I’ve been trying to blog more and in an effort to document more of my process, a few people have been asking. So here’s a little project I was working on in the last week, I wanted to post my process video and give you guys some insight on some of the tools I’ve been using for hand lettering.
I have quite a few different ways of creating hand lettered work. The first way that I’ve been using for the last year is starting a pencil sketch in a sketchbook. The other way is that I’ve recently purchased an iPad Pro and Apple pencil and have been creating a lot of digital hand lettering. But unless you feel comfortable working in digital, I suggest you practice the old fashioned way. So for this example I started off with a sketch in my Adobe Moleskine Sketchbook, this is a special notebook that you can draw in and there’s a free moleksine adobe cc app that you can download from the app store, links below here:
The first thing I did was sketch out what I wanted in pencil using a col-erase prisma color pencil in Tuscan Red. The wax from the pencil helps the drawing to stay in tact and not to smudge like regular graphite pencils, you can also use a light blue color. Finding inspiration online is something that I do first to get an idea of how I want to compose the drawing and then I just start sketching, modifying as I go and adjusting elements so that I have the right amount of balance in the composition. The sketch for me takes anywhere from 10-25 minutes and its important to not get too caught up in the details as you will refine the details when you start inking.
Then I used a Tombow fudenosuke brush pen to get the effect that I want, adjusting different line widths in different areas. As soon as a I am done inking I open the moleskine cc app on my phone and take a photo with the app, it then gets converted in an SVG file format (Scalable Vector Graphic) and then it gets uploaded onto the creative cloud. You can then open it onto your creative cloud files and then you can download it onto your desktop. I would suggest downloading the file as a JPEG. The reason for this is that when you open it onto Adobe illustrator, you can auto trace the image and it traces much better than downloading an SVG file and opening it onto illustrator. From there you can clean up the vector graphic as you please. Hope this gave some insight! For any questions please feel free to reach out!
This is an appropriate quote that I’ve been thinking about lately, sometimes you have to get lost to find your self again. Too much routine and repetition in your everyday world can lead to boredom! I’ve been having a lot of free time in the last month creating a bunch of work and trying new things to revive my creativity. As artists and creative people we feel a certain restlessness and we have this passion to want to keep creating new things everyday because that in itself is an adventure. Creating new art is an adventure, you never know where its going to lead you. Ces’t La Vie.
Finished Vector Graphic Below!
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