“Breezy” isn’t an oft-used adjective, but it’s the word that comes to mind when I look at the pieces created for this hand-lettering tutorial. The white ink, playful font style, and creative colored pencil shading give a casual vibe; yet this lettering style is also impressively intricate. In today’s tutorial, I am going to teach you how to create this hand-lettering style using a series of photos, videos, and a free printable exemplar.
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I’ll be the first to admit that figuring out calligraphy and lettering layout can sometimes be more difficult than writing the actual words you want to lay out! That’s because there are so many choices as far as how to present your information: do you justify to the left, do you center, do you add illustrated elements to highlight certain information? What do you want your viewer’s eye to focus on first, and how do you achieve that focus?
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I have written a general overview of brush pens before, but today I want to talk about using brush pens for calligraphy in particular. Flexible tips, quick-drying ink, and familiarity (since you’ve probably worked with markers before) make brush pens a wonderful candidate for not only creating modern calligraphy — but also for learning how to create modern calligraphy!
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Have you noticed how popular modern brush lettering has become lately? Everywhere you look, you’re likely to spot an example, from the H&M logo to artwork on Etsy. I think that brush lettering is popular now because of its spontaneity, contrast, and carefree look. It’s a refreshing style when a person is used to neatness and order in art and typography!
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My last blog post, How to Practice Calligraphy, was inspired by a reader’s question. Similarly, today’s blog post will address a combination of questions and comments from three different readers regarding calligraphy troubleshooting. All of these questions relate to shakiness when writing or nib pressure, which are issues that happen all the time, but aren’t talked about a whole lot. I have expounded on what I know about ameliorating both problems in the post below, but if you have further input {or questions!}, feel free to comment.
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Before I started writing this post, I decided to conduct some online research on painting with watercolors for beginners. That way, I reasoned, I wouldn’t gloss over any points, and I could craft an altogether better post. And … holy moly. I use watercolors all the time, and the information I found on Google overwhelmed me. After three too many mind-boggling articles, I threw up my hands and decided that I’m showing you how I, personally, “do” watercolors — and the adjective for my watercolor approach is “simple”.
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When I first made up my mind to learn calligraphy, I noticed a lot of photos of beautiful envelopes with a very strange-looking calligraphy pen. After a lot of Google Image research, I figured out this tool is called an “oblique pen holder”. However, there didn’t seem to be much information about why it is in existence or how to use it. Nevertheless, after I had used a straight holder for a while, I worked up the courage to try a plastic Speedball oblique pen holder. With the pen holder came a little bit of frustration at first, but eventually I got the hang of it — even going so far as to write this blog post over how to use one. Little did I realize my journey with the oblique pen holder was just beginning at that point!
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