I love all kinds of lettering, from super elegant scripts to blocky letters. I’m slowly trying to learn new ways of creating letters so I can try out different styles. After watching a recent tutorial by the ultra-talented Lauren Hom on GoodType‘s Instagram, I got totally obsessed with her 3D style.
Here are just a few of the pieces I’ve made as I practiced.
Everybody loves Procreate! It’s pretty much the greatest iOS app of all time and it’s definitely the most used app on my iPad Pro. The only thing I wish they offered were some standard shape brushes—a circle, a square, a heart, just standard shape stamps. After seeing a question about where to find standard shape stamp brushes posted in one of the iPad lettering FB groups I’m in, I decided to whip up this quick tutorial to show you how to make your own basic shape stamp for free using the Over app.
My latest quick tutorial shows you how to make a snowflake stamp brush for Procreate using the Amaziograph app. You can view the video here:
In related news, I’ve also updated my snowflake stamp brush pack to include 12 new brushes!
You can download them from Creative Market here: https://crmrkt.com/pra6gl
Or Etsy here: http://etsy.me/2BFk46r
I just recently reached my one-year calligraversary, and I can’t believe how much my lettering has improved. Here’s a quick before and after, if you need proof that practice pays off.
My first hand-lettered post on Instagram:
A recent hand-lettered post on Instagram:
So how did I go from the first one to the second one? Where did I start? What tips and advice can I give to people who are just beginning with lettering?
The number one thing you can do to improve your lettering: practice. I have done some kind of lettering almost every single day for a year. My Camera Roll is filled with photos of lettering I’ve done with Crayola markers, Tombows, and my personal fave, an iPad Pro and Procreate. Practice makes your hand steadier, it gets you used to pressure and speed with a marker or with an Apple Pencil, and it makes you feel more confident to try out something you might have seen online. For me, practice never feels like work. I love lettering, so it’s something I do to mellow out at the end of the day or to take my mind off work during my lunch break. If you really love it, practicing all the time is easy and fun.
Okay, you know you need to practice, but you want to take it a step further and learn some new techniques. My advice: start with YouTube. Almost everything I learned about using Procreate on iPad Pro came from watching YouTube tutorials. I have lots of favorites, but here are a few I found particularly helpful… Continue reading
You’ve done all your lettering on one layer, but now you want to apply a foil texture to part of it and not the entire layer. Don’t worry! You can separate out the words and apply foil where you want without having to worry about recoloring or erasing anything. This quick tutorial takes you step-by-step through the process.
Pick up my foil texture mandala kit on Creative Market or Etsy to try this technique with a beautiful mandala stamp, and view my first tutorial about adding texture to a layer here. Continue reading