My Lettering Transformation
I’ve been practicing hand lettering ever since I can remember but it didn’t become a consistent part of my day until early 2017. In this blog post, I will go through the evolution of my lettering skills and showcase some of my old works.
Growing up, I was always the kid who was changing their hand writing. Sometimes I would make my letters tall and skinny and other times I would make bubble letters. In 2012, I began working on intricate lettering pieces using sharpies. I carried around my 50 pack of Sharpies in a pink container and “lettered” mainly song lyrics and movie quotes. A lot of them were embarrassingly enough, One Direction song lyrics. In 2012, I was leaving middle school and heading into high school where my passion for design really began.
Lyric from “Up all Night” by One Direction. June 2012
Lyric from “Gotta Be You” by One Direction. June 2012
Lyric from “Angel Eyes” by Love & Theft. June 2012
I started really focusing on hand lettering at the end of 2016 when I bought my first brush pen. I began practicing with Prismacolor Brush Pens. I later began using primarily Tombow Dual Brush Pens and that is what I continue to use today!
After practicing for several months, I decided to invest in an iPad Pro. I’d always preferred digital work and knowing that I could combine my new love for lettering with digital design was extremely exciting!
My first completed lettering piece on the iPad Pro using the Apple Pencil in the Procreate App.
iPad Lettering piece from Summer 2017.
Below are some of my recent works! I have started branching out to try different styles of hand drawn type, monoline, and practicing traditional thick-to-thin hand lettering. It has taken me several years to get to this point but I would have struggled through the years of horrible One Direction lyric lettering to get to where I am today again and again! You’ve gotta start somewhere and I hope this post helped to show you that all it takes is practice & dedication.