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- 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 on Pinterest and on Instagram.
And it took me a while to learn.
There's definitely a lot 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 sure that 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 links down below if you wanna
check that out.
But without further ado, let's just get
right into the tutorial.
Alright, so getting started 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 have the 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, standard watercolor brushes,
and then also you can actually use Crayola markers.
I have the super tips markers,
but I've heard that the fatter Crayola markers
work as well.
I'm also gonna be showing you guys
how to use regular fineliners for calligraphy.
I'll show you that later on,
but these are just standard fine-tipped fineliners.
And lastly, you're gonna wanna
keep in mind the type of 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 that you use and also make it
harder for you to get a smooth calligraphy stroke.
If you're a complete beginner at calligraphy,
I recommend doing these exercises,
just kind of doing a wavy line.
And what you're gonna wanna 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 proper grip 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 of calligraphy 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 space is 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 for letters that are ascenders,
except these are for your h's, your t's,
your l's, anything that hits 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 different ways that you can
do every single letter as 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 just seamlessly connect.
Just make sure you're not going too fast
or too slow, you wanna be 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're gonna 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 little bit more personality
to your hand lettering.
It looks a little bit more 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 and more kind of italicized.
And then on the flip side, I've also done
an example where I've squished the letters
closer together and made them thinner and taller.
So it's really completely up to you.
I wanted to show you guys the difference
between each of the tools that I mentioned earlier,
and kinda talk about my tips and tricks
for each one because they are completely different.
Obviously, the one that I've been using
this whole time is the Tombow Dual Brush Pen,
but the Tombow Fudenosuke Pens, 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 better for 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 little bit 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 use watercolor brushes as well,
I guess this was kind of like the original brush.
The only thing is, with watercolor you do
have to re-dip your brush 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, and what 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 pretend to redraw the word,
and then on the downstroke add 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 a little bit more time,
but I think it looks pretty accurate.
So this was kind of like a quick overview,
but if you wanna learn even more about lettering,
I definitely recommend you check out Skillshare.
I personally learned how to do lettering
through their website.
It's the best.
If you don't know what it is, it's an online
learning community with over 15,000 classes
in design, photo and more.
You can take a class, you can teach one,
and it's only $10 a month for a premium membership
with unlimited access to classes 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 partnered up 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 them out 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 including all 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 every time I post a new video.
I hope you have an awesome day,
and I will talk to you in my next video.
Bye, guys.
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