How to Start Hand-Lettering
6 Tips for Starting Out Right, Plus Essential Supplies List!
Starting out on your hand-lettering journey can be like stepping out onto the dance floor at the high school prom. There’s a million things to grab your attention all at once. It’s as exciting as it is overwhelming, and if you don’t find your feet quickly, you might just miss a step and land on your face.
In this guide, we’ll share some secret tips for how to start hand-lettering the right way. We’ll cover some basic principles, essential tools and supplies, and helpful resources to consider as you begin.
When I First Started…
When I first started hand-lettering, I had almost no idea what I was doing. I started with mugs: custom hand-lettered, oven-cured mugs. I bought a set of paint pens and my blank, dollar-store drinkware and got to work.
It was like I was trying to run before learning to crawl. All I knew was that I loved lettering (and coffee!) and I wanted to start somewhere.
Looking back, even though I learned a lot, it was the wrong place to start. I look back on those early days of my business with fondness. But even so, as a new hand-lettering artist looking to blossom, there are some things I could’ve done better.
In this blog post, I would like to share some of my insights and how I got from the mug pictured above to this:
6 Tips for How to Start Hand-Lettering
1. Start Simple
The lesson of my homemade mug adventure is that I started with something too complicated. I hadn’t taken enough time to learn the basics of hand-lettering. I was attempting to practice on a curved, ceramic surface, and I hadn’t really discovered my niche yet.
The first rule for beginner hand-lettering artists: start simple. Don’t go out and buy a whole bunch of expensive supplies or a $2,000 tablet or a commercial-size pallet of blank mugs.
If you truly want to become adept at hand-lettering, you don’t need those things. Not yet. They might come later, but if you try to start out with them, it will cost you. All of the mistakes you’re bound to make will create unnecessary frustration and anxiety because they’ll be expensive mistakes.
It’s like giving a five-year-old crystal dishes and attempting to teach him table manners. You don’t start with the crystal! You start with indestructible plastic because he’s bound to drop something.
2. Buy the Right Supplies
There are four things I recommend that all beginner hand-letterers purchase and have on-hand at all times. You can buy more, but these things are the essentials for fostering good lettering habits and building your foundational skills.
Calligraphy Pen
A calligraphy pen is a versatile ink pen with a pointed, semi-rigid tip called a nib. The nib is semi-rigid to allow it to bend as you apply pressure against the paper. As the nib bends, your line stroke becomes thicker. As it straightens out, it gets thinner. More on thin-to-thick in a moment.
I recommend a Tombow Fudenosuke soft tip and hard tip or the Ohuhu Calligraphy Pen set.
Pencil and a good eraser
A pencil serves two essential purposes in hand-lettering. First, it can be used for actual lettering, practicing fonts such as Monoline, Tall & Thin, Faux Calligraphy and more. Second, it allows you to sketch out your lettering design and make necessary changes before inking. This is where a good eraser comes in handy. Being able to completely erase your sketch lines from your paper after going over the strokes with a pen allows for clean, crisp finished piece. Make sure it’s a good eraser that won’t leave smudges.
For a pencil, I use the Paper Mate ClearPoint 0.5mm mechanical pencil, and for an eraser a Pentel Hi-Polymer eraser.
Journal
In terms of value, a journal is only one step above scrap paper. In other words, the stakes are very low. When I know the design I’m creating is going to be hung up in someone’s restaurant for hundreds of patrons to see every day, I’m anxious, and my lettering can suffer because of it. But, when I’m just doodling on a page that no one else will ever see, those are some of my most creative moments.
A journal allows you to have these creative moments. It’s yours, no one else’s. You can make mistakes. You can experiment with new designs. Plus, it’s easy to keep your journal close by throughout the day for whenever creativity strikes.
I recommend buying a smaller journal (around 6 x 9 inches) with blank pages, acid-free paper, perforated edges and metal ring binding on the side, not the top. Personally, I use the Strathmore 400 Series 5.5 x 8.5-inch, 100-sheet sketch paper journal.
Lettering practice sheets
Just like the cursive worksheets we all did in kindergarten – following the dotted lines for each letter in the alphabet – one of the best tools for learning to hand-letter is practice sheets. There are several forms of practice sheets, from stroke drills to full alphabet guides. I recommend both. Practice sheets are cheap, easy to print off and helpful for understanding all the nuances of a particular font you want to learn. You can also choose from several different alphabets, but the best place for a beginner to start is with modern lowercase calligraphy.
3. Learn the Basic Principle of Thin-to-Thick
Hand-lettering takes many forms, from wildly ornate to simple and quirky (read more about what hand-lettering is here). However, one of the most basic principles is the concept of thin-to-thick. Thin-to-thick refers to the stroke pattern that your letters follow. The pattern is: upstrokes are thin, and downstrokes are thick. Easy to say, a challenge to perfect.
Thin-to-thick lines can be created with a brush pen by varying the pressure you apply to the tip. As you press the tip down onto the page, the line becomes thicker. As you relieve the pressure, the line becomes thin again.
The letter M is a great example to show thin-to-thick. As you write the letter M, you begin at the top, creating a thick downstroke. From the bottom, you move upward again with a thin upstroke. As the first hump curves around, the stroke becomes thicker until it reaches full thickness, descending into the downstroke. Then, it’s back to a thin upstroke, and the process is repeated for the second hump.
Part of the challenge of creating this effect is getting a feel for how subtle the change in pressure needs to be. If you want consistent letters that flow across the page, you need to apply the same amount of pressure on each downstroke, and likewise on each upstroke. It takes a steady hand, patience and practice!
4. Practice! Practice! Practice!
To practice hand-lettering, sit down at a table, desk or other level surface with your journal and brush pen in hand. Hold the pen at a 45-degree angle, and start lettering.
You can letter anything that comes to mind, but if you’re like me, there will be times when it’s hard coming up with ideas. Here are 20 to help get you started:
Favorite quotes – From history, movies or books
Encouraging phrases – To get you or someone else through the day
Bible verses – Great for meditation and memorization
States and their capitals – Handy for students and teachers
Cities you want to visit – For the aspiring traveler
Cities you’d like to visit again – For the seasoned traveler
Countries you’d like to visit – For the ambitious traveler
Names of the planets – Science nerds unite!
Your favorite foods or desserts – If you can’t eat it, letter it!
Names of flowers – A beautiful pairing with hand-lettering
Types of animals – Woodland creatures or otherwise
Types of fruit – Delicious and fun to write
Your favorite movies – Pride and Prejudice, anyone?
Your favorite books – Pride and Prejudice, anyone?
Sermon notes – Writing it helps you absorb it
Lecture notes – As long as the teacher or professor doesn’t talk too fast
Holidays – An excuse to think about Christmas!
Funny phrases – An excuse to be sassy
Favorite hobbies or sports – All the sportsing
Inspiring people in your life – Mom, dad, best friend
These are just a few ideas you can use to get started. They’ll lead to other ideas, and soon you’ll find a niche or pattern of things you like to letter. Just remember to keep pushing yourself, to go outside of your comfort zone and to try new challenges. One of the best ways to do that is to follow other artists on social media.
5. Follow Other Lettering Artists
I recommend Instagram as the social media platform of choice for any aspiring artist. I have a Facebook page, and YouTube comes in handy when I’m looking for a tutorial on something very specific. But by far, Instagram has been the most helpful in my artist journey.
It’s easy to scroll through countless posts of genuinely good art-related content, and the platform does a good job of serving up content that’s interesting to me. Unlike a lot of other platforms, there are very few ads, and somehow the entire culture on Instagram seems to be much more positive.
My advice is to create an account – it’s super simple! Go do it, right now! – and start posting your lettering art today. Don’t wait until you think you’re good enough. If you do, you’ll be waiting forever. If I could post this back when I started, you can post anything, and you don’t have to fear being shot down.
Tag me @heinendesigns, and I’ll send you an encouraging word!
6. Join a Community
On the topic of social media, I wouldn’t be the lettering artist I am today without the relationships I’ve built on Instagram. Over the years, I met a number of ladies within the art community that I really began to bond with, and it wasn’t long before we formed our own small circle of friendship. We literally talk to each other every day about life, family, faith, and of course, art.
For your own hand-lettering journey, join a community of artists. Be on the lookout for likeminded individuals who will encourage and grow you. They’re real people. Encourage them as they encourage you.
