How to get started with Brush Lettering 🖌️
Ever felt mesmerized by the beautiful lettering you see in posts (like the one above) on Instagram or Facebook? Ended up thinking that you can’t pursue this kind of hobby or lack creativity? I say that you can do it.
I realized this after attending “Brush Lettering Workshop” taken by Nandini Gangal, Digital Product Designer at Flipkart. What I learned after this workshop was that for Brush Lettering you just need 3 things — just the right pen, paper, and practice and you’re ready to create your own beautiful piece of lettering. Let’s Get Started!
Some key points shared by Nandini that I will briefly touch upon in the later part of the blog:
- What is Lettering? Difference between Lettering, Calligraphy and Typography.
2. Tools and Materials Required
3. Brush Handling
4. Basic Strokes
5. Lettering Terminology
6. Ductus
7. Assessing and Correcting Your Letter
What is Lettering?
👀It’s a medium of visual communication, it’s a visual voice!
đź–‹The way you feel emotions, what you experience and share it with people to express yourself with these letterforms.
đź“ŚIt has a very unique role in communication.
🎬Our brain processes visual at a much faster rate than text, as a matter of fact, it’s approximately 90% faster. Consuming visual info 60,000 times faster than text.
Lettering is the best of both worlds, the visual meeting the literal and these combined together, create a synergic effect which drives a message with a lot more impact.
Difference between Typography, Calligraphy, and Lettering
Lettering is the art of drawing letters where each letter acts as its own mini illustration. The thing that sets “lettering” apart is the individual attention paid to each letter and its role within a composition.
Calligraphy is the art of writing letters. It uses specific tools like a nib and ink, and it is marked by a variation in width for the upstrokes and downstrokes of each letter.
Typography is the style and appearance of printed material or the art of arranging type. It’s not a specific style of writing or creating letters and words, but more the arrangement of how those letters appear together in a system.
Tools and Materials Required For Brush Lettering
1.Brushes, Pens
For Beginners, Nandini suggests Brush Pen Art Marker Pens as its sharp, a thin tip delivers fine lines when needed. When tilted a bit, the marker can create thicker lines.
2. Paper
If you’re starting out, tracing paper is an excellent tool to use since it has a smooth surface to practice on without draining the ink of the pen all at once. If you’re a beginner or just playing around with strokes and swirls, you can use regular copy paper. Just take care that the paper is not too glossy that drains the ink all over, and also not too rough leading ink to absorb.
Brush Handling
Where the movement comes from (range of motion), break the writing habits.
Maintaining control over your pen is important when first learning brush lettering. It is crucial to understand how to best hold the pen, control your movement, and position of your body, arms, and hands.
Holding the brush: tripod method
Use the Tripod Grip to hold the pen as shown in the image above.
The most important aspects to focus are to maintain the grip as you write and to maintain the angle at which the tip of the pen is on a page. The brush pen tip should be angled in order for you to apply different pressure to the pen and achieve those thin and thick strokes that define brush lettering.
Posture at the table
Make sure that you are seated with your body facing forward. Find an angle of the page that suits you best.
Move the paper with the non-dominant hand
You may need to turn your paper at different angles while you write, so turn it using your non-dominant hand.
Basic Strokes
Straight Strokes
Focus on making a constant width throughout the stroke. Try pulling strokes(top to bottom), pushing strokes(bottom to top) and horizontal strokes from both directions. Also, try varying the lengths of the strokes to get accustomed to both wrist and full arm movements.
Tapered pressure/release strokes
Begin with putting pressure on the brush for a heavy stroke, then slowly lift the brush to end with a slight taper. Try pulling strokes, pushing strokes and horizontal strokes from both directions. Also, try varying the lengths of the strokes to get accustomed to both wrist and full arm movements.
Pressure Release
Start with a heavy stroke, then gently lift the brush to make the stroke lighter and tapered. Try starting with a light stroke, and try this as horizontal strokes.
Transitional Stroke
Start with a light upstroke, then slowly pull the brush around into a heavy downstroke. Pay close attention to the transition from light to heavy and vice versa.
FreeForm Strokes
Have Fun! Experiment with strokes of different shapes, sizes, lengths, and tapers.
Lettering Terminology
Stem
Refers to the main vertical straight stroke of a letter.
Cross-bar
Refers to the horizontal bar that is used to cross a vertical stroke, as seen in the letter t in the image above.
Bowl
Refers to the curved part of the character that encloses the circular or curved parts (counter) of some letters such as g in the image above.
Baseline
The baseline is the invisible line that the bottom of your letters sits on.
Capline
This is the imaginary line that marks the topmost height of the capital, uppercase letters.
Meanline
This is the imaginary line that marks the topmost height of the lowercase letters.
Ascender
The ascender is the lowercase letter with vertical extending forms, as t in the piece above.
Descender
The descender is the lowercase letter that may extend below the baseline, letters like g or y.
X-Height
This refers to the distance between the baseline and the meanline.
Cap Height
The cap height is the distance from the meanline to the Cap Line.
Ductus
Ductus refers to the numbers, sequence & direction of strokes needed to create a letterform.
Assessing and Correcting Your Letter
It’s important to maintain Consistency, Proportion, Spacing, and Style to write a beautiful piece of a word using Brush Lettering.
Here are some books for beginners to get started:
Nandini suggested some books to practice Brush Lettering:
- Hand Lettering For Everyone By Vanko Cristina
- Hand Lettering Ledger By Mary Kate
- In Progress By Jessica Hische
Some Glimpses from the Workshop
I hope if you are a beginner, this blog helps you with the basics of Brush Lettering. But the best way to learn these hands-on things is to attend live workshops like this one. To attend such meetups with me, you can subscribe to www.hellomeets.com.
A special thanks to Sahiba Sethi, Ayushi Mohindra and Nandini Gangal for guiding me with this blog.
