Watercolor Lettering

1. Introduction: do you love lettering and now want to dive in to the world of watercolor lettering? Or have you already tried watercolor lettering and want to learn some new techniques to take your lettering to a new level? Hi, my name is Shelly Heads. I'm an artist and illustrator, and I love lettering. When I first got into a lettering, I've then soon discovered watercolor. I'm definitely a water color girl. And so combining my love for lettering with water color has been amazing. I want to take you step by step through the process of how to use a brush or water brush with water color. How to really develop your rush control, how to get the water right, but also how to create some really cool techniques with your watercolor lettering. So get out your brush and watercolor paints and get ready to have some fun. We're going to go over lending the water color on gray effects. We're gonna go through galaxy lettering, even adding really awesome gold shadows to your watercolor lettering and one of my favorites splatters. I love it. So let's get going, and I cannot wait to see your water color lettering go to the next level 2. Supplies: in this video. I want to talk about supplies, so basically all you need is some foreign form of watercolor paper, a brush to use and water color paint. You can use whatever you have on hands. Don't worry about going out and buying new supplies for this class. I want you to use what you have and enjoy the process. However, for the brushes, it usually is better if you have a smaller tip or a fine tip. These are three different brands of water brushes, so water brushes are really, really fun because you just put the water in them and it makes the process, I think, just easier and a little bit less cumbersome. But if you don't have a water brush, don't worry about this. But this also my water rushes also travel with me so I can do watercolor lettering and watercolor painting anywhere. I'm partial to the pen tell aquatic water rush just because that's what I started with. But there is a secure a coy and this is the cure a talkie brand and they're all really good rushes. The Security oy has a longer tip, which could make it better to really get those thick. Somethin's in your lettering, but it could also make it harder to control. So if you're a beginner, I do recommend the pen tele quash for the water brush you can get them for usually under $5 on Amazon could. Also, he's a regular brush. What I started with were these Grumbach er, Golden edge from Michael's. I used the size to Typically for your beginner, it's better to start with us larger size. The smaller size is not gonna hold as much water. It's gonna be a little bit more technical and difficult to use, but I lost my number two. I don't know where it went, but my number two is what I created. My brush lettering practice sheets I sell on Etsy. It's what I used to really get started in tow. Learn. But now I mostly used these Windsor in New in serious seven they Arthuis Sable hair, which is a higher quality of brush. And it's interesting because the size zero, this is the size zero on the Windsor noon is about the same size. Is the size one on the ground, Bacher. So for the Windsor Newton, I'd recommend the site either the size one. If you're a beginner or a size zero, either those sizes will work well for lettering. As far as the paint goes, you can use whatever paint you have on hand you can use to pains, which you put in a palette like I have here. These are my mission gold watercolor paints there currently my favorite. But one thing I love with watercolor lettering is using these equal line liquid watercolors . Thes air really handy because the lid gist comes off and then you can just sit this on your dusk and you can just dip your water brush or your brush into this. It's already a great consistency to use, and you don't to do any mixing. And they really are fun to use for watercolor lettering. So I love these for the lettering. We will have a lesson in this class about galaxy lettering, and in that lesson I will be using a uni ball signal. White pen. Now this is optional. You don't have to have this, but if you have it, it's something you can use for that project. And then I will have another video where I talk about adding gold effects. I love gold, and I'll be using these fine tech gold pains, watercolor pains to add shadows. And I'm just going to show you a technique using golden bossing powder. Now you don't have to have these, but if you do have these things on hand, then it'll come in handy for that lesson. But let's get started. This is gonna be such a fun class. I love watercolor lettering is just really relaxing. If you do want to learn more about the exact paints I recommend and why the paper? I recommend the different palates and all the supplies that I use and recommend I do recommend going through my class, watercolor and ink supplies, I held nothing back. I wanted this class to be complete. I wanted it to be the class that I wished I would have had when I was first starting all the supplies really confused me. And so I wish somebody would have really walked me through step by step, and that's what I do in that class. So if you're curious about supplies and you just wanna learn a little bit more or get a peek inside what I use and why definitely go back and take that class. Watercolor earning supplies. But you can first Sure, just use whatever watercolor paper you have on hand, a brush, water, Russia, regular rush and watercolor paints, so let's get started. 3. Before You Begin: before we begin, I want you to know watercolor lettering is so fun and highly addictive. I love it. It is just amazing all the different effects you can get. However, there is a process that I believe you need to go through. So if you don't already know some of your basic strokes, you don't already know how to form your letters. I recommend starting with my brush lettering for beginners class. This class will take you from the very beginning. Help you get all your foundational strokes and understanding of how hand lettering or brush lettering works to prepare you for this class. I would say this class is an intermediate class and that my brush lettering for beginners class would be the beginner class. And I don't want to repeat everything in this class that I already taught in brush lettering for beginners. And so if you have not already gotten a really good hold on your basic strokes and your letter forms, take that class first and then come back here also the next to videos about water control and brush control there so necessary to have success with watercolor lettering. But just know that the fun really begins in blending and blending your letters. I don't want you to skip the next to videos, but I want you to know that their foundational for watercolor lettering learning that water control in that brush control. But then the fun and the magic happens when we really start learning how to blend, are letters and learn how to use the different colors. And so I am so excited to dive in, Let's get started. 4. Water Control: one of the most important things you'll need. Toe learn with watercolor lettering is water control. Now, if you're using these equal line liquid watercolors, you can use them straight out of the bottle, and you don't really have to worry too much about the water control. But if you're using any kind of PN watercolors or to water colors that you've put in a palette, you'll need to be able to learn how much water to add to the paint in order to get your desired effect. What I like to do is I'll just use a little spray bottle, and I will wake up my paints in my palette. Now you may already have the liquid watercolors, and if you do, that's fine. But I usually spray those down just to activate them. The thing with watercolor to is you can see I have some left over in here so I can just spray down these watercolors that are already in my palette, and I can reuse those as well, so you never have to waste anything with watercolor paints. And I love that. But what you're gonna have to learn is kind of how much water to put in and to use with your pains, something I use all the time. And it's just a preference. I love having this little eyedropper, and it helps me to easily drop water into my paints, one drop at a time. And so this is something that you may find helpful as well. So when you're working with your watercolors, so you show you with my regular brush first, I like using two bowls of water you can use to jars. You can use anything you want, and what I do is the one on the left is the dirty water. The one on the right is the clean water else. Have a little paper towel here to wipe off any color or water in between. And so what you're gonna do is you're going to look at your colors and decide which colors you want to use for your lettering. Let's just make a simple underst use one color. So one of my favorite colors is this bright opera pink. I can tell I use it a lot. It's running down. I'll pry, have toe order more of that individually. Soon as you can see, I'm getting some pain in their now one of the things with water control that you'll notice is you either have the situation where you don't have enough water. It's too dry, or you may get to the situation where you have too much water. So let me show you in this situation, it's it's too dry. I don't have enough water. So let me just show you with some basic strokes what happens and you can see it's running out of water pretty quick now. Sometimes you want that dry brush look, but you can tell it ran out of water really quick. And sometimes it's the size of brush that you're using. Let's just was a little bit more water in here. You can dip your brush into the water bowl to get that water, or you can use the eyedropper. Let's try this again. My hand was not to study on that, but you can double. You see the difference. It's much better now. Let's say we have too much water in here. Go ahead and add too much water. When it's too much, water is just gonna get spread. Oh, it's not gonna have a good consistency, and it's just not gonna look good. Let's try this. All right, so it's not bad. It just needs blended out a little bit. But you can see there's more pooling of the water, and I would just have to go back over it and kind of blend it out again. So, you know, adding more water makes it just a little bit more transparent or a lighter, more pastel color, which you may want that. But just know you may have to go back over it a little bit more to get a more consistent look. But just play with your water color and how much water you have in there just to see what you prefer. Now I do go into depth on the exact basic strokes that I recommend for practicing your lettering in my brush lettering for beginners class. I'm not going to cover that end up in this class because you can go back and watch that video in that class. But I do recommend using the basic strokes to practice your watercolor lettering as well. So let's go ahead and just use that again, and we just give you an example. So it's, you know, thin up thick down. This is one of the basic strokes. Again, this is a little bit too much water for what I would prefer. You can kind of see what that looks like. I'm gonna add a little bit more paint, and it really is a feel. You'll get a feel for what you like. Also, I like really right colors. That's my personality. That's what I like. You might like more pastel colors, so that might be more your thing. Can you see how different this is? So much more right? And so one of the things with the water control is what kind of color do you want? But also it is good to not have too much water as it causes pulling like there's pooling of water. And then it also just makes a little more a little bit harder to control me. Show you with the water brush so you can just basically dip it in. Once you have your hey there, you don't have to use the water bowls when you have a water brush. And let's just do the basic strokes. I didn't feel like I had enough water, and with the water rush, you can also squeeze out of the barrel to get a little bit more water in the rush. So if I squeeze it out, squeeze it a little bit. Some water comes out and it kind of gives me war water. And again, you're using your pressure if you haven't yet mastered brush lettering and the different pressures and the strokes, as well as knowing just how to form your letters, definitely recommend going back to my brush lettering for beginners class. I really consider watercolor lettering, amore, intermediate skill. It takes a little more skill, a little more practice. It's harder. So if this is frustrating at all, for you or harder for you, or if you're just the very beginning, definitely recommend going back to my brush. Living for beginner class first getting your basic strokes in your alphabet down and practicing that and then come back toe learning watercolor lettering. But if you're just wanting to jump in, go for it. I mean, that's totally up to you. A swell. Let me go ahead and show you if you're using the water rushed from the very beginning, I'm going to use this purple that's also one of my favorite colors. Put it in here and you can see how that's pretty concentrated. It's pretty dry. There's not much water in there. Just gonna flip this over to show you. And so again, this is a little bit too dry for me, and you can tell it has more of that dry ness to, and I'm going to just squeeze out some water. Then I'm just gonna swish it around, try to get the consistency that I want, and I kind of am familiar now. But you'll get you'll get a feel won't doesn't take long to get a feel for how much water and you'll do the thin up in the thin down. So I probably added a little bit too much water. So this is a good example, and I always like to have scrap pieces of paper around for me to practice on before I start my lettering. Peace. That way, you can really figure out if you're, you know, have a good consistencies. Let's try a little bit too much water. Let me get a little bit more paint a little more pink in here. For me, that's about right. And again, just like I taught you in the brush lettering for beginners class. I recommend holding the rush around 45 degree angle and starting with the basic strokes so I can't recommend it enough. But if you have not gone through the brush lettering for beginners class yet, definitely go through that. And if you have already been doing lettering for why I still recommend going back and going through that class because I really think it can give you some extra tips along the way. So what I've been doing here as I've been talking, as I've just been spreading in the water color into these strokes a little bit better. That's something you can do for blending. We're gonna be talking about blending in another video. But as I was talking, I just found myself naturally doing that. So, basically, for water control, you want to test it. You can either have too little water, which means you'll have more of like that dry, dry brush. Look around the edges. You may have too much water, which then it just is leaves different pools of water and makes a little harder to control . So just find what really works best for you and what you prefer as faras, the different ones go and them for the water rush. Just squeeze out the water and rub it along the towel until it's clear. And that's when you know all of the pain is out of the brush and it's good to go. Let me also just show you one of these liquid watercolors. And like I said, I really like thes cause I can just dip my Russian and go says kind of a purplish blue. This is 507 and equal line and depending on how big your brushes will depend on how much water it can hold, how much painted can hold, so you may have to dip in more often. You can see that's how that works. And then again, just getting all the pain out of the brush by squeezing a little bit. Don't squeeze too much and then rubbing it against the napkin and then with a regular brush again, you just dip it in and just come down and, uh, down. Now, this brush definitely holds more liquid, so you can see the 1st 1 was was more dark, which is kind of a need effect. But I love these because I can just dip in them. I don't have to worry about mixing any water, and so that's a really fun thing to do. A swell. I hope that you're now feeling comfortable with how much water to mix with your pains. With the control of your water rush, go back to the brush lettering for beginners class, get out your basic strokes and go back and practice your basic strokes using this water control that you've just learned. 5. Brush Control: in this video. We're gonna talk about brush control now because of brush is so flexible. And it's not as stiff as some of the brush pens, especially the Tom Bo food Natsuki Harden soft that I recommend for beginners in my brush lettering for beginners class. But because the brush is so flexible, it's going to take more practice to really get control of your thick centonze. The basic strokes with a brush lettering is you're going to go pick on the down stroke and thin on the upstroke again. I go into detail on all of that in my brush lettering for beginners class. But I just wanted to go over just some basic brush control tips for you. I personally love working with the brush. It's really the style I found that I love. I recommend using a lot of different tools, a lot of different brushes and just see what you like The best I love using brushes and the the look that it gives, and yet it took longer is probably one of the hardest skills toe learn in lettering, and so don't get discouraged if you feel like it's hard in the beginning, because it will be. This is a flexible thing, and it's hard to control. So let's go ahead and take some of this paint that I already have. And when I go ahead and just take my eye dropper at a couple more drops swishing around, and so when you're working with a brush, you're going to have to learn the control of the pressure. I recommend holding it at about 45 degrees angle. Try not to hold it too tight, and then let's just practice the thin up strokes and the thick down strokes. And typically you wanted to try to be on the same angle minor kind of getting off, and you can see I'm losing some. What are their? The cool thing with watercolor lettering is you can always go back over it, so nothing's ever really lost. You just go back over it and it's all good. And so you're gonna go thin and you're gonna go kind of like on the tip of the brush. And then when you go thick, you're gonna push down and see how it bends the brush, and again, you can come back over it. If it doesn't give you the exact look you want. Let's do some circles. Those are the hardest You're gonna start. Then put the pressure down, and then you're gonna come back up thin and again. You can kind of go back over the thing with watercolor lettering as real. You rarely get it exactly perfect the first time. But the cool thing about watercolor lettering is you can go back over and smooth out the edges, so definitely don't you know, if you see a lot of people that are posting watercolor lettering on instagram and think that they get those perfect layers the first time, they probably don't. I mean, some of them do and you know, if they're if they're really good and they've been doing this for a long time, but it just takes a lot of practice. You're gonna push down and then come back up on more thin, more of a thin stroke. And let me just show you with the water brush. I do recommend kind of sticking with one or the other just because then you get used to that. And so, whichever one that you feel most comfortable with, go ahead and choose one or the other, and I'm just going to kind of come back over this again. I tend to use the pento water rush a lot. I use it with ink, and so this is what I'm used to. But what I recommend is deciding if you're going to use the brush or if you're going to use the water rush and just choose one or the other. And so I want you just to start practicing your diff'rent strokes. And you know, we learned some water control. Like how much water to put into your pains, What you want to do with that and use it to practice your basic strokes again. You can download a practice sheet with these basic strokes on them in my rush lettering for beginners class. And that way you can have those to start practicing, and so you'll notice. Here these air uneven and the thing like with the brash control, you can always come back over with watercolor while it's still wet and smooth it out unless you just want kind of that organic look. Sometimes when you're working on a piece or your your certain style as you practice, your style will evolve and Maybe you like that organic look, but you can go back over and just smooth it out. And what you're really wanting to practice is the thins and the fix. So that is the basics of brush controlled is really getting comfortable with the thins and the fix and getting comfortable with how that looks, how that feels. And you want to start getting a consistent look toe, how thick your thins are and health IQ, your fix, our So you want to try to get that consistency, and it takes a lot of practice. I have heard really big name calligraphers in hand letters say they still practise their basic strokes and alphabet every day. So don't think that you know you can't. You know you could just learn, and then it's all good. It's a continuous process and of learning and just getting used to your brush. So your assignment for this video is choose one brush, choose which one you're going to use for lettering. Try it. The ones that you have. You just have one brush, then use that one. But I want you to choose one that you're really going to practice with your going to get proficient with, and it's okay if you use a couple and you change. But just know if you use more than one, it's probably gonna take you longer to really become proficient at it. So I hope that this helps you and just getting a little bit more comfortable with your brush control. Also, make sure to download all of the practice sheets I have for you in the brush lettering for beginners class. Go through those videos because it will really give you a good foundation, but you'll also be able to down the those practice sheets to start using also with your watercolor lettering. 6. Alphabet: in this video, I'm going to go through the basic alphabet that you can create with your brush and water color paint. Here's a video I created for you that is the lower case alphabet, and I'm using Payne's gray here. Payne's gray is a beautiful color, and it's one that I bought specifically because I didn't already have it in My said. It's just a really sophisticated color and it really gives ah, neat look to your pieces. But here is the video of the lower case alphabet. Just to see how it's done with watercolor lettering, you e a za reminder. I go through all of the anatomy of each letter in my brush. Lettering for beginners class as well as Fonsi can use all sorts of different practice sheets. If you cook on the your project tab, you'll find all of the practice sheets for the rush lettering for beginners class there. And so I recommend going over to that class and making sure you download all of those practice sheets and specifically make sure that you watch the basic strokes, brush, lettering, tips and anatomy of each letter video. I think those will really help you as your getting into water color lettering 7. Blending Letters: Let's talk about blending letters. This is where it starts to get really fun. And I love watching the different colors blend. It is so relaxing. It's very therapeutic. And I think you will completely enjoy the process as well. So I've already prepared my palate of different colors. I will use these air some of my favorite colors to use. This is a teal I have some peacock blue and I think some cerulean blue This is cerulean blue. This is the bright opera pink and this is the bright, clear violet, these air, the mission gold paints I will show you in these pains and then I'll also show you with the equal line, and I'm also gonna start with my Windsor and Newton brush. But I think I also show you with the equal lines as well. So you can kind of get an idea how it works with different types of materials. So when you're working with blends, you obviously want colors that are gonna look good when they blend together. And one of the ways you're gonna know if the colors blend well together is by knowing a little bit about color theory and the easiest thing to think about is the rainbow. I remember learning the rainbow Roy G. Biv so that's red, orange, yellow, green, blue and it's in to go and then violet. But basically that's the rainbow, and those are the different colors that air next to each other on a color wheel. So if you use colors that correspond are next to each other on the color wheel or in the rainbow, Roy G. Biv they're gonna mix well together. So a few mixes I love to do is the red, orange and yellow beautiful mixes. Another mix that is fun to do is the yellow, green and blue. But probably my favorites to do is the teal, the blue, the violin and the pink. So I really love those colors, but you use the colors that you love and that work well for you. The other thing that I do is I keep a lot of scrap pieces of paper in my work station, and then what you can do is you can just take your color, for instance, this pink. I could take this color and I could put it on here, and then I could see if a color is gonna blend. Well, now, one thing to know is if a color is on the opposite of the color wheel. So if you look on the opposite of the color wheel of this of the kind of the red violet, the pink is going to be like a green or yellow green. And so let me just show you real quick If I would take a green and try to blend what it would look like, See how it becomes this kind of brown ish color. That's because they're opposite each other on the color wheel, and they're just not gonna look as pretty when they blend is gonna create this brown, and that's not really what we're trying to accomplish. So if you're ever in doubt, you can always just do a simple test and no, which colors are gonna blend well together. But the safest thing to do is just choose those that are next to each other on the color wheel. Or you can think in terms of the rainbow. Roy G. Biv. All right, let's get started. I'm gonna use these colors here. I'm just gonna do the word blend, so I'm just gonna dip My brush and watercolor lettering is dependent on how much water your brush holds. So if your brush doesn't hold as much water, you were going to have to dip in more often so you can see him starting to run out. And that's not a problem with watercolor leading and you just come back over. So what you can do is add a little, like drip of more of pain at the end, because having that paint there at the end, the water there at the end is gonna help you to blend. Now you're gonna dip your brush into the next color, and then you're going to dip. It just kind of dab it into that place where you have that extra paint from the previous color, and then you're going to do your next letter. So this is one way to do. The blending is to do one letter each color, and I'm gonna show you several different options. And what you can do is clean out the paint from your brush and then come in here and kind of come from each direction and help it just kind of blend in a little bit more. I might dip into my teal a little bit, but yours kind of massaging at. That's why I kind of like to think of it. It's just kind of like a massaging of those color blends. Okay, now let's go ahead and do the pink in a dip in here. Get my get my brush loaded up. So see how I'm kind of just dabbing at the end there that's forming like a pretty purple color. Look how pretty that is. See how that just came out so pretty? I'm telling you, it's addicting. Can remove the paint from your brush so you can have a clean brush to do the blending. And really, there's very, you know, so so many things you can do to correct. If you have any little mistakes, you can come back in and and redo it. But just let yourself relax, cause if you're too tense, worried about making a mistake, then it's not going to go a swell. So I'm gonna add a little bit more pink in here cause it got a little bit purplish, so I just dipped my Russian to the pink, and then I'm gonna remove a little bit of the water cause I can see this is really wet now with the extra paint in there, and I'm just gonna kind of work it in a little bit more. So you just take your time. This watercolor lettering, it can be very quick and that you can just do it or you can take your time and really massage these letters to really look how you want them to look. Okay, I'm gonna get some of this purple to cope. Pretty that pink is coming in there. Gonna remove the the paint and some of the water cause I see it's really wet and the the way you'll know if it's really wet is just It's really shiny and you can start to see. But you can see how pretty some of that pink even came into the top of the end, which I think is really pretty. Then let me back into the purple because I want to make sure I have I have some wetness. This was one of the things I didn't really know when I was first. Starting watercolor lettering is in order to get these nice pretty blends. You has to be wet enough here at the end since I don't know if you can see. But now that has on a lot of color. There. Now, let's go ahead and test this purple with this teal and just see what it would look like. Okay, I think that looks fine. I just You know, that's just a example of how you contest it. Okay, you can dip it in there a little bit. And if the color is darker than the color you're using, like this purple is darker than this. Teal. It's not gonna show up as much on the purple Letter, but it will show up more on the teal letter, the purple and the teal. And so that's something to know. And then it doesn't matter how much you really have at the end of this D because we're not gonna be blending. But look how pretty See how that's just naturally coming in there and it just looks really , really pretty. The the blends. So I'm just gonna come in here and just kind of work this a little bit. I don't like to work mine too much. Um And to be honest, it depends on the quality of your paint. If you have student grade paints, it's gonna not have as good of an experience with the blending. But I think that's pretty good. Let me just come in here and give a little bit more to this end. There we go. How beautiful is that? Oh, I just love it. Think this is where the magic happens and let me just show you It's all drying right now. But can you see these beautiful, beautiful blends? So as each letter came into each other, they have all of these really pretty different colors that formed and I just love lips. I swear that I just love how that looks. So if you accidentally do something like that, let me just show you what you can dio have a little happy accident, right? It's run. Not necessarily. You can re wet the water and then take a little towel and most the time you can pick it up . Some watercolor paints are very staining, so they won't pick up as easily. But for the most part, you can fix most little mistakes, not a problem, and not have to worry about having to redo something. The moral of this story is, though. Is that really you should be careful about moving or touching your pieces until they are dry? Because that can happen. You can't smudge things me. See if I can get this a little bit. There we go. So that is better. And so that's one way to blend is doing one letter at a time. Okay, so this time, let's try a different method. I'm gonna use the equal lines, and I'm also gonna use my pen, tell water brush just to kind of show you the difference. And I'm just gonna dip straight into the equal lines. You can also create different palates and mixed them with water. And let's go ahead and just do the word smile. Just gonna dip in here. And what you can dio is when you have a word that you're doing and I'm gonna add a little bit more water who didn't have as much water on my brush just shut. And with this water brush, you can also just squeeze it and more water will come out. You have to be careful that you don't get too much water on your PC. Might have liked what I did. Squeeze it to the side. So you're getting it really wet. And there's a balance, though. You don't want it to it. Okay, so once you have it wet, what you're gonna do, make sure you remove that color from your brush to not contaminate the different colors here. So I'm just going to dip into the purple. And what I can do then is just drop in the purple in different places. I'm gonna remove that. It's kind of like a purplish blue dip into the blue, and it's almost like more of a tie dye effect, A marbled effect, whatever you want to say. And you can just really do whatever you want with this. And you just want there to be more water so that it really gets some movement. You can also get some more water and, you know, add some water to this, gonna make it move around a little bit more, and you're going to get more of like what I would call a tide I effect or a marbled effect , and just depending how you want to do this. You can work it in as much as you want or you can just let it do its thing. Watercolor cannot be controlled. That's one of things I actually like about it. It's not something that you can just control. It's going. It has a little bit of a mind of its own. Okay, let's go ahead and do the M here and gonna just add a little bit more into you. Get just a little bit more what this really needs to be wet. Justo. Have the blending work correctly. Let's go ahead and drop in some of the blue. See how I don't know if you can tell. It's just real pretty blending so you could do different blends. Different things. But it really adds interest when you just drop different colors into your into your letters and you can actually combine the two methods. So if you do the one letter at a time, you conduce that, and then you can also drop different paint into each letter to so you can actually do both at the same time, which is fun. I just encourage you to experiment like it's just fun. You can experiment and find what works best for you and again, you just want tohave somewhat. I'm gonna just get a little more water here, See what this red looks like on here. And you're just going to keep doing that. You can see I didn't completely clean out my brush, so it was a little bit of a mixture. You do want to be careful with ease, Eagle lines of your dipping straight in there that you're not contaminating the color If you don't mind that it has a little bit of a mixture in there than that is fine. But I'm really using this paper. Tell I just squeeze it out and toe so you can't see the color anymore, and that's when you know it's good. Now I'm getting low on water here. So that's one thing, um, you will need to refill this every once in a while. If you're using the water brush. If you want. You can just use the eyedropper, you know, just don't want to get up. And right now, I don't want to interrupt the filming of this so you can just use an eye dropper to refill it or you going to say, get your saying can refill it. However, works bust for you and I do go through more paper tells when I use a water brush. So you just wanna have maybe some extra ones handy so that they can just dry out in between . You don't to throw this one away. You can just let it dry, but you're just gonna need tohave more. You can see they're still blue in there, and these air are concentrated watercolors. So sometimes it takes Sometimes I'm just gonna leave it like that for right now. And let's go ahead and do this last one. I like to keep it really on my classes. So when stuff happens instead of editing out all the mistakes and the things that have happened, I actually like to leave that stuff in. So you know what to do when that happens to you. And I think for me, I would rather like to really just know, like, okay, if something if I smudge my watercolor, what I do or my paper towers full water. And so that's something just to that I like to dio and I just like to be able to share those little tips with you. And again, you can rework this as much as you want and get it different. But I think that looks really cool and I'm just gonna leave it like that. So this is more of like a tide. I look and you can do a mixture of both or you could do one or the other types of Lund's, and it's gonna be just really fun to experiment. So there's absolutely no right or wrong. And art art is unique. It's not perfect. It's your interpretation. And if you're having trouble really embracing the artist in you or you hear that stinking thinking in your head like it's no good, this didn't turn out right. Why can't you get it right? I heard you to take my class, embrace the artist in you And this is a class here and skill share that a lot of people have really enjoyed, and it will help you kind of overcome some of those mindset things. So I just really encourage you to let go. And I just want you to letter one phrase for your class project in whichever way you want to do it. Whether you want to do the blending technique letter by letter, if you want to do the more of the more the tide I look. Or if you want to do a combination, you know, do whatever you want is to choose a phrase, and I want you to really just learn toe let go and is not funny. I put some pink in there, but it ended up being more of that purple. Gonna go ahead and remove the paint from my Russian when I use paint in my palette. I don't worry as much about contaminating just because this is just a small bit of my my paint, and I can always wash it out and get more if I want. Whereas in the bottles, if I'm dipping straight into the bottle, that's like the entire pain so that it kind of be a little more careful. It's not pretty. I just love that pink. It's so bright. A. I just want you to learn toe let go. So not to have a preconceived conception of what it needs to be today. But let go and enjoy the experimentation. Let go and enjoy just the relaxing part of watching the colors go on the paper and to mix and just to blend and see what happens. See what colors you like the best. I really like these colors better than I like thes that red is just not quite as bright as the pink. And so I just like that bright pink butter. But that's pretty to probably what I would like. Even better in this color is just using the purple in the blue and using those two and not including the red. So you know you'll learn which colors you like the best. What really looks good? What you love what you don't love but be willing to experiment. That's why I love using these four by six cards. They're small. If I make a mistake, it's not a big investment of money. And that's why I also like using the cancer in Excel. It's inexpensive. Many times I can get a big pack of it with a coupon at my local art store, and so it really just gives me that freedom. And so what you're gonna find is as you try these blending techniques, you're gonna find the color combinations. You like the brush that you prefer. You're gonna find just all sorts of different techniques, and you may even learn a technique that I have not taught you in this class that you can share with us in your cost project. So go ahead right out of phrase and make sure to post it in the Kloss Project area. You'll need to be on a computer or a browser, and there we'll see a tab, says your project. Click on that tab and upload a picture of what you created. It just inspires me so much and inspires the other students to see what you're creating, and I cannot wait to see what you create. 8. Ombre Technique: in this video, we're gonna go through an ombre effect. So hombre just means that part of the word is one color, and then a blends into another color. So what you typically want to do when you're doing an ombre effect is start with the lighter color and then add in the darker color. So I'm going to start with a lighter color on. Let's start with this pink. It's gonna be the lighter color. And I'm just gonna do the word hombre to make it simple. And what you're gonna want to do is just write it out in that lighter color first. - All right, so you want to kind of trying to make sure it's still what and minus starting to dry. So I'm gonna add in a little bit more paint here at the top, and you can add the second color in either at the top or at the bottom of your letters. It just depends on where you want the effect to be. So you just wanna you're gonna have to work a little bit faster just because the paint will dry. But you can also, if you're in a situation like I am where it's been drying and you need more paint in there . Just add a little more people. All right, so now I'm going to do the purple, and I'm going to just drop it in here at the top. This purple is very strong, so I don't need a ton of it. There's gonna be dropping it kind of in to the top areas of these letters. So once you have some pain in there going to go ahead and clean off my brush and I'm just gonna work on blending this So now I'm just with a clean brush. I'm coming from the bottom. This is not needs a little bit more pink down here, so just dip into the pink and you could just now blend it to your heart's content and see how pretty that looks As you just get those two colors and they're gonna add a lot more pink this start to dry. So and basically, the goal is to have the purple stronger at the top, and then you're gonna have the pink at the bottom. And I have tried this with cheaper paints, and it doesn't come out quite as nice, but it is still possible. It's just going to give you a little bit different effect. Okay, so you're just kind of coming back in. This is a little bit of a tedious process of just blending this. And to be honest, I don't tend to do a ton of this on my everyday stuff just because I like to work a little bit faster. But this is a really pretty effect that I just I wanted to make sure to show you what's possible. I want to go ahead and dip a little bit more in the pink on these two colors. Here, you have to think about lettering as illustration. It's not handwriting, it's not. And, you know you have to go slow and you have to really think of it. This already looks pretty good. Don't know if I need to blend it. Really think of it more like illustration. And so it's going to take some time. That's okay. Just, you know, enjoy the process. Something I love is just I love the process. Watercolor and lettering just brings me so much joy. Try to make sure your shoulders air relaxed, that you're not tensing your shoulders. Um, I'm just kind of trying to smooth out this edge here. And if there is already kind of like a hard edge dried edge, you can just kind of take a wet brush and come over it gently to tryto mix that a little bit butter. And so then you have this pretty ombre effect. Isn't that pretty? You can definitely play around with different colors and get this just I could probably work on this a little bit more, but I just I think that's pretty just the way it is you could also take. Once this drives, you could take a pen like a micron pen, and I like the 05 size and you could outline these letters and that would look really pretty. Could put some shadows on them. I teach how to do shadows in my Crayola art class, and that's a really fun class to because I show you how to use Crayolas for watercolor lettering. How fun is that? You don't even need the paint. And I also show, ah, lot of other little techniques. So another way to do ombre is you can have the colors change as they come down the page. So let's say going to start with this teal you can see I didn't have enough water on my brush, so that's not a problem. Just come back over it and smooth out the edges there. What I'm gonna do is get a little bit more water. What you can do is you can start with one color and then do another color in another color. So it's like it starts to change with that ombre effect with the different words on the page. So I'm just gonna do say you are enough and I'm just going to start with the teal. And now I'm gonna do this blue. No way. I'm gonna finish with the purple, and you can't do a really light pencil sketch for your layouts. I do like to do a pencil sketch for my layouts, but the thing is, is you cannot erase it once you've gone over with watercolor. And so you have to just do a really light If you're gonna use a pencil sketch and I can go back through and blend in each of these letters better, I kind of like just the organic look. But if you wanted you could come back through and make sure all of these air blending well and so you can kind of see there's a flow of an ombre effect as you go down the page. Another way to get the Nombre look in your lettering is to start with one color on the left side and then do the same blend of color all through your phrase or your longer lettering piece. So let me show you what I mean by lettering the phrase watercolor lettering. And I'm gonna go from teal to purple, two pink, both in the word watercolor and in the word lettering you can see you can make that radiant come across now minus kind of coming at an angle. So if you want to make the hombre look appear the same for each phrase, what you'd want to do is make it, you know, blue until it here purple until here and then my problem paying were really blending. Ah lot here. So I decided on the bottom to give it more time so I could really see some pure pink at the end. But you can really make your Andre look however you want, and it really looks cool, especially when you line it up and you go across and it's the same colors all the way across. So I hope this was helpful and that you enjoyed this tutorial. 9. Gradient Effect: so something else you can do is what's called a Grady int effect. Let me show you what I mean. Use one color and just make it lighter as you go. So let's say we're doing the purple and just gonna do the word purple. It has stepped a little bit of water to kind of water down the paint, but still be able to keep going. Get a little bit more water, depending how light or dark you want this. You could add more paint, add more water, so what you can do is then just have a Grady int. So this is more of ingredient effect on. Basically, you're starting with a darker color in the beginning, and then you're you're adding a little bit more water or just using your brush with the paint that's in there, and you're gradually going to see the color fading. And this is a really fun technique as well. This is called ingredient effect, and you're just gonna go from dark to light. Or you can go from light to dark and have a lot more water and your brush and then go darker. One thing you could do is you could premix your paints and actually have one of the paints have a lot more water in it. So it's a lot lighter and then have one of them be darker. So instead of adding water, kind of like as you go, like what I was doing could actually just be dipping into the pains as well. So I wanted to show you this Grady in effect, and I hope that you enjoy it as well. 10. Galaxy Lettering: So in this video, I'm gonna show you how to do galaxy lettering. And what I'm gonna do is just show you with one letter. So I'm just gonna do a letter, a kind of in the block style. And I do have a class on block lettering and you can check out that class. If you want to learn more about that, you just get a lot of water. So you just want quite a bit of water. And this is what's called a wet on wet technique in watercolor painting. A wet on wet technique is where you put the water down first, and then you put the paint into it. And so what we're gonna do now as we're just going to add the paint? Just gonna dab it in there and just start adding a bunch of different paint in here. The galaxy look is kind of like the tight I look, that I was showing you earlier, except it's gonna be much more dark. And Galaxies can be different colors. You can do different things. It doesn't have to be black, you know, it could be just some of these dark colors. It's nice to have sometimes some pink in there and some add a little bit of pink, kind of like having a pop a pink here, there, and that looks really cool. You can do the purple, too. In order to get a black, you can mix the three primary colors, which are read blue and yellow if you want to do more of like a black color. I personally like my Galaxies to be kind of colorful. Sometimes I do like the black, so it just depends on what mood I'm in. You'll find out with watercolor. It's like there's all sorts of different things you can do and just see what you're what mood you're in and what you want to do and go from there. I mean, there's so many different things. That's what while I never get bored, so I'm just kind of filling it in a little bit. What I like to do is layers, so I'm gonna let it dry, or you can use a heat tool and dry it. So I'm just gonna use the heat tool. You can see where there was water built up. It gives this little effect, but I kind of like that effect. I think it's kind of cool. I don't mind it. And so, you know, you're gonna just add more water and some more, um, pain. I just wouldn't recommend, like, really using your brush strong on this. You just want to kind of dab it and watercolor dries lighter. So in order to get like a dark galaxy, look, we're going toe, have to do some more layers, and I accidentally got a little bit more on there. So I'm just making my letter a little bit thicker. And that's what you can do. Just adapt. It's doesn't have to be thrown out. You can just a lot of times adapt what you're doing to what happened. So again, it's more of just like a dabbing and putting in the different colors that you want and you can do as many layers as you want. I think I'm just gonna do these two when you're dabbing, just make sure you're staying in the lines unless you don't mind it kind of going outside of those lines because it is easy to kind of get outside of those lines. Okay, so I think that's pretty good for me. I'm gonna go ahead and dry this and I'll show you the final stop for this final step. I'm going to use the unit ball signal pen and you want to make sure that everything is nice and dry. It looks nice and dry to me, and here's where you're going toe. Add what looks like stars so you could splatter white on here. But then I've tried that before. And then it gets around the whole paper, and it just didn't look right to me. And so instead, splattering the paint on there like you would a typical galaxy. You'll just kind of do some random dots with your pen. Makes some of them a little bit bigger, some of them a little bit smaller. You can do like little stars in there. If you go too fast, you might kind of get a smear like that, but that's almost like it's a shooting star. You know, Galaxies are really all of them are a little bit different, but you don't to really worry about messing anything up. It's it's gonna look fine and just really have fun with some of the different things that you're doing here. I like to Hannah. Have little cluster sometimes. So you don't want it, Teoh necessarily. Just look the exact same all over which minus kind of looking like that. But try to have, like, little clusters, kind of give some interest. That's what they often say with art. You know, make mix it up a little bit and don't make it so uniform so that there's some interest and , you know, just keep doing it until you feel like you have the way that you want it again. You can outline this something that's really fun if you have a gold jelly roll pen. Something I love to Dio is just outline this letter with the gold, and that's a really fun effect. And basically you're just taking the jelly roll pan and coming up and down here, and that's something you can dio you can outline with a micron pen. You can just leave it like it is. I mean, I think it's beautiful, just like it is now. Galaxy letters are time intensive, so, you know, unless you want, you know you wouldn't want to invest a ton of time. This may not be something you do all the time. but for special pieces. Or if you want to really accentuate your letters in a certain piece, you know are there might be a certain thing that really goes with the theme. It's not. It may not be something you do all the time, but it definitely is a fun effect. You can also add some of the gold in with the stars. Kind of give it a little bit more of ah, twinkle effect. How fun is that So pretty. And it's just so fun to experiment and try also sorts of different techniques. If you try this technique definitely posted in the project area, you can also tag me on instagram with any of your projects. My handle is at color, my world beautiful, and I'd love to see your work. 11. Add Some Gold Shine: All right, let's add some sparkle to our pieces. I love adding gold. It just is so much fun. And so let's just add a little bit of sparkled. I'm using these fine tack paints, and they are really, really pretty. And what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna add a shadow. So basically, you're just coming on one side or the other and you're adding a shadow on to the letters. I go into more detail on adding shadows in my Crayola class. And so you can also check that out even if you're not going to use Crayolas. The Shadows video will help you to really visualize and see where to add shadows. But basically, I just think of one side. I think of your adding it to the one side. So I'm just putting them all on the right side. New one, I think, kind of like if this is connecting what it's gonna look like and then I'm putting it on the top for the shadow. You may want to use a smaller size brush, so I'm still using the same size brush. What? What I could have done is gotten my smaller brush out to do the shadows, so it wasn't quite as thick. So let me show you how that works. It isn't that gold fun? I just love it. We grab my smaller rush, and that way because typically the shadow is going to be smaller than your letters. I just want to make sure when you're doing the shadow that you don't have a lot a lot of water on there. And as you practice these, you'll get better anthem. There we go. Now I'm starting to get the feel of this particular brush, and I definitely like the thinner brush. If you have a gold jelly roll pen, you can also use it to add some shadow just on this side. And it's a little bit thinner, so it's not going to be as thick. And sometimes that can really add a nice effect. And you can put this as thinners thinkers you want because it starts with a really thin line and then you can add more to it. So I have enjoyed doing this cause I feel like this, you know, just kind of gives that subtle shadow, but this is really pretty. I mean, look at that shimmer is really pretty. And so those are a couple ways to add the gold shadow. If you have some embossing powders from Golden Boston powder, this could be really fun. This isn't required. I just want to show you what was available. We'll have a name bossing class in the future just to show you how cool and bossing is to include with your lettering. It's really not that expensive to get started, and it's a really, really fun way to make some gifts and things that just really look professional. But for now, I just want to show you how you could add a little bit into your watercolor lettering. Let me just go ahead and put the word joy. I'm just gonna use block letters again when you letter. It's nice to do a combination of block letters and script letters, so I like to do a combination and sometimes I want to do the script letters. Sometimes I want to do the block letters, and for this particular one, I'm just feeling the block letters. Do you want to make sure it's pretty wet? So if it's not just kind of take a little bit of extra paint and come back over. It kind of made that a little thicker on accident, but hey, go with it. Right. Okay, So did that Teal. And now you're just gonna take a little bit of this in bossing powder? Go ahead and put another piece of paper underneath the just to catch any extra in los ing powder. And I'm just gonna go ahead and Sprinkle a little bit of this in to the water color, and then you're just going to take this and take off any extra. Was that that's aside, Just gonna put the extra back in clothesline so I don't spill it. But the fun thing about bossing is when you put it in, then it's going to and you use a heat tool. You have to use a heat tool. I have the Nicole heat tool. So let's go ahead and see how this will look. You e you. So Isn't that like magic? Allegan is. I love it. And look how pretty this is shiny. And all I did was I just sprinkled a little bit of embossing powder in there while it was dry. Another little tip is if you have a dry brush before you use the heat tool. If you, you know, just take off any of these extra pieces Now they are on there, and I like that Fine, cause I don't mind the sprinkled look, but you can take a dry brush and just get those off before you apply the heat tool. But isn't that beautiful? Oh, I love it. So have fun with this technique and be looking for an embossing class. Ah, full of blasting class in the future. 12. Fun Splatters: all right. So I feel like I've saved the best for last. One of my favorite things to do with lettering is splatters and watercolor splatters air so fun. And they had such a neat effect to your lettering. I typically like to use a bigger brush like around six, and use that for the splatters just because it will hold more water. But you can also do it with the brush that you have. And in this piece here, let's go ahead and dip it into that teal again. And then what you're gonna do if you have a setting that you don't mind getting painted like this? I don't. This would I don't mind. Then you don't have to apply anything. If you have a table or something that you don't want to get pay on, make sure you put some paper behind your piece so that it catches the splatters and then you're just gonna fill up that brush, make sure it's nice and fold. Then what I do is I just put my brush over the peace, and then I just tap it. And the thing with the splatters is you just have no idea exactly how they're going to turn out. And that's what I love about it. They're just random and fun, and I love it. So let me to show you with the smaller rush, you can also do it. If that's the only brush that you have and you're just gonna tap on there, see how it's just out in those waters. For whatever reason, I don't find that the water brush does the splatters as well, but you can go ahead and try it. But I just find that the regular brushes and especially the larger size brushes, tend to be better for the splatters. Now, you could do multiple colors of spotters, so I've just done the blue to add some more interest. I could do a few pinks. Waters just add a little bit of papa color. That's pretty. And I could even maybe do a little bit of purple. Why not? Right? And don't worry about ruining your piece with some squatters. You are only going to be able to know how it's gonna work if you try it. I know at first I was kind of worried about like I'm gonna but I'm gonna ruin this piece or whatever. And no, this is all part of the process of learning of becoming a better artist of really just experimenting, trying different things. And you can see I just added kind of few splotches in different areas, like three different areas there to kind of rounded out. How pretty is that? I love how this the splatters look. It adds what kind of whimsical and free feeling and that is definitely my style. Now, splatters may not be your style, and that is fine. But I do encourage you to try it. So if you try it, post it in the project area or tag me on Instagram at color my world, Beautiful. I'd love to see your work. So I hope you've enjoyed this class and all the different techniques that we have went through. I cannot wait to see all that you do with your watercolor lettering and how you take it to the next level 13. Next Steps: There you have it. We have covered a lot When it comes to a watercolor lettering. I hope you feel much more equipped and excited to continue to use these techniques and refine your skill of watercolor lettering. Your project for this class is to choose a word or phrase toe letter using one of the techniques you've learned in this class and to make it even more fun. What I recommend that you dio is to have a four by six inch piece of watercolor paper. I have a bunch that I just pre cut, and I have them here at my desk in my art studio and then water color letter your phrase on this piece of paper, this piece of paper. If you live in the US key and be sent as a postcard, so whatever you letter, then you can turn over on the other side. Just create a line down the middle a few lines for an address. You can use a postcard stamp and send your lettered postcard to a friend. People rarely get snail mail these days, and so you will make their day. So just write an encouraging message in watercolor lettering using one of the techniques you've learned in this class and send it off to a friend. But you don't have to do that. That's optional. You can simply letter a word or phrase and take a picture of it and posted in the your project area of this class. You'll have to be on a computer or browser in order to see that little tab your project and then upload your picture there. It means the world to me to see your work. I'd also love it if you would post your work on instagram and tag me. My handle on instagram is at color, my world beautiful, and I'd love to be able to see your work and encourage you on instagram as well. If you enjoy this class, I would really appreciate you simply taking a moment to post your review here on skill share. There should be a pop up at the top of your screen that says, Would you recommend this class to other students? Simply click yes and post a sentence or two about what you learned what you appreciated or what you've gained from this class, and it would mean the world to me. It also helps to reach more people with his training. And so I appreciate you taking a moment to do that again. My name is Shelly Hits. It has been my joy and my pleasure to take you step by step through this class of water color lettering, If you haven't yet, make sure toe. Also take my class all about watercolor backgrounds. I shared 10 easy watercolor backgrounds anyone couldn't create, and you can have even more fun with watercolor. Make sure to click the follow button here on skill share so you'll be notified of my upcoming classes and I'll see you in the next class.