Hand Lettering + Font Inspiration

| Allison

Hello, dears!

Unfortunately I couldn’t make my Art Lab post on Friday, but I have time (and data XD) to do it today! In this post I’ll show you a few tips and tricks on lettering, plus show you plenty of font inspiration to copy or use to think up your own fonts. (Because I usually run out of ideas after, like, three fonts. XD) So. Ready? GO!

Technique:Ā Hand Lettering

Hand lettering is super fun, and also very useful for when you want to spiff up an envelope or gift tag or any number of things.

Fonts

Let’s start with one of my the most common and prettiest fonts in handlettering: fake calligraphy. Lovely name, isn’t it? šŸ˜› That’s because it allows you to get a calligraphy-like effect without using any special calligraphy tools. It’s also super simple to write. See?

lettering 1.jpg

Step One: Write out your desired words in the neatest cursive you can.

Step Two: Find the downstrokes. Downstrokes are the places in a letter where you move your pen down the paper, like the little pink arrows show in the picture.

Step Three: Widen and color in the downstrokes to get the look of a calligraphy pen. Ta-daa! Pretty, isn’t it?

This is a great base font, especially when paired with a simple sans or serif.

DSC_3220.JPG

So basically sans doesn’t have the little “tags” on the ends of the letters and serif does. I like writing all caps sans and all lowercase serif. šŸ™‚

And now, here are a bunch more simple fonts I wrote out to look through and use as inspiration or copy yourself. Which is your favorite?

Accents

Now that you got some fonts under your… um, pen XD, it’s fun to add little accents and flourishes to fill in the space beside the lettering. Here are a few ideas to get you started, and you can find a bunch more on Pinterest and the “Doodly Accents” section of PicMonkey. šŸ™‚

DSC_3221

Inspiration

Still need some more ideas to get your creativity flowing? Here are a few of my recent (and not-so-recent) lettering pieces.

You can hand letter with any medium you wish! Here I used my watercolor brush pens which are super fun for lettering.

envelope 8
Quote from Jane Austen’sĀ Emma

For this one I used a blue notebook marker + a blue ballpoint pen. I love adding vines to letters, but it does take a bit of time and patience. šŸ˜‰ Another fun thing to do for fonts with thick, solid bars of color like below is to add zigzags or circles or other patterns inside the bars for more interest.

DSC_2629
Quote from Nancy Pearcey’sĀ Total Truth

This is the first page in my second bullet journal. I like how the mix of colored pencil and ballpoint pen looks together. šŸ™‚

Not quite the right season for this, but hey, it’s lettering! XD I think it looks really neat to overlap some letters, like I did with the ‘y’ and the ‘o’. Also a little extra line of a different color beside the downstrokes adds a shadow effect and makes it look more special.

art (1280x1280)

And lastly, a lovely Bible verse that I copied completely in blue ballpoint pen. (By the way, these Pilot G2 pens are practically THE BEST PENS EVERRR. They write super smoothly and you can get them in a range of point sizes.)

Bible journal 5 (1272x1280)

That’s all I have for today, so hopefully you’re inspired by now. šŸ˜€ If you did make some hand lettering inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Check out how to help us fill our art gallery here.

***Allison**

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88 thoughts on “Hand Lettering + Font Inspiration”

  8. Now, could you not have posted this 24 hours earlier when I was desperately looking for handwriting fonts for the namecards I was designing for Chinese New Year? šŸ˜›

    Love this! Thanks for the Inspiration. I especially like the Calligraphy one. šŸ™‚

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  15. I love calligraphy and typography, so I really enjoyed this post! Lately I’ve been practicing fake calligraphy more (I used to have a real calligraphy pen, but it kind of got used up), and it’s pretty fun, though I’m not good at it. Did you notice I used it on the card I sent you? šŸ™‚

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    1. Yes, it’s super fun! Ooh, really? Real calligraphy pens seem pretty hard to use. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ve gotten your card yet… but now I’m extra excited to get it! šŸ˜€

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      1. Yeah, one year in highschool I did calligraphy during Bible study, and so I used a calligraphy pen. It was hard, but we have a book that shows a bunch of calligraphy fonts, so I just copied that.
        Oh, I wonder why the card hasn’t come yet. I sent it out the day before Valentine’s Day.

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        1. Ooh, really? That sounds super neat! I have a calligraphy book too, but the pen doesn’t really work. :/
          GUESS WHAT? It just came this afternoon! Thank you SO much for the card! It was so sweet of you to think of me, and I can tell you really put a lot of time into it. ā¤

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          1. Yes, it was pretty fun.
            Aw, that’s too bad that the pen doesn’t work. Bad pens/markers are annoying. šŸ˜›
            Oh, yay, I’m so glad it came and that you like it! I always like making valentines, so of course I had to send one to you. šŸ™‚ ā¤

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  17. wow! Your fonts and lettering are so pretty! I try to copy different fonts, but it never really works out…your word art is also really pretty!
    Lydia ā¤

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        1. Ooh, that looks really fun! Unfortunately this isn’t a good time for me to participate in contests because I’m pretty busy helping my family with moving preparations. :/ I hope you get lots of participants, though, and thanks for letting me know!

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  25. These were BEAUTIFUL! I loved all of your work, you are so talented! šŸ˜€ I love all your ideas and such, I’ve been trying to hand letter more, it’s a learning curve but super fun! šŸ˜‰

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  31. These are precious! You are very talented and i love the way you’ve told us what you used. The Christmas colours really made me smile šŸ™‚

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