alisaburke: creating with make wells- 3 tips for finding your lettering style AND A SALE!

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

creating with make wells- 3 tips for finding your lettering style AND A SALE!

Hello! It's Megan here with another lettering post but I also wanted to let you know that I've got my lettering classes on sale this week.

You can head on over to Alisa's shop HERE for more details.

There’s no way around it people, hand lettering, brush lettering, calligraphy - all of it - it’s popular right now. If you are reading this, then you probably have jumped on the Letter Bandwagon - so welcome to the club!

I’ve been working professionally as an “artist who draws letters” now going on 5 years, and I’ve worked REALLY hard to try and create my own style and “look.” And trust me, in a sea of talented lettering artists, it’s tough to create your own little niche. But truly, the best compliments I ever receive are when people say, “I knew as soon as I saw this that you made it!”. That makes me swoon, and inspires me to keep creating what is ME.

So, today I want to share with you 3 Tips to Help you find YOUR lettering style!

So here’s what I mean - because there is nothing wrong with tracing as a way to practice. Just try not to rely on tracing alphabets with fancy pens as your sole source of learning and practice.

Pick up a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and start drawing!

Tracing is a great way to practice strokes with different pens and is especially useful for practicing brush lettering techniques - but if you don’t learn to really DRAW the shapes of letters on your own, you might find it harder to branch out and discover new styles - and ultimately YOUR style!

There came a point in my artist life where I realized I was spending WAY too much time looking at other people’s work. Don’t get me wrong; I love admiring the work of other artists and learning from them, but I found I was spending just as much time looking, as I was putting my head down and making.

And that affected my work. And my originality.

So put your head down and practice. If you want to achieve a style that’s YOURs, make sure you spend just as much time practicing without feeling the need to constantly reference Pinterest or Instagram for inspiration. That’s going to force you to pull from within and rely on your own creativity.

Of course we all love to look, pin, and like - just make sure you balance that with healthy doses of shutting off the screens and flying solo with your paper and supplies.

Sometimes there can feel like there are a lot of rules you just don’t want to break with lettering - achieving perfect curves, drool worthy flourishes, consistent weight, blah blah blah.

But you know what also looks cool? Imperfect letters.

I won’t pretend I haven’t seen a piece before and winced at how goofy looking the lowercase g looked. It happens. Sometimes people draw really bad looking letters. I mean, let’s just be honest here. Not every imperfection is going to be a homerun in the lettering proverbial ballfield.

But imperfections are often interesting. My work is quirky and whimsical and expressive, mainly because my strength is NOT being super perfect and precise. I tend to be impatient, which can lead to messy-ness. But instead of fighting against this “weakness,” I’ve just embraced the way I like to work, and that’s helped me create a style that feels very ME.