TUTORIAL ROUND-UP: HAND LETTERING

We art journalers love our hand lettering. Whether headlines, statements, song lyrics, quotes, or even paragraphs, we want to include fun and beautiful words in our art journals. After all, we're about art AND journal, image AND text. We're all about the power of full visual expression.

In Hand Lettering Tutorial: Getting Started, we learned that even though hand lettering involves words, it has very little to do with writing (besides spelling correctly!)  Why? Because when we hand letter we don't write, we actually draw the letters—in fun, imaginative forms.

Some of us dislike our handwriting so we think we can't make beautiful letters in our art journals. That isn't true! Yes, you need to know the basics of the craft (see the Getting Started tutorial for that, too), and yes, there are many hand lettering styles and forms to learn and invent. But what good hand lettering really takes is practice—and our art journals are perfect places for that! 

With learning and practice, you will be amazed at what you can hand letter in your art journal.

So let's talk about the learning. The trick is to find good resources.

What we're looking for are tutorials and instruction that will help you quickly improve skills and learn new techniques that you can take straight to your next art journal page to practice.

Hand lettering tutorials for art journalers...

That don't require a big investment...

That are fun.

Right?

Right.

As it happens, every one of the following tutorials in today's tutorial roundup meet those criteria.

(Sure beats unhelpful, boring, expensive, that's for sure!) Okay, so here it is...

Tutorial Roundup: Hand Lettering

This is one of the first videos that comes up on a general YouTube search and there's a reason for that: Made by Marzipan gives us a good basic introduction to hand lettering (and the video not too long: 05:47 minutes) She also has other videos worth checking out, too.

Three Steps for Getting Started This is a nice quick introduction with some good basic advice.

Here's an oldy but goody from waaaay back in 2010. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer has a knack for showing us the simplicity of any arting technique and in this video, she shows us how easy it can be to hand letter. With a little imagination and doodling power, we can hand letter in our art journals any time we want whether or not we learn more advanced lettering techniques. Made when crafting time-lapse video was much less common, it comes in at about 16:00 minutes—but it's worth the watch. This video is full of good ideas for both lettering styles and tools and it will certainly give you confidence that you can do it, too.

Teesha Moore has a classic series of videos on YouTube where she teaches us how she creates an art journal from beginning to end. I recommend the whole series, but regardless, these two tutorials, Part I and Part II, focus on hand lettering and are worth the watch.. They're great, each about 9-10 minutes long.

Alisa Burke features a guest series from MakeWell's Megan Wells and it's well worth checking out. Each post is full of useful information. You'll want to begin with the first post in the series.  It's super. Not only does Megan give us a great introduction to lettering, but I loved her One Letter 100 Ways Exercise. Here is my A series—that's right, the 100 of them!

With just that one letter, I learned that there's much more to my imagination that I...well, imagined! Now, for those other 25 letters 100 times...

If you want to dig in and learn from a master whimsical hand lettering artist, Joanne Sharpe's book is excellent.

Finally, there's Pinterest. I've collected all kinds hand lettering ideas and tutorials on my Lettering board. Just click on any picture as you scroll through the board and it will take you to that website.

 Lucky, lucky, lucky us...to live in such times.