry about that effect there. It is a beautiful part of lettering with a brush and watercolor. Again, just creating nice flow so that I have something to attach to as I'm creating more of a flowy modern calligraphy style alphabet. I just added a little bit of punch there because I felt like the tip of my brush had too much pigment, now I know I was going into a nice thin upstroke. Reloading, there's my g. Oh, I did g already, I do this every class, e, f, g, h, i, that should have been a j. That's so funny. I do it every class, every single class, h, i, j, k. You can tell that I'm not looking at anything for reference. I'm just going for it, which means as I talk and letter, I am bound to make some mistakes. There's my m. You can see how easy it is to create modern calligraphy style, bettering using a brush. What I like about using watercolor and a brush like this is that if I am working on porous paper, maybe working on some handmade greeting cards, I am able to create a really nice finish that is beautiful and handmade. Let's go see, l, m, n, o, p, q, r is next. Skipped a tiny bit, no worries, you can always go over it. That's our s, t, q, I'll go ahead and cross that, so you know what letter it is. Oh, I just dipped into the wrong color. Let's go ahead and get my pool or puddle going. There's v, s, t, u, v, and w. Here's my x. I'm running out of space little bit here. There's y, and then z, I'm sure I'll have just enough pigment on my brush. There is a modern calligraphy style alphabet for you to reference. The next alphabet we'll do is something that's a little bit more simpler, and I guess edgier or cool. We'll change up the color that we're using for that next alphabet too. Practice this one or go ahead and press play so you can look at the next alphabet.
9. Bold brush lettering as I demonstrate the upper case alphabet: What I'm doing here is creating a nice puddle of black. I'll be using a number of one white tech lawn brush, which gives me a nice fine stroke, but I can still create a beautiful, beautiful thick stroke. What I'll do is maybe work in the uppercase alphabet so you can see what that looks like. Just taking my time, see how really awesome that the watercolor is creating a nice transparent look there, as well as ongoing big, as well as that nice texture. Again, you can't get that with any other medium. I've run out, maybe I should go a little bit smaller so that I don't run out of pigment so much. There's my C to a nice cool D, here's an E, oh I love it. Nice texture F. You can create some really fun lettering. I can just imagine what this would look like, scanned and digitized. That'll be another class. Let's do a cool I. I'm going to try not to script this alphabet, J. Here we go. I am reloading each time. It's a very thin brush. It will run out of water and watercolor because as soon as it touches the page, that watercolor papers just want to suck up the water in the brush and you'll run up quickly. But again, look at that cool texture. You could only imagine what that looks like when we scan it. I am using the side of my brush, I just noticed, maybe I'll point that out to get those lush thick lines to one side. Maybe we even continue that, and you just play with it just go intuitively. Oh, my pageant turn out so well that loop, but that's okay. Personality is what we're after, might be a little crazy. That's okay. Cool S, T, I'm going to run out of room, but we can continue on a different sheet. There's a U, V, I'm going quicker because I want it to be a little bit more fluid, and not so perfect. Unlike with calligraphy, we want to control with what our lettering looks like. With this type of brush lettering, I feel like the messier, the better look, how cool that looks. Oh, I'm very pleased. That just gives you an example of the uppercase alphabet. Maybe what we'll do is grab a sheet of watercolor paper, and let's see what we can come up with for a lowercase version. I'm going to put that off to the side. I might even digitize, scan that and see what it looks like in Photoshop. Again, that'll be another class. Let's go ahead and make sure we load up brush. We'll do maybe smaller, more controlled lowercase. Just go, have fun with the texture. Vary, what the size looks like. Vary the stroke, I's there get there too much, you can do with them. J Maybe make bigger, K is cool. Again, see that big blob, I'm going to go ahead and release that, so it doesn't get really messy on my page here. Cool, M values that side of my brush a little bit more, so I can create some really nice thick fat downstrokes, so that the upstroke is different. Again, the variation between the thick and the thin I, O is fine. Looks a lot more interesting. Elemental P, Q, nice and thick again, look at that. Nice and thick at the top there, and tapers off, love that. A U, V, W, here we go. I actually got a little bit fatter halfway down when I realized that I was using the side of the barrel which I think is again, a really cool. That's a really cool effect.
10. Learn how to letter a quote as I show you how I letter "celebrate every tiny victory": So for this part of the class, I think what we'll do is work a little bit with pencil first. That way you can feel a bit more comfortable when we're working on our quote. I'm hoping that you'll share your quote with me in the student project area. So what you can do is just grab a pencil. This is just a 2B. I'm not going to worry too much about being able to erase it. This is just for practice and to get into a flow a little bit. So the quote I'm going to work on is already the very plan here. Celebrate and you'll be surprised, my every day hand lettering isn't gorgeous. It is very messy and rushed. Celebrate every tiny victory. So I'm looking at the balance of the words and how they'll flow together, so that when it comes time to using a brush, I can figure out what I want that to look like. So I do know that I want some of the words to be in a calligraphy style lettering and some of them I want to be in a very cool brush style lettering or something a little bit more simple, like a sans serif. So I'm thinking celebrate looks like it will be a fun word to do in calligraphy. I can be quite expressive. So maybe, I'll just go ahead and see what that looks like, written out. I think that celebrate is a powerful word, so that can be nice and big and flowy. Then every tiny might even be nice if it's written out, I have to make it a bit bigger. Just in some block brush lettering but small or tiny, because then that will suit the words. So when you're looking at style, you want to think about the word, the feel of the word of the emotion, behind the word and then the size. So again, I think victory can be nice and powerful. So maybe we'll even play around with something strong. I am going to vary using uppercase as well as lowercase. So make the t even a little bit higher, probably, even though I'm using a lowercase t there, will do an uppercase. So let's just see what that looks like. Again, I'm just playing around. I don't want it to be my final copy. This isn't for any specific purpose, but I just wanted to see what that looks like, and then you can get into the flow of using a pencil before you start lettering. So I think I'll go with black just because I love black. I'm going to use my small brush pen, small brush to do that. So what I'll do is just take my time because I have my pencil line down. I am going to trace over my pencil lines, keeping in mind that I want it to look like calligraphy. So it's a thick downward stroke as well as a thin. Now this is a big L, so I want to do it in one go. So I'll take my time trying to have my hand be supported, so I can create that nice line, I did get a little bit. I ran out of pink there, but I don't care. It is a fun practice. If I decide to do this quote again, which I actually really like, I think I will. Then I know that I need a lot of water on my brush, so that I don't run out there. Probably will run out here as well. That's a little bit too much. So I'll go ahead and go over it. So while it's wet, I went and I continue to that stroke. Nice thick down, going right into that r. So again, if I wanted to go over that, I can. Now looking at this block, I actually think I should have went with a different color, so I may do this quote once more to see what that looks like with color. But I'll free hand at the second time around. I said don't even bother with spacing. Again, it's just for practice. Muscle memory. I know that my spacing is off. I started a little bit tighter together with the C and the e and everything else. Again, there's always room to improve. So I'm going to do nice and square, making it a little bit bigger. So I'm following my pencil lines and not. What I'll do is I'll erase them when it's dry and show you what that looks like. Again, creating a little bit of personality there. It's nice, and I don't have a lot of pigment in my wash of color here. As you can see, it's more of a gray than it is a black. If you wanted to have more pigment and go right into my black palette here and I think for victory will go really heavy. Again, nice and heavy. A strong T and I might even elongate the cross. Lowercase r or you can join it to the y, and a nice swoop of the y. The bigger you go, the more color and pigment you need on your brush, but you can always go over and fill that in. So look at how fun that looks. Again, it's not perfect. I know my spacing isn't great, everything is on an angle because of the way I was holding it, so that I could letter and video it, but I like it. I think that this quote is a really great quote. It has great potential, and you're able to see, I think quite easily, how effective it is when you add some really fun bouncy, flowy lettering next to very simple line lettering. I actually had to read over celebrate because I wanted to make sure to spell correctly. Something I do all the time. Anyway, so I hope that was a great example for you to follow. Go ahead and let's go on to the next video, so that you can see what a quote looks like when we use a water brush pen for lettering. So see you in the next video.
11. Learn how to letter "all we have is now": I wanted to show you too as you're practicing. Watercolor paper can be quite expensive. If you can use something a little bit cheaper, the texture and the finish will be different. I am going to try to save paper by flipping it on to the opposite side. The finishes a little bit smoother on this page, which is kind of neat. Let's see if there's a little bit of a difference with our lettering. What Will do is work on our second quote. I think that quote will be, "All we have is now". I think it needs an underline as well. I think I will let her freehand using my water brush. I've used blue already, red. Maybe we'll use a green. We haven't used a green yet. I'm going to go ahead and just by squeezing on the barrel of my brush, go ahead and add a little bit of water there. What I want to do is I'll create a variation in the greens too. Just creating a puddle and picking up pigment, I'll squeeze and create a puddle on my lid here. Hopefully you can see that okay in the video. I have a nice green, deep green as well as a nice light green making sure that there's quite a bit of pigment and I'll try not to make the lettering as large, which means they won't run out of water color as quickly. See how messy I get. I get so messy when I work but that's the beauty of doing things by hand. All we have is now, so I think all we have needs to be on the same line. I want it to be a very bold, clean style lettering. Then is now I think I'll have a little bit of fun with. Again, by writing it out I can see the spacing and how much room I need so that everything is balanced once I start working. There's a little bit too much pigment on the tip of my brush there, I'll go ahead and take some off and even scrape some off. We'll do some fun lock style. Maybe I won't do all uppercase. But again, all is very just straight line. There isn't any movement to it. But maybe we can make the We bigger. We and the next one is half again expressive. I maybe want to make them be a little bit more interesting by dropping it down. Not every letter is on the same line. There is a little bit bouncing flow, even though most of those letters are just straight up and down lines and mean apart from the undertones of your w, your e and your a, everything is very straight up and down, which is cool. I like that. I'm going to go ahead and use the darker color. On my next line, I'll go ahead and use more calligraphy style lettering. That's a bit flowy. All we have is now not sure if it goes and if I love it yet. But we'll see how it looks. I think it's just nice. If you're creating maybe a quote for Instagram or for a blog post, that's fun when you photograph it, apply a cool filter or really turn up the brightness. I think that lettering will look really neat and interesting. So there you go. You can create some really just simple straight lines or add a little bit of flow and movement. I think I'll do one more quote. That gives you an idea and hopefully inspires you for your class project. I'll see you in the next video.
12. Learn how to letter "be you" adding flourish and style: For this last exercise, I think what I'll do is just pick two words. I think BU, written out with a little bit of charm. Some fluid movement will be really interesting for you to see. Because we can add some swirls to it, so you can see I am just drawing out where I want to add, we'll cross that Y over as well. You can see again how flexible water brush lettering can be. BU feels like a strong, but I don't know, for me it feels like I can be feminine as well as strong. Let's go ahead and use some of maybe these purples. Make sure I have a lot of pigment on my brush. I'm going to start with this bold, expressive B. I'm going to cross it over. I'm running out of pigment there. So go ahead and fill it in and just continue to follow that B, maybe add a little bit of a swirl there. I'm not loving this 100 percent, but when you freestyle that is what happens. Then the Y, if we bring it up over there, tuck it in beside this E, that looks really nice. Then make it, I smudged it. That's what happens. But bring it across and make it really fun. We can always go back and add to it. It is dry, but I'm going to encourage some watercolor to flow over. I have to be careful not to smudge because it is quite wet, especially if I'm crossing over letters. We'll do the O, and the O I think will be short at the bottom, will bring a nice expressive upper loop there and then bringing that U, so across this, maybe about here with the Y, so it's not complete single stroke. When forming of the swirls, you can go back over and add a little bit to it. This one, I'll just fill it in a little bit. I want that to be a little bit more bold and not broken up by the stroke there. So there we go you can create, again, really neat flourishes style lettering using a brush and watercolor to have some variation and some interest. Again, I can see that on an Instagram post I may even use it. I'll do it again so that it's not so messy. Photoshop can clean that up really nicely. I can show you that again in a future class. But I can see that posted on Instagram, empowering beautiful, fun and you can even change up the coloring. So there you go. I hope you're inspired by the different quotes that I provided you with. I can't wait to see what you create for me. I hope you enjoyed these examples. Yeah, let's go on to the next video so that I can give you some reminder pointers and go from there.
13. Closing tips and your class project: So I hope you enjoyed all of those lessons and had a really great experience with learning brushed lettering with me. I've covered a lot in terms of the tools and how to use them, as well as a different style of alphabets, which I think is really cool with brushes. You can't get that same effect with a nib and dip pen. As much as I love my traditional nib and ink, it doesn't allow me to have that same experience. So get playful with your brush and watercolor. Really explore how to use the watercolor and to blend your pigments as well. I want to see your class project. So I thought for this class it would be really great to come up with a short quote, maybe vary the style of lettering that you use. So go ahead and use that modern calligraphy style lettering, along with the very simple Sans Serif style lettering as well. Play around with it. Have some fun and post. I'd love to see what it is that you are creating. So thank you so much for taking this fresh lettering class with me. If you are curious to learn more about lettering, please look at my introductory class to modern calligraphy using a dip pen. I even have an advanced class and just the same with this class, I have really great handouts for you to use, as well as I demonstrate how to form those letters in real time throughout the different classes. So thank you again for joining me. I hope that you do follow me here on Skillshare as I have a very long list of classes that I'm putting together and would love to have you on that journey with me. Keep practicing your lettering and get more comfortable with forming letters. Thanks for joining me in this class.
14. Uppercase Alphabet: I decided to create this video for you to show you some uppercase letters that you can incorporate into your practice. I'm just using a palette that I put together. It's a prima watercolor palette with my very small Akash brush. Go ahead and load up my brush, making sure to protect my tip. Here we go. So just very simple. I'm going to make my letters nice and big so that you can see them. But very nice and simple. Uppercase to help you build your practice and work on your strokes. This is a mixed media paper. I'm going to go a little bit smaller, so it's getting a little too large. A mixed media papers sketchbook that I have. So it's great for wet mediums as well as dry mediums. I did say it was going to go smaller but feels natural. It's just a really nice simple letter E. Sometimes you can add your bit of a personality at the top there. Appeared letter E. I'd like to add just a little bit of interest when you're starting out with an alphabet so that you're not overwhelmed by the movement of your brush. Remember to hold your brush up at a 90 degree so that you're able to control that brush creating nice declines. Remember, nice thin, look at that variation there. So again, just going slowly you can mimic the lowercase letter G for the H, like to keep it really simple. So I started with that little upper entrance stroke, followed by nice thick downstroke. I'm going to keep it simple. So just a little bit of pressure at the top of the stroke and releasing the pressure at the bottom and creating just a simple cross stroke there. You can even add a little bit more personality if you wanted to in your I. I like to keep the straight stroke letters really simple because I feel like it gives my I a break when I'm working on additional letters. The letter J and K, I'm going to create just a little bit of a swirl. So again, a little bit of pressure, more pressure and releasing that pressure. So you have a little bit more of interest in your stroke there. There's the letter L and M will just keep it really simple. Lifting your pen for every upturn there, making sure to do that left and down again. You can even add a little tail there if you choose. It's getting dry, so let's add a bit more water. So remember, your dry water colored palette should be nice and loose. So it should look like water, just colored water. If it starts to get creamy, you know that you need to add a little bit more water to the palette so that it can flow. There's your letter O. For P will just keep it simple. Let's go on to Q and R maybe I'll even add a bit more of exaggerated tail. So for your exit strokes, you can even extend them a little bit. You want to add a little bit more personality. Our S, and S can be a little bit challenging because you're really not lifting at any point. It is more of a curved movement. So you can play around with the S and practice that one a little bit more, and then your letter T, you're again creating a nice interest for their cross, and then U perhaps we'll add a little bit more tail there. I am changing my uppercase alphabet a little bit, but I want to show you some variation so you can stop at the bottom of your stroke or you can add a little bit of tail and continue that. Doing that will just add a little bit more elegance to your lettering. Make it look more formal. There's the V, put enough pressure there, just very simply again. W, remember to lift and then go ahead with your downstroke. Our letter X, here we go. Letter Y will be very similar to that G, because they are very similar letters and will help the alphabetic and come together. Finally, letter Z, there you go. So that's a really great example of an uppercase letter that you can practice along as you build your water brush lettering skills, and gain, if you're working on a poem or perhaps a quote, you can incorporate some of your uppercase letters in the alphabet as you need. Hope you enjoyed that.
Nicki Traikos, Letterer, Watercolorist & Instructor
