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Small Envelope Addressing Guidesheet — Logos Calligraphy + Design

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Small Envelope Addressing Guidesheet — Logos Calligraphy + Design

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I posted a couple of months ago regarding envelope addressing and wanted to share my *NEW* "Small Envelope Addressing Template" for your personal use! Baseline spacing is tighter at 0.5 inch apart and the x-height is at 0.17 inch. This guidesheet works well for smaller envelopes such as your RSVP envelopes. Click below to download both versions (the previous one is also updated! I included 'x' marks to indicate x-height and also included a landscape version for those mega envelopes):
SMALL ENVELOPE ADDRESSING GUIDESHEET
LARGE ENVELOPE ADDRESSING GUIDESHEET
HOW TO USE THEM
You can use these guide sheets for both light and dark envelopes. They contain the 55 degree slant lines, x-height, a center line, and enough spacing between the baselines for you to add flourishes! You simply place your envelope on top of the guidesheet and use the center line as your reference point to keep your lines centered. If you are aligning every line to the left, you may want to draw in more vertical lines that's more personalized to your needs.

Here is a quick process of how I address light and dark envelopes...

LIGHT ENVELOPES
For white/cream envelopes, it's best to use a lightpad! I use the Treviewer Super Thin LED Tracing Lightpad and it's been such a lifesaver! I've also heard great things about the Artograph Lightbox. I place my envelope & guidesheet on top of my lightpad and start writing. There's no drawing lines/erasing. Having a lightpad has saved me so much time. I like the one I have because it can lay almost flat, but you can also angle it. The light is adjustable so you set the brightness to how you like it. Not only do I use it for envelope addressing, but for writing placecards, letters, and designing prints.. I really can't recommend getting a lightpad enough!

DARK ENVELOPES
For colored envelopes, you won't be able to see the guidesheet with a lightpad, so I use a laser level! I've seen people use Slider Writer ($59.99), but I'm been pretty content with my Black & Decker Laser Level from Amazon (only $15!). I got it 2 years ago and it's been working great! I love that it's portable and I think I only replaced the batteries 2 times. How do you use the laser? You first place the envelope on top of the guidesheet, center it, and then line up the laser to the baseline. I mainly use the laser to make sure I'm writing in a straight line. The guidesheet will help you estimate the x-height and ascender line as you write.

Hope this helps!
Younghae

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Small Envelope Addressing Guidesheet - Logos Calligraphy + Design

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I posted a couple of months ago regarding envelope addressing and wanted to share my *NEW* "Small Envelope Addressing Template" for your personal use! Baseline spacing is tighter at 0.5 inch apart and the x-height is at 0.17 inch. This guidesheet works well for smaller envelopes

# data[].attributes.headline
Small Envelope Addressing Guidesheet — Logos Calligraphy + Design

# data[].attributes.subject
Small Envelope Addressing Guidesheet — Logos Calligraphy + Design

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I posted a couple of months ago regarding envelope addressing and wanted to share my *NEW* "Small Envelope Addressing Template" for your personal use! Baseline spacing is tighter at 0.5 inch apart and the x-height is at 0.17 inch. This guidesheet works well for smaller envelopes such as your RSVP envelopes. Click below to download both versions (the previous one is also updated! I included 'x' marks to indicate x-height and also included a landscape version for those mega envelopes):
SMALL ENVELOPE ADDRESSING GUIDESHEET
LARGE ENVELOPE ADDRESSING GUIDESHEET
HOW TO USE THEM
You can use these guide sheets for both light and dark envelopes. They contain the 55 degree slant lines, x-height, a center line, and enough spacing between the baselines for you to add flourishes! You simply place your envelope on top of the guidesheet and use the center line as your reference point to keep your lines centered. If you are aligning every line to the left, you may want to draw in more vertical lines that's more personalized to your needs.

Here is a quick process of how I address light and dark envelopes...

LIGHT ENVELOPES
For white/cream envelopes, it's best to use a lightpad! I use the Treviewer Super Thin LED Tracing Lightpad and it's been such a lifesaver! I've also heard great things about the Artograph Lightbox. I place my envelope & guidesheet on top of my lightpad and start writing. There's no drawing lines/erasing. Having a lightpad has saved me so much time. I like the one I have because it can lay almost flat, but you can also angle it. The light is adjustable so you set the brightness to how you like it. Not only do I use it for envelope addressing, but for writing placecards, letters, and designing prints.. I really can't recommend getting a lightpad enough!

DARK ENVELOPES
For colored envelopes, you won't be able to see the guidesheet with a lightpad, so I use a laser level! I've seen people use Slider Writer ($59.99), but I'm been pretty content with my Black & Decker Laser Level from Amazon (only $15!). I got it 2 years ago and it's been working great! I love that it's portable and I think I only replaced the batteries 2 times. How do you use the laser? You first place the envelope on top of the guidesheet, center it, and then line up the laser to the baseline. I mainly use the laser to make sure I'm writing in a straight line. The guidesheet will help you estimate the x-height and ascender line as you write.

Hope this helps!
Younghae

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Small Envelope Addressing Guidesheet - Logos Calligraphy + Design

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I posted a couple of months ago regarding envelope addressing and wanted to share my *NEW* "Small Envelope Addressing Template" for your personal use! Baseline spacing is tighter at 0.5 inch apart and the x-height is at 0.17 inch. This guidesheet works well for smaller envelopes

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Create a Sophisticated Hand Addressed Envelope - Every-Tuesday

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Create a Sophisticated Hand Addressed Envelope - Every-Tuesday

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There's nothing quite like receiving a beautifully hand addressed snail mailed card, note or correspondence. There's also nothing quite like creating that very same mailbox surprise for someone else.

I looooove hand addressing envelopes in all kinds of different styles (suited for the person and the occasion, of course). It's one of my most favorite things to letter and I can't believe I haven't created any video on it yet! That's all about to change this week and next week with a two part envelope address lettering series! We'll start this week with sophisticated lettering for more formal notes (for delivery to traditional folks or for classy occasions) and we'll cover playful and whimsical lettering next week (reserved for the hippest of family, friends and events). All of the materials mentioned + links included below!

Create a Sophisticated Hand Addressed Envelope

Materials Mentioned:
- White Gelly Roll Pen
- Gold Gelly Roll Pen
- Black Pentel (tube) Watercolor
- Pentel Waterbrush (small)
- round paint palette
- Colored Envelopes (A4)
- Recycled Paper Envelope

Additional Lettering Tutorials:
- How to Create Non-Traditional Calligraphy
- Brush Script Lettering Basics
- Waterbrush Lettering Tips
- Full course: Waterbrush Lettering Essentials

You May Also Enjoy

Create a Whimsical Hand Addressed Envelope Posted in Tutorials, Typography, Hand Lettering, Hand Drawn, Crafts

Waterbrush Lettering Workshop! Posted in Typography, Hand Lettering, Crafts

Vday Envelope Prep: Lovely Letters Posted in Roundups, Typography, Hand Lettering, Illustration

Freebie: Printable Hand Lettered Mother's Day Card Posted in Freebies, Typography, Hand Lettering, Holiday, Hand Drawn

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Create a Sophisticated Hand Addressed Envelope - Every-Tuesday

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There's nothing quite like receiving a beautifully hand addressed snail mailed card, note or correspondence. There's also nothing quite like creating that very same mailbox surprise for someone else. I looooove hand addressing envelopes in all kinds of different styles (suited for the person and the occasion, of course).

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As you can probably imagine, I have a reputation among family and friends for sending envelopes that are usually more glitzy than the contents contained inside. Since I send so much snail mail, I am always looking for new and unique ways to address an envelope. Yesterday, I partitioned off a few hours to come up with a few singular styles that you'll be able to use in your snail mail endeavors, too. {Just in time for sending holiday cards, right?}

1. The Margaret

To create this style, you'll need:

A gel pen {such as a Pilot G2} or a ballpoint pen

A knowledge of how to make faux calligraphy {read this tutorial}

Ruler or straight edge and pencil {optional}

Begin by writing out your recipient's name. Try to orient it so the name is closer to the right edge than the left. You can see that I added a big tail to my last letter to achieve a little more length.

{I like using Kaitlin style calligraphy because it's super easy, and you can over- or under-correct letters to make sure your calligraphy turns out straight.}

Next, use the faux calligraphy technique to fill in the downstrokes.

Here's what you'll end up with:

If you're using a ruler and pencil, draw a simple, straight line about two inches away from the side of the envelope.

Make sure you have the recipient's address at hand ... because we're going to do something a little weird with how we write it.

Okay, the secret trick with the Margaret style is we are going to write the address, letter by letter, backwards. That's why it's good to have your address at hand ... sometimes it's difficult to spell things backwards in your head. Much easier to look at the address for reference!

Start by writing the last letter of the first line of the address nearly flush with the guide line you made. {I like to leave space between the pencil guideline and the letters so I can erase the line immediately after writing out the address with no fear of smudging.}

And keep writing ...

I'm having you do the address backwards for two reasons. The first {and most important} is this way you can truly ensure your address is aligned to the right. The second reason is writing like this lends almost a "typewriter" look to your letters. When you write regularly, you tend to have the letters work together, resulting in a cohesive look. If you write backwards, the letters lose that harmony, which actually looks pretty cool.

And that's it! The only note I would add is if you're stumped on how to make the little sans serif letters, write a few out in a font like Helvetica on the computer and try to emulate them. Or just use your own style of letters. It's your envelope and you can do whatever the heck you want with it.

2. The Lawrence

To create this style, you'll need:

Or, if you're not comfortable creating calligraphy yet, you'll just need:

Begin by tracing around the larger circular object. I found a spool of ribbon that worked great, but you could use a cup, a coaster, a CD or DVD ... whatever, really.

Next, center your smaller object inside your tracing of the larger object. I had another spool of ribbon that fit the bill.

That should leave you with two circular lines:

Now, use your oblique pen and white ink or your white gel pen {and the faux calligraphy technique} to create calligraphy inside those two lines. Your calligraphy will be your recipient's name/s.

You will probably run into the problem of the names not making a full circle.

No biggie; in this case, I would encourage taking advantage of our old space-filling friend, the über-simple laurel branch. Just draw a few almost-connected lines that fan out ...

... and add in some little leaves.

Taa-daa!

Now, use your pencil and a ruler or straight edge to make lines inside the circle to write your address on. I made five lines: two for the street address, two for the city/state, and one for the zip.

I used a kitschy serif font that came out of my head. Feel free to mimic it, or mimic a computer font. If you're using calligraphy pens, use your straight holder for this.

Once you're finished, wait a few minutes for the ink to dry, then gently erase your guidelines. {If you've used a gel pen to create the Lawrence style, wait a few hours to erase ... otherwise, welcome to Smudge City. You'd be safest to let it sit overnight.}

This is what you'll end up with - perfect for the holidays! Note, however, if you use a square envelope like this, you'll need to put extra postage on it. USPS machines can't process the non-standard envelope shape, so they have to do an extra step {or something}. I believe this also applies to countries outside the US, but you should double-check to be sure.

3. The Art Deco {Inspired by this very lovely envelope}

To create this style, you'll need:

Knowledge of how to create watercolor calligraphy {see this tutorial}

Straight calligraphy pen with Brause EF66 nib

Ruler and pencil {optional}

Or, hey, just create something like this with a regular gel or ballpoint pen. Why not?

I began by drawing a vertical line on the left for my little vertical design, and horizontal lines for the address on the right.

I then drew a swirly vertical design. Feel free to mimic this one, or make your own.

Next, I wrote the recipient's name, using a 1920's-inspired font that I made up just now. Use whatever font you want, though!

When I was finished with the address, I went back to the left side of the envelope and wrote "Please Send To" to visually balance the envelope out. I waited a few minutes, then erased my guidelines ... pretty simple!
4. The Wave

Here's what you'll need to create this style:

Or, just use a ballpoint or gel pen and faux calligraphy in the Kaitlin style.

Begin by writing your recipient's name in Kaitlin style, but make your letter connections longer than normal. Be sure and connect the first letter to the left edge of the envelope.

Connect the last letter to the right edge of the envelope, as well. The point of the Wave style is to look like a wave in the ocean, kinetic but harmonious.

Use the same technique for the subsequent address lines. If there's no way to connect a letter or number to the envelope edge, simply draw a wavy line, as I have done with the first and last numbers in the zip code.
5. The Banner

Here's what you need to create this style:

Or just use a regular pen! Whatever you're comfortable with works for this style {and every style}.

Begin by drawing a banner.

Now, write whatever you want in that banner. Obviously, I wrote "Please Deliver To", and you could do a variation of that - but you could also get playful and label your recipient. Like: "The Pulchritudinous Miss", "The Talented Mr.", "My Favorite Sister" ... and so on and so forth.

Then, use any font you want to write out the address. I have no idea what this is, but it came out of my head and you're welcome to imitate it.

At this point, the envelope looked empty to me.

And what better way to fill emptiness than with a few birds? I just winged it {haha, no pun intended!} on creating them; but the hand-drawn banner tutorial should help you figure out how to make a flying bird. A nest is pretty easy, and the tree branch is basically a few a lines with leaves. Anyway, The illustration was an afterthought to fill up space, so you should feel free to come up with your own space-filling illustration.

So, there you go: fun and unique ways to address an envelope!

Now, get out there in the world and make someone's mail box pretty. If you're ready to take the leap to learn modern calligraphy to use on your own unique envelopes, try out these worksheets:

If you make an envelope you're proud of, feel free to share it on the TPK Facebook or Instagram! {Be sure and blur out or Photoshop the recipient's address for privacy.}

Thanks again for reading; my immense appreciation for you and your creativity is the reason I keep blogging {and keep enjoying blogging!}. So: thank you for your interest and for following TPK!

XO,

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As you can probably imagine, I have a reputation among family and friends for sending envelopes that are usually more glitzy than the contents contained inside. Since I send so much snail mail, I am always looking for new and unique ways to address an envelope.

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The Ultimate Hand Lettering Guide for Beginners (2019) | LittleCoffeeFox

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The Ultimate Hand Lettering Guide for Beginners (2019) | LittleCoffeeFox

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So you're interested in hand lettering! That's fantastic news. You're about to enter into a whole new world of creative exploration and expressive fun. Perhaps you've tried your hand at hand lettering (pun intended) or perhaps you are brand new to the whole thing and you have no idea where to begin. Either way, this hand lettering guide will walk you through all the basic elements of lettering and give you a foothold in this incredible hobby.

First things first: what exactly is hand lettering? Hand lettering is a specific creative skill that uses letters to create beautiful design and art. You might think that hand lettering is just a fancier version of handwriting, but that's not quite right! Of course, both practices use the written language, but the similarities end there. Hand lettering requires some level of discipline and skill to be developed in order to achieve your lettering goals. That's good news, though! That means that no matter how neat or messy your handwriting is, you can absolutely learn hand lettering and get good at it.

In order to succeed at hand lettering, you need to pick up a bit of knowledge about pens, materials, practicing techniques, and the letters themselves. Don't worry though - I'll walk you through all of this and more! And if you want to dive in deeper, check out my ecourse Brush Lettering 101! So without further ado, let's jump into the secret world of letters.

Materials Needed for Hand Lettering

The beauty of hand lettering is that you can pick up just about any pen or pencil and get started. But if you want to learn all the different aspects of lettering, then you need to pick up a few tools.

Hand Lettering Essentials

There are a ton of different hand lettering materials that you can go out and get, but here are the ones I suggest to total newbies who just want to learn the basics.

You need a good base for all your lettering, right? You can obviously use regular computer paper or plain cardstock. Those will work just fine! But for learning purposes, I would highly recommend a Rhodia Dot Pad. The dot grid makes it a million times easier to watch proportions, angles, and letter sizes as you learn.

I'm a huge fan of Tombow as a brand. I started my lettering journey using their products and I still use them as a professional letterer. I love Tombow so much, in fact, that I even became a Tombow Brand Ambassador! The very first pens I bought from Tombow was a set of their Dual Brush Pens. These pens are excellent because the brush tip allows a great deal of flexibility and the bullet tip is perfect for simple linework. Plus they come in a whole variety of color sets, like bright, pastel, galaxy, secondary, and grayscale. These pens are a hand lettering must-have, so pick your favorite palette and grab them!

While the Dual Brush Pens cover the color category beautifully, you will also want something in black and something a bit smaller. That's where the Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens come in. They come in both a soft and hard tip, giving you tons of flexibility for your hand lettering projects. I use these pens constantly and I'm always buying more because they are essential in my lettering toolkit.

One thing you definitely need for hand lettering is a variety of black pens. That's why I highly recommend this Faber-Castell pen assortment. They have plenty of black pens in various widths, along with a few interesting nibs for you to play with and explore.

Extra Hand Lettering Supplies

If you decide that you want to explore beyond the bare basics of hand lettering supplies, you'll be delighted to find a whole world of fun materials waiting for you. Let me share some of my favorites!

Miscellaneous

The Anatomy of Letters

One of the very first things you need to learn before you jump right into lettering is the anatomy of letters. It's easy to want to skip this step because you might think you already know plenty about letters. After all, you read and write every day! But I promise you that a solid foundation in letter anatomy will go a long way towards your lettering goals. Understanding letter anatomy can help you figure out how to best make a hand lettered work of art look balanced and aesthetically pleasing.

There are plenty of ways to break down the anatomy of a letter, but let's just stick with the basics. There are four lines that you need to keep in mind as you write out your letters: the base line, the X height, the ascender line, and the descender line.

The Base Line

This is the line where all your letters will sit. The main body of each letter's bottom will rest upon this line, and from there you will base the other aspects of letter anatomy. Think of it as your own bottom when you sit on a chair.

The X Height

The X height is the line where the tops of the lowercase letters reach. To be perfectly exact, the X height is the height of a lowercase "x" in a given typeface. It also goes for all of the simple lowercase letters, such as "a", "e", "o", "n", and so on. These lowercase letters should all sit on the base line and reach up to the X height. Since we're comparing these lines to the human body, imagine the X height line is right at the tippity top of your head.

The Ascender Line

All the letters that have strokes that reach upwards will make use of the ascender line. That includes letters like "k", "h", and "t". These letters have strokes that are taller than the X height, so they reach to the ascender line. Imagine that you're holding your hands above your head - the tips of your fingers would touch the ascender line.

The Descender Line

You probably know where this one is going. Where the ascender line reaches up, the descender line hangs down. This is the line where dangling letters like "g", "q", and "y" can rest their tails. If you're sitting in a chair with your hands reaching up, then your legs sitting on the floor would reach the descender line.

How to Use Anatomy in Hand Lettering

Why do you need to know this? One of the most important elements in successful hand lettering is consistency. When you maintain a tight framework for your lettering style, it can look incredible. One of the marks of an inexperienced letterer is inconsistency in their lettering - it can be inconsistent shapes, line widths, spacing, or letter sizes. Understanding letter anatomy helps you make your lettering more consistent and therefore look more advanced. Of course, it takes practice to really get used to creating consistent letters, but the quicker you implement your knowledge of anatomy, the faster you will develop.

You can also take this knowledge and adjust any of the lines to achieve different styles of lettering. Move the ascender line higher, shrink the X height, and lengthen the descender line to create a tall, elegant style. If you want something a little more youthful and poppy, then balloon out the X height and make the ascenders and descenders smaller. Play with these lines and see what new styles you can create!

Lettering Families

Another important element to hand lettering is learning about lettering families, or font families as you might know them. There are a million fonts out there, but the majority fall into one of three main categories. You can choose to focus your efforts on mastering just one family, but figuring out how to create lettering with a variety of font families can really make your work pop. The three families that you need to learn are serif, sans serif, and script. You may or may not have heard those names before, but I promise you are familiar with them already. You see dozens of examples of all three font families every day when you see advertisements, watch TV, or read your favorite blog. Let's break down each family.

Serif Fonts

The serif family is the most traditional branch of the lettering family, though that doesn't mean it is boring! This font family is very common with printed text, because the small lines that are added to the letters, otherwise known as "serifs", help guide the eye and aid in reading. These little extra lines at the ends of strokes are incredibly subtle if you aren't paying attention, but there are certainly several serif fonts around you right now. In fact, the title in the title graphic at the top of this post is a serif font! The popular fonts Times New Roman, Garamond, and Georgia are all serif. When it comes to lettering, the serif family might be one of the most difficult for a beginner to learn quickly due to all of the extra lines and strokes.

Sans Serif Fonts

As you might have guessed from the name, sans serif fonts lack the serifs that are characteristic of the serif family. That makes the sans serif family often appear much more sleek and modern. In fact, sans serifs fonts grew to popularity alongside the rise of computers. In the early days of computers, the screen was so pixelated that serif fonts were difficult to read with all their extra lines, so sans serif fonts became the obvious pick. The font of this paragraph is actually sans serif! Some other common sans serif fonts include Ariel, Helvetica, and Verdana. If you want to learn how to hand letter serif fonts, starting with the sans serif family is a great way to go since they tend to be more simple and clean.

Script Fonts

The script family is one of my absolute favorite families, and it is a love shared by many in the hand lettering community! In fact, most letterers begin with brush lettering, which deals largely with the script family. Script is usually cursive, with the letters connecting to one another. There is typically a variation in line thickness, giving it an appealing flow. You might notice that I work almost exclusively in script, and for good reason! Script is often forgiving of mistakes and doesn't show errors as blatantly as serif or sans serif fonts might. If you are just beginning, I would highly recommend you brush up on your cursive and jump in with the script family.

How to Hold Your Body for Lettering

When you're lettering, it can be tempting to sit in some less than ideal positions. You might want to slouch, put your feet up, or lean your elbows on the table. However, these kinds of postures can not only negatively affect your lettering results, but it can leave you feeling sore and achy. With just a little bit of body awareness and practice, you can train yourself to position your body for the best lettering.

How to Sit for Lettering

First, let's talk about the best way to sit when you letter. When you go in for a hand lettering session, you should sit down in a comfortable chair with your feet flat on the floor. Sit close to the table, but try to keep your back straight and don't lean over your work. That's pretty much it - sit on a chair with good posture. Sounds easy, right?

Unfortunately, it's really hard (at least for me) to avoid slouching or hunching over the paper while I'm lettering. My instincts tell me that my face needs to be as close to the paper as possible. This is terrible, and you will most certainly feel the pain if you don't sit straight.

Practice sitting properly from the beginning of your lettering journey and develop those good habits early. You want to take care of your body so you can keep doing this for a long time! Plus the more relaxed and loose your joints are, the more fluid and lovely your hand lettering can be.

How to Hold Your Pen for Lettering

While your posture is important for lettering, the position of your arm and hand can make or break your lettering. In fact, when people tell me that they just can't get the flow, pressure, or consistency of lettering figured out, the problem usually lies in arm position. So how should you hold your pen for optimal lettering?

The key is moving the pen with your shoulder and not your fingers. It sounds totally ridiculous, but I'm serious! When you write or lettering, you are most likely going to move the pen with your fingers and hand, moving from the wrist. This is the wrong way to move the pen! Lettering with your hand and fingers will restrict your motion, leading to stiff lettering with no flow or grace.

Instead, you need to move your whole arm. Your elbow should either not be touching the table or should be lightly touching so it may glide around uninterrupted. When you're done lettering, your shoulder muscles should be burning a bit. Your wrist and fingers can still move a bit once you get used to the proper way to move your arm, but in the beginning, you should attempt to make them as still as possible.

How to Develop Muscle Memory for Lettering

One handy trick for developing the right shoulder and arm movement for lettering is to write on the wall. Having access to a chalkboard or a dry erase board makes this exercise easiest, though you can also tape a piece of paper to the wall and write on that. Most people have no trouble using their whole arm when asked to write on a dry erase board, so it's a great way to practice and get a feel for the right muscles. Once you identify those muscles, you can focus on them while you lettering and develop the right muscle memory for lettering.

Line Weight in Lettering

Of all the skills you need to learn to master hand lettering, line weight is priority number one. But what is line weight, exactly? It's simple! Line weight refers to the thickness or thinness of a line. If the line is thick, the weight is heavier. If the line is thin, the weight is lighter. The best way to remember this is to think of the pressure you used to draw the line. If you applied heavier pressure, the line weight is heavy, and vise versa.

The reason line weight is vital to hand lettering is because literally every single font or lettering style relies on line weight in some way, even if the font has the same weight through and through. The look of your lettering can drastically change if you simply alter the weight of the lines. And when you're creating lettering with a font that varies line weight stroke to stroke, you need to get that weight consistent to make it look great. If your line weights are inconsistent from letter to letter, it's not going to look its best. Of course, as with anything else in hand lettering, nailing line weight takes practice. Developing the right muscle memory as discussed in the last section will go a long way in helping you master this skill.

Downstrokes and Upstrokes

Throughout this guide, you will see the words "downstroke" and "upstroke", which refer to how you are pulling your pen when you make the line. There is a general rule in the hand lettering world that downstrokes, or the stroke of your pen when you pull it toward the bottom of the page, have a heavy line weight. Upstrokes, which is the stroke of your pen that is pushing toward the top of the page, are typically a lighter line weight. This rule can be broken or bent to suit your lettering needs, of course, but it's best to accept it as gospel while you're learning hand lettering. The only time you will regularly see this rule broken is with sans serif fonts, which typically have a single thickness for all the strokes.

How to Practice Hand Lettering

As you may have guessed, practice is absolutely necessary in order to excel in hand lettering. You can't pick up a brush pen for the first time and be amazing. Everyone has to start somewhere, but regular practice can help accelerate your growth and set you apart. So how do you practice?

Hand Lettering Drills

The best way to launch into practicing your hand lettering is to engage in drills. Hand lettering drills are simply repetitive lines or shapes to help you practice the movement of lettering. Drills can help you work on thick downstrokes or thin upstrokes. They can aid you as you learn how to transition between strokes or curve the line for certain letters. Besides being great stand-alone practice, drills are excellent for warming up before a lettering session! I like to do a page of drills before I sit down and letter anything serious.

If you want to grab a free drills sheet to help you get started with practice, you can subscribe to my email list and download one right now! There are other lettering worksheets, printables, and other freebies, too! Just click here to sign up and you can start some hand lettering drills ASAP!

Practice in Other Ways

Besides drills, what other ways can you practice? Well, there are lots of ways to practice hand lettering! Here are some excellent ways to get practice in.

#1 - While Watching TV

Grab your favorite brush pen and some paper, sit down for your favorite TV show, and letter away! I like to letter character names and quotes from the show. It doesn't have to make sense or be presentable for social media. Just fill a page up with random words, names, and phrases. It's a great way to make time for lettering without having to change your schedule at all.

#2 - Bullet Journal Headers

Keep a bullet journal? Utilize your lettering skills and letter out your daily, weekly, or monthly headers! This is one of the ways that I practiced the most and learned a ton. One of the perks of practicing this way is that you get to practice every day in an organic, simple way.

#3 - Take Notes

I first started learning hand lettering when I was working as a receptionist. One way I practiced with my new lettering skills was to take down notes during meetings or phone calls with some lettering flair. Of course, I couldn't do it constantly because I often needed to write quickly, but I could do a little bit here and there. If you're a student, take notes during class with lettering. If you work full time, letter your Post It note reminders or meeting notes. Find some way to incorporate lettering into your existing writing routines and you'll find yourself practicing all the time!

#4 - Join a Challenge

You can find all kinds of lettering challenges on social media that are perfect for beginners. You can join in regardless of your skill level, meet other lettering enthusiasts, and get inspired by the prompts and your fellow letterers. Instagram is a great place to find lettering challenges and share your work. Check out the #happyletteringchallenge for a fantastic starting point!

What is Brush Lettering?

This post covers all the basics of hand lettering, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the differences between hand lettering and brush lettering. Brush lettering is a common subject that is brought up all the time online, and it's important to understand what sets it apart from hand lettering. Thankfully, the difference is quite simple!

Hand lettering is the broad net that covers everything in the art of creating letters beautifully. Brush lettering is a practice that falls under that net, making it a subcategory of hand lettering. Brush lettering is basically just a general term to describe any hand lettering that is done with a brush pen. It can also be used to describe the specific style of lettering in a script font with a brush pen. Hand lettering, on the other hand, can utilize any pen or marker.

So any time you see the terms hand lettering or brush lettering being thrown around, you can understand exactly what areas of the lettering world are being discussed. The differences are subtle but important!

What is a Brush Pen?

Since the definition of brush lettering hinges largely upon the tool being used, I think it would be a great idea to point out what makes a brush pen stand out from normal pens. So what is a brush pen, anyway?

First, let's talk about normal pens that we use in regular writing every day. You probably use ballpoint pens, felt tip pens, and gel pens often enough to know how they write. If you step up to basic drawing pens, they are similar to felt tip pens in how their nibs are designed. They can come in a variety of sizes, but these pens write with a single line width that can only be thickened by putting down more strokes.

A brush pen, on the other hand, has a flexible nib that can create thick or thin lines depending on the pressure used while putting down a stroke. Brush pens can either have a flexible cone-shaped nylon tip or have actual individual bristles that behave exactly like a paintbrush. Brush pens feel totally different from normal pens and can produce totally different results, making them a fun tool to add to a letterer's toolkit.

Some Brush Lettering Tricks

If you want to test out brush lettering without investing in a set of brush pens, you can buy some cheap Crayola markers and create a similar effect. It's an economical way to tip your toes in the water before you spend a lot of money! Another super easy technique you can use is called faux calligraphy. This technique allows you to use just about any pen to achieve a brush lettered look without actually using a brush pen! I would suggest you eventually grab some brush pens and give them a try, but it's always good to have a few tricks up your sleeve.

Adding Embellishments

At this point, we have covered all the basics of hand lettering. Hurray! Most of hand lettering is understanding fonts, line weight, and developing the right muscle memory. But that doesn't mean that there isn't more to learn! There are a ton of fun ways to inject style, decoration, and intrigue into your lettering with some embellishment techniques. Let me share some of my favorite ways to take your lettering to the next level.

How to do Bounce Lettering

Bounce lettering is exactly what it sounds like - the letters bounce! The letters don't all sit on one base line like we learned in letter anatomy. Instead, the base of each letter varies, creating a fun, bouncy effect. This is one of those instances where you learn about letter anatomy so you can break the rules!

When you first try your hand at bounce lettering, I would suggest you use a pencil. Getting the right balance between higher letters and lower letters takes some practice. Eventually, though, you will develop an eye for it. Sometimes you just need to do it for yourself to see what looks best. Remember, you want some level of consistency with the X height, ascenders, and descenders, even if they aren't all on the same base line. Keep the letters all roughly the same size when you do bounce lettering for the best effect.

Begin your bounce lettering by drawing out the first letter. Then determine where the second letter's base line should sit - should it be high or low? Keep the letters on slightly different baselines or make the difference dramatic. If the letter has an ascender, it might be great to have that letter's baseline sit low. If there is a descender, perhaps position the letter high so the descender can swoop and curl beneath the word. Play with it and see what looks best! You might be tempted to have each letter in a word vary evenly between high and low, high and low. This rhythm doesn't always produce the best results. Instead, try to keep it somewhat random with high and low letters. I promise that if you practice your bounce lettering you will get a feel for it!

Flourish Fancy

Another way you can add style and grace to your lettering is with the use of flourishes. Flourishes are any decorative swoops that dance around and between your letters. Often, flourishes are attached to ascenders, descenders, or just about any part of a letter if you're creative enough. They can be wild and dramatic or simple and understated. Either way, they can take your lettering to the next level. So how do you start creating flourishes?

Firstly, I would suggest you start practicing your flourishes with a pencil. They can be a bit tricky at first, and the ability to erase and redraw a line is incredibly helpful. I would most certainly advise against using a pressure sensitive marker like a brush pen while you're starting out. You don't want to worry about line weight when you're first flourishing.

There are a ton of different flourish shapes you can create for seriously stunning effects. Simple wiggles like the picture below, especially when repeated, can look awesome. Dangling letters like Y and J can create excellent opportunities to flourish away. If you want to learn some basic flourish shapes, grab my free flourishes worksheet right here to help you get started!

Borders, Doodles, and Textures

Beyond bounce lettering and flourishes, you can add nearly anything to your lettering to add more character! Draw borders around a phrase, banners around specific words, and branches along the edges. Create backgrounds, textures, wreathes, shapes... the list goes on! As long as you are bold enough to create it, anything is possible in the realm of hand lettering. After all, this is a form of art. Make it yours!

Pointed Pen Calligraphy

There is one category of hand lettering that has fascinated people for centuries - nib calligraphy, otherwise known as pointed pen calligraphy. Nib calligraphy is elegant, dignified, and as old world as it gets. But that doesn't mean you can't add it to your repertoire of hand lettering knowledge in the modern world! Here are the basics that you need to know to get started with a nib and ink.

You'll be happy to know that all the general principles of hand lettering remain the same for nib calligraphy. Letter anatomy, line weight, and font families - the rules all apply. Nib calligraphy is a style that is almost entirely centered around some type of script lettering, though you can absolutely venture into the other font families. And just like brush lettering, the general theme of heavy downstrokes and light upstrokes is consistent in nib calligraphy. Basically, everything you've learned so far applies to this new tool.

Nib Calligraphy Supplies

You don't need a ton of supplies to get started with nib calligraphy. After you grab a nib, nib holder, and ink, you should be good to go! Here are some of my favorite pointed pen calligraphy materials.

The most important part of nib calligraphy is, of course, the nib! Specifically, you need a flex nib. This means that the two sides of the tip (also known as tines) are bendy and can spread under some pressure. A stiff, unforgiving nib will not be useful for calligraphy. I would recommend one of these to get started.

Nib Holders

There are two basic types of nib holders: standard and oblique. The standard is pretty much exactly like a normal pen or pencil, with the nib being right on the end of the nib holder. An oblique pen holder is different in that it puts the nib at an angle, which allows you to better see your work and create thick and thin strokes easier. I can't say I would recommend one or the other for a beginner, as it all boils down to personal preference. If you can, try both types of nib holders to see which works best for you! I use both regularly.

One of the perks of nib calligraphy is that you can use a wide variety of dipping mediums - that is, you can use ink, watercolors, certain types of paints, and more! As long as you can get a decent viscosity for the writing and you can clean it off of your nib, you can probably use it for nib calligraphy. Here are my favorite inks and paints for pointed pen calligraphy!

Preparing Nibs for Use

When you get a brand new nib, you might want to pop it into a nib holder and immediately get started. However, there is one step that you need to do before your nib ever touches paper. All nibs come with a thin layer of oil that the manufacturer puts on them to prevent rust. That oil might not seem like a big deal, but it will seriously affect how the nib reacts with ink. Unless you remove the oil before use, you will have the most frustrating time trying to write!

Thankfully, removing the oil is a quick and painless process. There are a few ways to do it, all of which can be done with basic household supplies. You can simply wash your new nibs with dish soap and a small brush (like a toothbrush). You can wipe the nibs with something acidic, like vinegar. If you have several nibs to clean off at once, you can even stab them into a regular ol potato for fifteen minutes. When you're done, just pull them out, rinse them off, and dry them. Easy peasy!

Want to improve your nib calligraphy? The number one thing you can do is practice, of course! Do drills, just like the ones you would do for brush lettering. It's a great idea to do a sheet of drills before any lettering session to loosen you up and prepare your arm.

And if you want to find more awesome resources on nib calligraphy, here are my favorite ways to learn!

Watercolor Hand Lettering

I must admit - one of my absolute favorite ways to hand letter is with watercolors. Watercolor hand lettering is flexible, dynamic, and unique each and every time! There's something so freeing about watercolors as a medium. No matter how hard you try, you can never get the same result twice, and you can never fully control it. But once you learn to embrace the wild nature of watercolors, you can use it to create some truly stunning works of hand lettering. There are a ton of advanced ways to use watercolors for lettering ( like using masking fluid), but for now, I'll focus on a few of the basic techniques. Interested in learning more? Head to this post for a more in depth tutorial!

Watercolor Lettering Supplies

There are a few things that are essential to using watercolors. And guess what? You don't need to invest in a ton of super expensive materials to begin hand lettering with watercolors! There are plenty of very economical options that you can pick up to help you get started.

Believe it or not, the most important thing you need to buy for your watercolor hand lettering kit isn't the paint - it's the paper! Using cheap or inappropriate paper will make you seriously hate watercolors. Trust me, I've been there. Cheap paper will wrinkle, bleed, warp, and make your paint look terrible no matter how hard you try. Spend your money on decent watercolor paper and you won't look back!

Watercolor Paints

You can use just about any watercolors for hand lettering, but there are a few brands that really excel. I'll list a super cheap watercolor palette that's great for beginners. However, if you really want to jump into watercolor lettering with both feet, I would suggest you try some bottles of liquid watercolors. Liquid watercolors are second to none when it comes to lettering. I would also suggest you grab a palette of Finetec metallic watercolors because they are simply gorgeous. You'll never want to stop practicing!

Paintbrushes

When it comes to hand lettering with watercolors, there is only one set of brushes I'd recommend. These have been my favorites for years.

Blending in Watercolor Lettering

The most obvious and direct way to use watercolors for hand lettering is to use a single color for all your lettering. But you don't need me to tell you how to do that! After all, all the lettering techniques are the same as standard brush lettering. So I'm going to jump to the next step and show you how to blend several colors together while lettering.

This tutorial goes into more detail (and has a video!), but let me share the basic principles. With watercolor, you need to move quickly because the paint usually dries pretty fast. If you want two colors to blend, you need to do it while the paint is wet so you get a soft, smooth blend like the picture below. The trick to mixing two or more colors from letter to letter is to quickly wipe your brush on a paper towel between colors. Doing this ensures that you don't accidentally end up with purple if you're trying to blend blue and red. It's a tiny step that seems obvious, but it took me lots of frustrated attempts to figure it out! Of course, if you want the colors to mix together and create a whole new color, all you need to do is not clean your brush and you will achieve your desired effect.

I know it seems simple enough to do when you read it, but practice is where you'll really figure this out. Like I said before, watercolors are a bit wild and unpredictable. You'll need to get a feel for how much water to add to your brush, how quickly you want to letter, and how often to clean your brush while you letter. I imagine you'll probably be frustrated or annoyed the first few times you try watercolor brush lettering because it's so hard to control. But I promise that if you stick with it, you will be rewarded for your patience and practice!

Watercolor Lettering Pro Tip

If you're just practicing and not giving the final piece to anyone, letter on both sides of the paper to make the most of your resources! Wait for one side to dry before you flip it, though, unless you want watercolors all over your desk.

Create Watercolor Backgrounds

Another great way to use watercolors is by creating lovely watercolor backgrounds! Watercolors can create such a wide variety of color mixes, textures, and patterns, so the possibilities are endless. Experiment a bit with your paints and see what you can create. Create a simple, flat wash of color like the picture below. Or blend a few colors softly into the background. Try creating a gradient of light to dark and see how you like it as a backsplash!

You can also use regular table salt on semi-wet watercolor to create a million tiny starbursts. Just wait for it to dry completely and wipe off the salt before you letter and that's it! Use your clean wet brush to dot the semi-wet paint and you'll end up with softer spots of lighter color, like the picture below. Try using rubbing alcohol on wet paint for a cloud-like pattern. Basically, experiment and see what fun stuff you can come up with - then letter on top of it!

The Ultimate Hand Lettering Guide

This guide may be long, but it in no way encompasses all of hand lettering. There is always something new to discover, something new to master. No matter where you are in your hand lettering journey, you are forever a student. So don't worry about comparing your work to anyone else's lettering - you are growing and developing, and you are doing amazing stuff.

If you are ready to jump into lettering and pick up techniques lightning fast, then enroll in my online ecourse Brush Lettering 1o1! This course covers all of the foundational knowledge that you need in order to boost your skills to the next level. With nearly 45 minutes of video tutorials and 12 downloadable practice sheets, you can jump start your lettering in the course of a single weekend.

Head here to see if this information-packed class is right for you!

I hope this ultimate hand lettering guide was helpful and you are feeling charged for some lettering action. Drop a comment below if there is anything I missed in this guide, or just let me know your biggest obstacle in hand lettering!

Last update on 2019-10-08 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API / Prices shown represent Amazon prices only, and do not represent the current price from any other source.

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The Ultimate Hand Lettering Guide for Beginners (2019)

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So you're interested in hand lettering! That's fantastic news. You're about to enter into a whole new world of creative exploration and expressive fun. Perhaps you've tried your hand at hand lettering (pun intended) or perhaps you are brand new to the whole thing and you have no idea where to begin.

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A website showcasing the calligraphic paintings and ceramics of Amity Parks.

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In Spring 2017 I began a collaboration with illustrator Andrew Fox to animate his characterful calligraphy drawings of animals.  A simple, fun project between two creatives that grew in the making and became this film.

A big thank-you to Wesley Slover / Sonosanctus for doing a killer job on the sound design.

Me: www.stevekirby.co.uk
Andrew Fox on Behance: https://www.behance.net/afox

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Wordplay Painting - Carla Sonheim Presents

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Wordplay Painting - Carla Sonheim Presents

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Class Includes Lifetime Access, Instructor Feedback, Online Community, 90 Minutes of Video & More!

Use words as inspiration, graphic elements, lists, and as the subjects of small paintings and drawings. Lynn Whipple demonstrates how to work as a writer might, considering things such as composition, editing (room for the eye to rest), titles, and character development. You'll create several smaller works using poetry and personal handwriting as prompts and then develop one larger piece that combines the all the techniques covered along the way.

Class Description

In this class you will be infusing artwork with compelling, meaningful and irresistible words! Think of your Art Books as small laboratories for exploration, inspiration and play. We'll use words as inspiration, as graphic elements, as lists, and as the subjects of small paintings and drawings. We will also work, much as a writer might, by considering things such as composition, editing (room for the eye to rest), titles, and character development.

We will explore through prompts poetry and personal handwriting as well as make one larger piece that will combine the techniques we have gathered along the way. Even our book covers will act as canvases!

I look forward to spending time with you and delving into the rich set of possibilities that we will find together when focusing on working with words in our work!

Class Itinerary

Lesson 1: Word Paintings
We will start by playing with different ways to write words, exploring how to seep personality into each word by "drawing letters" and using spacing and pacing of letters within a word. You will choose a word or two as the main subject of several small paintings... a simple way to elevate a word with your personal style. Have fun!

Lesson 2: List Paintings
We will begin with a fast, but grounded writing prompt and then you will serve them up in a new way on fresh pages of your Art Books by making two different "list paintings." Combine paint, pencil, water-soluble crayon, ink, pastels and markers in a variety of ways so that each line of your list has a personality of it's own, yet it works together as a whole.

Lesson 3: Poem Paintings
Words are so much fun. For Lesson 3 you will pick out a few words that speak to you, paint around your chosen words and "edit out" all or most of the other words on the page, leaving interesting edges and shapes. We will do 3-5 of these and create a simple "sight maps" by drawing and directing the eye from word to word. The Haiku is another great rhythm or structure we can use with poem paintings... a Visual Haiku.

Lesson 4: Character Paintings
Every good book has interesting characters in it. We will create characters in two ways, embracing the "flaws" in both cases (most characters have layers of interesting traits, qualities, and lovable flaws that they show and don't show, but are evident in some way). In the first exercise we will start with words, and the second you will complete your painting by incorporating your character's name in the composition.

Lesson 5: Book Cover Paintings
So often you hear you can't tell a book by it's cover, though a clever title and interesting image can certainly help pull you in. I will share a lettering technique and we will combine collage, painting and drawing on your Book Cover Paintings. Come up with a title for your book and use those words as a graphic element in your design.

Lesson 6: Putting it all Together
Welcome to Lesson 6! This should be fun as we look through the pages of our Art Books and pull some favorite pieces, parts and ideas to create a final, larger piece! I guess we could loosely call this a Book Review 🙂 Think about a main character and a title to use in this piece and ways of using words and text as storytelling and design elements. Using parts of used books in your work can add texture, color and interest. Weaving words into our work adds an extra and often personal layer, and in this lesson we will pull it all together.

In this class you will create list paintings...

Poem Paintings...

Character Paintings...

Book Cover Paintings...

... and Pulling-it-all-Together Paintings...

Supplies

2-3 used books that speak to you. One larger book in the 10×12 inch range or more would be great.

White or cream paint (acrylic paint, flat house paint or gesso works well)

Water soluble crayons and/or water soluble colored pencils

#3 pencil, or soft lead pencil or graphite stick

Colored pencils

Pastels

Tombow markers assorted colors (looking for a marker that will bleed through paint, sharpies will work also)

Brushes, small tipped, medium and larger (one inch is great)

Rag

Black ink and white ink with eyedropper and dip pen

Gel medium

Scissors

Scraper for gel medium, credit card will work as well

Watercolor set

Basic acrylic paints

Plain copy paper

Lynn Whipple

Lynn Whipple writes, "I am deeply grateful to live my life as an artist. Play and discovery are my dearest and most constant companions. There are a zillion tiny challenges in each art making experience, and so often I find, just as many small, sweet victories. Without a doubt, living creatively is the most enjoyable and satisfying game I know."

Lynn shares a warehouse studio with her husband, John Whipple, in Winter Park, Florida. Lynn's work includes found-object mixed-media assemblages; found images altered with a combination of drawing, painting, sewing and more; and her well-known Ninny Boxes, collages combined with found objects, and assembled within a box format. Her unique pieces have a playful, quirky, and often absurd, charm.

Lynn explains: "I allow myself to play and let my pieces reveal themselves to me...I have been fascinated by old books, history, and odd bits of memorabilia. I find the things that interest me the most are slightly absurd...My hope is to create something real and somehow poetic but not commonplace. My goal is to keep communicating in my language."

Lynn's work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and her new book, Expressive Flower Painting, was published July 2017. Visit Lynn's website at www.lynnwhipple.com.

Nuts & Bolts

This class is now available as a self-study class.

Immediately upon class signup, you will receive access to the class videos and corresponding materials.

A private Facebook group will be available for you to (optionally) share your artwork and enjoy and learn from the artwork of others. You may also email your teacher directly with questions or feedback.

You will have indefinite access to this class.

Joy Stuff The Essence of Still Life

Joy Stuff The Essence of Still Life

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Wordplay Painting - Carla Sonheim Presents

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Use words as inspiration, graphic elements, lists, and as the subjects of small paintings and drawings. Lynn Whipple demonstrates how to work as a writer might, considering things such as composition, editing (room for the eye to rest), titles, and character development.

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How to Improve Penmanship | The Art of Manliness

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How to Improve Penmanship | The Art of Manliness

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Over the years here at the Art of Manliness we've sung the praises of the handwritten letter and simply writing things out by hand in general. Typically, when folks think about writing a handwritten note, they imagine doing it in cursive. Perhaps it's because we've all seen movies set in times past where people open up handwritten letters to reveal a note filled with handsome script.

Whatever the reason, I know a common refrain we hear with these posts is that many people feel their cursive handwriting is atrocious, to the point that it's illegible. And when we get letters in the mail from readers, many of them begin with, "Sorry for my bad handwriting. This is the first time I've written in cursive since second grade."

With schools spending less and less time on cursive handwriting (and sometimes doing away with penmanship lessons altogether), and our increased reliance on keyboards to communicate, it's understandable that most people aren't getting much practice writing things out by hand.

It's easy then to dismiss the decline in penmanship as a non-problem, but there are a surprising number of people who do wish their handwriting was better. And there actually are a few reasons you might consider joining their ranks. Today we'll discuss those reasons, as well as how to improve your cursive penmanship.

Get out your inkwell, sharpen your quill, and let's get started.

The Rise and Fall of Cursive Penmanship

Ever since written text came into existence, there has been a class of individuals who specialized in handwriting - scribes, penmen, etc. And every age had a unique handwriting style. Monks in the 8 th century gave us the Carolingian script with its bold, easy-to-read letters. During medieval times, the legibility of Carolingian script gave way to the more indecipherable "black letter" script. Renaissance scribes and writers returned to the Carolingian style, but made it look a bit more ornate by slanting it and connecting some of the letters with lines. Because this type of script originated in Italy, it became known as "italic."

The 16 th century ushered in a more ornate style of handwriting called "copperplate" - so dubbed because students used engraved plates to learn to write it. Copperplate incorporates all sorts of loops and capital letters with unique flourishes, and was used to pen the Declaration of Independence.

With the rise of literacy in America, a more systematic way of teaching handwriting was needed. Enter Platt Rogers Spencer. Spencer used nature to teach penmanship - water worn pebbles served as his model for ovals and the waves on a lake served as the inspiration for the lines that connected his letters. Spencerian script was a simple, yet elegant form of cursive handwriting that focused on legibility and ease of writing. Beginning in the 1830s, Spencer developed a system to teach his script that included over 100 question and answer catechisms on how to draw each line and curve in his particular style. By 1850, Spencerian cursive was the standard writing system throughout America.

After his death in 1864, students of Spencerian penmanship began to make the style even more ornate by adding in flourishes, shaded strokes, and extra ovals. This fancy style of Spencerian cursive became extremely popular and can still be seen today among professional penmen ( like Jake Weidmann).

During the early years of the twentieth century, a handwriting instructor named Austin Palmer realized that while the loops and flourishes made Spencerian cursive look nice, it wasn't very practical or efficient for the growing amount of bureaucratic paperwork that faced bookkeepers, accountants, and other businessmen. Moreover, it had become overly complicated to teach, especially to children. He also observed that Spencerian cursive primarily used finger movement to write all the letters, which often led to cramped hands.

To solve these problems, Palmer modified the Spencerian system in the following ways: First, he simplified the letters and got rid of the flourishes. In many ways, this was a return to the original cursive that Spencer taught. Second, he simplified and condensed the teaching of cursive - no more complex catechisms. Finally, he introduced "whole hand movement" to combat the fatigue and hand cramping that came with finger-only writing. Given these benefits, the Palmer Method became the standard way of teaching penmanship well into the 1960s.

Since then, several other systems of cursive have been developed, all with the goal of simplifying how it's taught. D'Nealian script was the most popular (and the one that I learned as a child). Developed in the 1970s by Donald Thurber, D'Nealian script was a way to help children transition from manuscript (block letter) writing to cursive. While it's easy to learn, it's certainly not as nice looking as Spencerian or even Palmer cursive.

Up until the early 1990s, teachers in schools across America spent a great deal of time on penmanship. But with the rise of computers, the amount of time spent on penmanship began to decrease in the U.S. (From what I read, this didn't happen in Europe to the same extent. If you're a younger reader from Europe, let us know if you had rigorous penmanship lessons in school.)

Fast-forward to today. With increasing pressure to meet federal and state test standards, many schools have dropped teaching cursive handwriting completely. Besides the pressure to spend more time preparing for standardized tests, school districts have also dropped penmanship from their curriculum because they feel it's no longer necessary in our world of computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Why You Should Bring Back Cursive Handwriting and Improve Your Penmanship

While we're certainly spending more time communicating with our digital devices, I think there's a case to be made as to why we shouldn't give up on good old-fashioned cursive handwriting and why we should all strive to improve our penmanship:

Writing things by hand makes you smarter. Research shows that writing things out by hand can help improve general learning. One study out of the University of Indiana scanned the brains of a group of four and five-year-olds and found that neural activity was about the same amongst all of them. The researchers then split the kids into two groups: one group was shown letters and instructed to recognize them visually, and the other was taught to write them. The researchers scanned their brains again and discovered that neural activity was now dramatically different between the two groups. The kids who were taught to recognize letters visually showed no change in neural activity, while the kids who learned how to write letters showed more "adult-like" activity in their brains' reading network.

Researchers believe there's something about manually manipulating and drawing out two-dimensional shapes (like letters) that aids in learning comprehension. Studies have noted similar brain boosting results from handwriting practice in adults.

What's more, other studies show there are cognitive benefits that come with cursive writing in particular - such as improved reading and spelling scores - that you don't get when writing block letters.

Anecdotally, I've seen the power of handwriting (particularly cursive handwriting) boost learning in my own life. Whenever I get stuck on an idea, I naturally turn to pen and paper to work out the problem. I did this in law school when I was having trouble grasping a difficult legal concept. I'd just get a legal pad and start writing in cursive, and 9 times out of 10, after thirty minutes or so, clarity came.

I still do this exercise today, and don't even have to think about it. When I'm having a hard time expressing myself via the keyboard, out comes my notebook and Pilot pen and I start writing things out by hand. For example, my posts on anti-fragility, the OODA Loop, and much of the Manhood series we published earlier this year were handwritten and then transcribed onto the computer. Those topics were hard nuts to crack, so I naturally went to pen and paper, after which the words and thoughts began flowing. I always make these notes in cursive; for whatever reason, I don't get the same effect when I use manuscript.

Of course simply writing things down isn't enough - if I had really crappy penmanship, I wouldn't have been able to transcribe those handwritten pages!

Writing with pen and paper is convenient. While I have some really handy note-taking apps on my smartphone, they're still clumsy to use compared to a pen and a pocket notebook. With my smartphone, I have to enter my homescreen passcode, navigate to my note-taking app, and type in my note using those tiny keys - all while struggling with autocorrect. Even with voice recognition capabilities, taking notes is still frustrating. With a notebook and manual writing tool, you just put pen to paper and you're done.

Again, if my handwriting was so horrible that I couldn't even read it, my writing would be in vain. Poof! - there go those spur-of-the-moment ideas.

Pen and paper don't need batteries. Part of the convenience of pen and paper is that they don't require batteries, so you never have to worry about losing power while you're in the middle of writing something out.

Good penmanship truly saved my academic rear end when I was in law school. Somehow I mixed up the time for my Civil Procedure II final exam. I thought it was in the afternoon, so I strolled into the law school building in the morning to get some study time in before the test. But when I walked by the room where my exam was going to be, I saw my entire Civ Pro class sitting there getting exam instructions! I rushed in and was told by the proctor that it was too late to get my laptop out. I'd have to handwrite my exam. Three hours of handwriting!

Luckily, I had kept up with regularly writing in cursive so my handwriting was legible, and I could do it quickly without getting hand cramps. Ended up making an A-. Score one for penmanship.

Cursive writing is easy on the hand. As attested by my exam example above, when done correctly, writing in cursive is much less tiring than writing in manuscript. Remember, one of the reasons cursive was developed was to make writing for long periods of time easier. I'm able to write in cursive for over an hour in my journal sometimes without feeling any fatigue or cramping in my hand.

Writing by hand makes your messages more personal. While there's a general form to cursive handwriting, your handwriting will develop its own unique personality and idiosyncrasies. Thus, when you handwrite someone a letter, they'll be able to see you through your handwriting. When you get notes from your grandparents, parents, and other loved ones, you immediately recognize their distinct style, and it triggers a feeling of warmth and connection. That doesn't happen with emails or text messages.

What's more, handwriting allows you to convey emotion that you can't with computer text. For example when we're angry, we have the tendency to press down harder on the paper with our pen and to write faster. Consequently, your writing will appear darker and more mushed together and squibbly. Also, for some reason, emotional phrases like "I love you" come across much more genuine in handwriting than in the digital strokes of a computer; perhaps because we know it took real, personal effort rather than just the punching of a few keys.

Cursive writing just looks nice. It's a pretty superficial reason, but a letter written out in nice cursive is just aesthetically pleasing. We get letters every week from AoM readers and while we love and appreciate them all, I'll admit that the letters written with cursive stand out the most.

And while I use cursive to write in my journal for its ease, I also do it because it just looks nice and timeless.

People judge the quality of your ideas by the quality of your handwriting. This is related to the previous point. While you'd think people would judge the quality of an idea on the content and not the way it looks, studies show that's not the case. One study demonstrated that in a classroom setting, good handwriting can take a generic test score from the 50 th to the 84 th percentile! If you're looking for an easy way to bump up your essay exam scores without having to know more about the topic, just work on improving your handwriting. Better yet, write your exam in nice cursive.

You need to know cursive so you can read historical documents. An important reason for kids to learn cursive is so they can read historical documents like the Declaration of Independence or just old letters from their ancestors. I don't want my kiddos going through the old letters or journals that Kate and I have from grandparents and great-grandparents and not knowing what they say. So even if our kids' schools don't teach cursive, we're going to do it at home.

It's meditative. We're big proponents of journaling around these parts. While I've experimented with digital journals, I keep coming back to my trusty paper journal. And I think it has to do with the meditative qualities handwriting has, particularly cursive writing. Synchronizing continuous hand movement with thought puts me in a state of flow that I can't get with typing or even writing block letters. Whenever I'm typing, I have a tendency to second guess myself and hit "delete" when a sentence doesn't come out right. Because there's no delete button with cursive handwriting, I spend less time judging what I'm writing and more time just getting lost in the process. The result is a feeling of calmness and flow.

How to Improve Your Cursive Penmanship

So you've been inspired to improve your cursive penmanship. Below I've complied some general tips to help you get started. Really, the best way to improve your cursive is to practice every single day. There is no royal road to good penmanship!

Buy a handwriting course book. While I can provide some general tips on how to improve your handwriting, the best way to do it is to go through a handwriting course book that has daily exercises. The best one that I've come across is American Cursive Handwriting by Michael Sull. It's a big ol' book that takes you through the paces on this style of script. American Cursive is a practical system of handwriting based on the Palmer Method and is great for everyday use like writing in your journal, writing a letter, or even writing law school exam answers. What's great about American Cursive is you don't need a fancy calligraphy pen, fountain pen, or quill. It works great for pencils, ballpoint pens, gel pens, etc. (We'll be doing a series of posts in early 2015 about the wonders of the fountain pen. Stay tuned.)

If you're looking to learn fancier script, pick-up an instruction manual on the Spencerian style. One that I've used with limited success (due only to my lack of effort!) is the original book that taught Spencerian penmanship. You'll learn all sorts of cool flourishes that will make your writing look like important historical documents.

You can also find several free cursive handwriting lessons online. Here are a few good ones that I've come across:

Review your letters. If it's been ages since you've written cursive, it's time to review your letters. Check out one of the sources above to brush up on their unique shapes and flourishes.

Hold your pen correctly. Your penmanship will never reach its full potential if you don't hold your pen the right way. Grip your writing utensil so that it's resting on your middle finger and hold it in place between the thumb and index finger as shown in the illustration. Keep your grip loose on your pen or pencil. If your fingernails are white, you're squeezing too tight. A tight grip will lead to a tired hand, and handwriting that looks stiff and stilted.

Position your paper correctly. Proper paper placement is key for effective handwriting. If you're right-handed, the top right and bottom left corners of your paper should line up in a straight line with your nose, as seen in the illustration. Your left arm holds your paper still. If you're left-handed, flip the above instructions. If you're a lefty that's gotten used to the "hooked" writing hand position, handwriting expert Michael Sull suggests that you try the standard position, as it's more comfortable for longer writing sessions.

This paper position facilitates proper letter slant in your handwriting. Ideally, letters should slant up and to the right by 35 degrees. If the above paper position doesn't facilitate that, adjust the paper until it does.

Stay in the "writing zone." The "writing zone" is the four-to-six inch area between your hands when they're in the position as described above. Your writing hand will naturally rest in this area as you write.

The problem is that as you move your hand left to right as you write and as you move down the page, your writing hand will eventually exit the "writing zone." Instead of straining and contorting your body, arm, and hand in order to continue writing, you simply need to move the paper with your non-writing hand as you work your way down the page. This way you'll stay within the writing zone.

To do this, Sull suggests the following technique:

"Before starting to write, shift the paper to the right until the left side of the paper is in the 'writing zone.' Then, after writing toward the right side of the paper for about two or three inches, stop, shift the paper to the left a few inches [with your non-writing hand], and continue writing for the next few inches. Then shift the paper as before and continue this process throughout to the end of the page."

By shifting your paper instead of your body or hand, you'll remain comfortable as you write, which leads to better looking handwriting.

Keep things loose and airy. A common mistake people make with their handwriting is that they press down too hard on the paper as they write. This leads to both hand strain and bad-looking handwriting. You don't need to apply that much pressure with the pen or pencil as you write in order to create a nice crisp line. Focus on keeping things loose and airy instead. To help with that, when you make a curve stroke, think of it as part of an entire oval. So when you write a lower case "a" for example, even though you're not actually making an oval, visualize the oval that your curve stroke would be a part of if you were making one, like this:

This simple visualization technique can help keep things nice and loose and consequently produce more graceful handwriting.

Movement exercises. Another thing you can do to help keep your writing loose and airy is to practice movement exercises every day. These exercises train your muscles for the movements you make when you're actually writing.

Here are a few simple movement exercises you can do:

Connected ovals starting from the top:

Connected ovals starting from the bottom:

Connected curves:

When you do these exercises, really focus on maintaining an easy, light touch. Don't tense up.

Move your whole hand and wrist for capital letters, your fingers just for lowercase letters. Most folks have a tendency to only use their fingers when writing. This leads to cramping in both your hand and in your handwriting. To avoid this, use a combination of whole hand and finger movements. On capital letters, focus on using your entire hand to write the letter; use just your fingers for lowercase letters. This practice will allow you to write longer without tiring as well as produce more graceful handwriting compared to just using finger movements.

Don't write too fast. When you talk really fast, people have a hard time understanding you. The same goes for handwriting. When you write fast, your handwriting will become less and less legible. Don't rush it. Focus on making neat, well-formed letters and words. Speed will come as you get the movements down.

Practice 20 minutes every day. As with everything in life, the key to successfully improving your penmanship is consistent practice. Set aside at least 20 minutes a day to practice your handwriting. Start off with five minutes of movement exercises, and then spend the rest of the time focusing on a letter. Better yet, follow the lesson plans set out in a handwriting book or online PDF.

Another way to get more handwriting practice is to write things out by hand more. Instead of a digital journal, switch to a pen and paper one; instead of sending emails to loved ones, write them an actual letter; instead of keeping your to-do list on your smartphone, keep it in a pocket notebook. You get the idea.

Another way to sneak in some handwriting practice while simultaneously working on improving your writing ability is to do copywork by hand. My favorite author to do copywork from is Jack London. I'll just take excerpts from his writing and copy it in a notebook by hand. I get a dose of virile, manly inspiration while beautiful, graceful letters fill the page.
Listen to our podcast on the power of penmanship:

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How to Improve Penmanship | The Art of Manliness

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Over the years here at the Art of Manliness we've sung the praises of the handwritten letter and simply writing things out by hand in general. Typically, when folks think about writing a handwritten note, they imagine doing it in cursive.

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Five Fun Art Journal Ideas - Joyful Art Journaling

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Five Fun Art Journal Ideas - Joyful Art Journaling

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Art journaling is fun - or at least it should be! But sometimes you avoid doing it because of the dreaded "blank page"! The truth is, sometimes while creatively exploring and expressing yourself with art journaling, you just can't figure out where to start. Believe me, I've been there! So I've come up with these five fun art journal ideas, along with some different ideas for how you might use them in your own unique ways. So that when you're facing a blank art journal page, you'll know exactly what you want to do.

I may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. See my full Affiliate Disclosure here.
So gather your supplies, and let's get started!
Fun Art Journal Idea #1: Journal about the current season.

How to implement this art journal idea: Each season has its own unique traits and qualities, just like each individual art journaler has their own talents and skills. When journaling about the season, you can use your same go to tools and supplies, or try something new!

For example, as I write this, it's Fall here in Portland. If it's Fall as you're reading this, try taking a walk and gathering fallen leaves. Use them by pressing them in your journal and writing around them about what you love about Fall (or Autumn, if you prefer!). You could also find a quote about Fall to include with your leaf or leaves.

It's also fun to use fallen leaves as "stamps" by covering them with paint or ink and pressing them into your journal as a background. Or simply as a complete page for minimalist art journalers!

Alternative: Not feeling inspired about the current season? Journal about your favorite season instead!

Fun Art Journal Idea #2: Journal about color.

How to implement this art journal idea: Color! It's such a fun topic in itself! And there are so many ways to include color in your art journals, even if you tend to shy away from it.

For instance, you could create a collage of color from clippings from a magazine, mixed with vintage ephemera, scrapbook papers, or whatever colorful bits of paper you have in your stash.

Do you love washi tape? (I'm not an extreme washi hoarder... just yet!) Why not create a page with samples of every roll you have? Or "write" the word COLOR with samples of your most colorful rolls.

Or journal about your favorite color, and what you love about it. Was it always your favorite? Why do you think you're so drawn to it? Maybe use the color to write about the color, too! (So meta!)

Alternative: Did you just buy a big set of brush pens, a watercolor set, Souffle Pens, Posca paint pens, etc.? Fill a page with every color that came in the set. (I made a "junk journal" just for collecting color, and you can watch me flip through it here.).

Fun Art Journal Idea #3: Journal about the place you live.

How to implement this art journal idea: Last time I was at the airport, I realized that there was a huge stand of free tourist magazines. These weren't flimsy fliers (though those could work, too!), but high-quality, glossy magazines with gorgeous photographs or my beloved city, Portland, Oregon. (If you visit PDX you can find them downstairs near baggage claim.) I've used those to create an entire journal just about my city. And now, when I'm visiting other cities, I look for them there, too.

You can also collect menus, ticket stubs, stickers, receipts, local magazines, photographs (I love how you can print small 2″x3″ photos on the go with Sprocket Portable Photo Printers ) and then write about your experiences.

You could also draw your favorite parts of - or spots in - your town, and write about why you love them so much.

Alternative: If you could live anywhere (else) in the world, where would you live? Journal about that place, and how it would feel to live there. You could collage in actual photos or illustrate it yourself.

Art Journal Idea #4: Journal some faces with collaged hair.

How to implement this fun art journal idea: I love drawing faces - from doodles to fairly realistic portraits, they are one of my favorite things to draw. But sometimes the hair gives me trouble. So I tried cutting out "hairstyles" to add to my doodle face drawings, and voila! I think they turned out pretty cute!

(By the way, the inky faces were inspired by Lisa Congdon's Creative Bug class, "Inktober Daily Challenge: 31 Days of Drawing and Painting with Ink "!)

You could do several, like I did, or spend more time on one face, and add a collage "wig" to that one. You could also draw your family, your friends, or your favorite musicians, etc. this way.

Alternative: Cut out (just the) face (or faces) from a magazine, and draw the hair on top instead!

Art Journal Idea #5: Journal about your favorite food.

How to implement this fun art journal idea: Even if you're not a self-proclaimed "foodie", everyone has their favorite foods! Some of mine are tacos (almost any Mexican food, really!), sushi, and my mom's meatloaf. I also love black tea (daily) and (occasionally) Spanish Coffee (that stuff is strong!)

You can draw or paint your favorites, or collage them. You could even hone your hand-lettering skills and include the recipe.

Alternative: Journal about a food you loved as a kid but dislike as an adult ( for me that's pickles and black olives, and most sweets). Or vice versa: journal about a food you hated as a kid, but love as an adult ( that's mushrooms and onions for me!)

Looking for even more fun art journal ideas? Check out some of my favorite art journal books, like and The Painted Art Journal . See my list of recommended art journal supplies here . And be sure to sign up for my email list so I can let you know when my forthcoming book, "Joyful Art Journaling: 30 Days of Joyful Art Journal Prompts" has been published!

Hey... one more thing before you go! 🙋‍♀️ If you enjoyed this post, would you mind sharing the love? You can...
Thanks my creative friend!

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Five Fun Art Journal Ideas - Joyful Art Journaling

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Art journaling is fun - or at least it should be! But sometimes you avoid doing it because of the dreaded "blank page"! The truth is, sometimes while creatively exploring and expressing yourself with art journaling, you just can't figure out where to start. Believe me, I've been there!

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For my activity I thought I would share more about my Daily Doodle Diary practice. Since I started doing it I have found that it has really helped both my creativity and also my wellbeing too.

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Lettering Artistry with Jessica Hische | Art School | PBS

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Lettering Artistry with Jessica Hische | Art School | PBS

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You've probably seen Jessica Hische's work in a lot of places. She has designed everything from chocolate lettering to Wes Anderson movie title sequences. In this installment of Art School, San Francisco artist and author Jessica Hische takes us into her design studio with a demo on custom lettering from pencil sketch to vector paths.

Aired: 03/10/17

Rating: NR

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Lettering Artistry with Jessica Hische | Art School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You've probably seen Jessica Hische's work in a lot of places. She has designed everything from chocolate lettering to Wes Anderson movie title sequences. In this installment of Art School, San Francisco artist and author Jessica Hische takes us into her design studio with a demo on custom lettering from pencil sketch to vector paths.