(upbeat music) – Hey, everyone, it's Amanda.
Welcome back to my channel.
Today's video was super highly requested.
A ton of you guys have asked me to do a video on my hand lettering slash brush lettering, slash calligraphy.
I know it's not like actual calligraphy, but it's modern calligraphy kinda like the stuff that I'm sure a bunch of you have been seeing onPinterest and on Instagram.
And it took me a while to learn.
There's definitely alot of tips and tricks that I found helpful, so hopefully today I can pass those on to you, and some of you find it useful.
I wanted to make surethat it is very detailed and in depth, so that you can really get the hang of it and learn about typography.
Let me know if you wanna see more writing videos in the future.
I can definitely do that for you.
I will also have my whole bullet journal video playlist linksdown below if you wanna check that out.
But without further ado, let's just get right into the tutorial.
Alright, so gettingstarted with the materials and supplies that you will need.
There's a couple of different options that you can use.
The first is the most popular, which is the Tombow Dual Brush Pens, these are kind of like a brush marker.
And then we also havethe Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens, kinda like the baby sister of the Dual Brush Pens.
These are smaller and more precise.
You can also use regular brushes.
This one is a water brush so it has the water in it, standardwatercolor brushes, and then also you canactually use Crayola markers.
I have the super tips markers, but I've heard that thefatter Crayola markers work as well.
I'm also gonna be showing you guys how to use regularfineliners for calligraphy.
I'll show you that later on, but these are just standardfine-tipped fineliners.
And lastly, you're gonna wanna keep in mind the typeof paper you're using because you wanna make sure the paper is smooth and not textured in any way because the texture will actually fray any marker tips thatyou use and also make it harder for you to get asmooth calligraphy stroke.
If you're a completebeginner at calligraphy, I recommend doing these exercises, just kind of doing a wavy line.
And what you're gonnawanna do is make sure that you are using less pressure on your upstroke and more pressure on the downstroke, and this will make it so that your upstrokes are thin and your downstrokes look thicker.
Doing this exercise will also help you figure out the propergrip you should be using.
You wanna make sure you're not using the tip perpendicular to the paper, kind of at a diagonal so that you have more control, and I'll help you when you're constructing your letters.
So now on to the basics ofcalligraphy and typography.
I wanted to talk about this just because it'll help you guys later on.
As you can see, I've drawn sort of like a guide, kinda like what you would do in kindergarten when you're learning to write letters.
The middle space is for your x-height, the top space is for ascending letters, and then the bottom spaceis for descending letters.
So if you're wondering about x-height, x-height is basically the height of all of these middle-sized letters, like, an a, an i, an x, of course, an n.
As you can see, they fit perfectly within those middle lines.
Characters that are descenders, obviously descend into the lower space, but as you can see, the x-height is still the same, they just hit that bottom line when they go down.
So these letters would be your p's, your j's, your q's all of that.
Same thing goes forletters that are ascenders, except these are for your h's, your t's, your l's, anything thathits that top line.
What I would recommend is to practice doing the whole alphabet.
That's the only way you're gonna get the hang of it.
Just make sure you do a thin upstroke and a thick downstroke, and you can practice this a ton of times, and this is how you'll also find your stylistic preference because there's differentways that you can do every single letteras I'm showcasing here.
There's like different variations of s's that you can do, r's, all of that stuff, and you'll only find your favorite by practicing it.
When you get the hang of writing letters and all of the downstrokes and upstrokes, it's time to put it all together and this should be pretty simple if you've been practicing your letters because they kinda justseamlessly connect.
Just make sure you're not going too fast or too slow, you wannabe at a steady pace.
If you really want, you can also draw those guidelines that I drew earlier, and that'll help you to get your x-height and your baseline all the same if that's the look that you're going for.
But of course, as you'regonna see very soon, you can actually switch things up and change the x-height and the baseline of all of these letters.
This is something that you can do when you get a little bit more comfortable with calligraphy and hand lettering because it adds a littlebit more personality to your hand lettering.
It looks a little bitmore whimsical and fun, and there really isn't a formula for doing this, you kinda just get an eye for it once you practice it a lot.
Here I'm just demonstrating what I mean by changing up the baseline.
The top example, you can kind of draw a straight line across, but the bottom one, as you can see, the baseline changes from letter to letter.
Other things that you can do to switch up your calligraphy is change the spacing of your letters, so this one I've done it more spaced out andmore kind of italicized.
And then on the flip side, I've also done an example where I've squished the letters closer together and madethem thinner and taller.
So it's really completely up to you.
I wanted to show you guys the difference between each of the toolsthat I mentioned earlier, and kinda talk about my tips and tricks for each one because theyare completely different.
Obviously, the one that I've been using this whole time is theTombow Dual Brush Pen, but the Tombow FudenosukePens, as I mentioned, are kind of like the baby sister of the Dual Brush Pens.
They come in hard tip and soft tip.
I personally prefer the soft tip because it's the most similar to the Dual Brush Pen.
These work a lot betterfor smaller lettering because they are quite thin, and you do have to add a bit more pressure than you do on the Dual Brush Pens.
If you didn't know, you can actually do calligraphy with Crayola markers, which is kinda like a cheap alternative to getting the brush pens.
This takes a littlebit of getting used to, you have to kind of adjust your grip and be super light on your upstrokes and very heavy on your downstrokes, so you get that difference in the lines.
Obviously, you can usewatercolor brushes as well, I guess this was kind oflike the original brush.
The only thing is, with watercolor you do have to re-dip yourbrush back into the paint quite often, or else it's gonna have like a faded effect, unless of course that's the look that you're going for, which is totally cool.
Okay, now I'm gonna show you guys how to fake calligraphy if you don't wanna buy a brush pen.
So I'm just using a normal fineliner and I've gone ahead and done some cursive lettering, andwhat you're gonna do is, on the downstroke of the letter, you're going to add an extra stroke next to it.
So it's gonna make it look thicker on one side of the letter.
You can kind of pretendto redraw the word, and then on the downstrokeadd that extra stroke.
You can even leave it hollow like this, it kinda looks cool.
But if you want to really emulate the brush pen effect, you just have to fill in those spaces, and there you go, you have your very own faux calligraphy.
Obviously, it takes alittle bit more time, but I think it looks pretty accurate.
So this was kind of like a quick overview, but if you wanna learneven more about lettering, I definitely recommendyou check out Skillshare.
I personally learned how to do lettering through their website.
It's the best.
If you don't know whatit is, it's an online learning community withover 15, 000 classes in design, photo and more.
You can take a class, you can teach one, and it's only $10 a monthfor a premium membership with unlimited access toclasses on mobile and offline.
I've mentioned Skillshare before because I really do believe in what they're doing and I love their platform so much, which is why I partneredup with them again to give you guys a free two-month trial for the first 250 people to click the link in the description box.
Definitely check themout if you're interested in learning new skills.
It's honestly such a great resource, you will not regret it.
All right, guys, so those were all of my personal tips and tricks for hand lettering and calligraphy.
I hope you guys learned something.
If you wanna follow me on Instagram and see more of my art in calligraphy and all that jazz, you can follow me at AmandaRachLee and at AmandaRachDoodles.
But other than that, make sure you check the description box.
I will have a ton of important links and details there includingall of the materials and supplies that I used in this video.
And while you're there, you might as well just click that little bell button so you're notified everytime I post a new video.
I hope you have an awesome day, and I will talk to you in my next video.
Bye, guys.
(upbeat music).
