Letter Like a Boss – My Favorite Tutorials for Learning Lettering

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:

I can't believe how quickly July flew by! #helloaugust #ipadlettering #procreatelettering

A post shared by Alexis Gentry (@alexisgentry) on

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

Quick tutorial – Adding textures to existing lettering in Procreate

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

Break Up Letter – my latest handmade font

I just released a new font! This one is called Break Up Letter and it’s a handwritten style that I developed using my iPad Pro. It’s the first font that I’ve ever released that comes in bold, italic, and bold + italic versions. It includes uppercase and lowercase as well as numbers and punctuation. The zip file you get when you purchase it also contains WOFF webfont versions, so you can embed it on your website.

View an example of Break Up Letter here:

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And purchase it from Creative Market or Etsy.