The Art of Whimsical Lettering (4 page)

1. With watercolor paints or markers, create thick lines to act as grids. Hand letter inside the gridlines. Try different intensities of paints and markers for various effects.
   
   
2. Paste graph paper in your journal and write out assorted alphabets with several types of markers. Use the graph paper squares and grids to explore the height and spacing of letters.
   
3. Letter with white pens on bright-colored cardstock and paste it into the journal.
   
   
4. Use a white correction pen to letter a quote in thick, bold white lines over a brightly colored marker background or scraps of colored paper.
   
   
5. Make “alphabet soup” with assorted marker tips. Create an interesting composition with all the letters of the alphabet, varying the height, thickness, and angles of the letters.
   
   
6. Colorfully illustrate a phrase or quote with markers on upcycled book-paper pages.
   
   
7. Write words on cut-up strips of painted paper scraps and paste them into your journal in an interesting arrangement.
   
   
8. Create a wavy lined grid and write along the curves, varying the heights of your letters to fill the spaces.
   
   
9. Make time for creative “pen play” in your inspiration journal every day. Try different lettering styles with different pens, assorted papers, new colors, and collected materials. Experiment constantly and use the composition book as a “safe zone” for making lettering art with no rules and no judgment. This is the journal where anything goes!
   
   

Keep going! Once you work your way through these twenty-five prompts, try some of your favorites again. Create additional pages in your journal using your newly acquired whimsical lettering skills.

It’s essential to try new things and have fun with the creative process. In this chapter, you’ll experiment with pens, markers, paints, and other materials to learn how to transform your own handwriting into art. I’ll share the techniques I use consistently in my own personal artwork. These are the fundamentals of whimsical lettering.

These days, we are consumed by type and text from computers and other electronic devices that just pump out cold, impersonal characters. Lettering and handwriting is a lost art in a technological age. I’ve heard recently of school districts considering the elimination of handwriting education for young children, since they are using more electronic devices in classrooms. What a disaster that would be! Can you imagine?

Handwriting is a part of our expression as human beings and is unique to who we are. As children, we learned to write with specific rules and instruction. But as individuals, we soon developed our own writing style that is unique to our own personality. No two people have the exact same handwriting. So why not take the fundamentals of your individual hand and infuse some art and design principles to create whimsical lettering?

As a product of Catholic schools, I was strictly taught by disciplined nuns who demanded perfection and conformity. I can still picture the cursive alphabet cards posted in the skinny cork borders above the chalkboard. (Oh, yes, dusty, messy chalkboards, remember when we had those in school?) As an adult lettering artist, I find great value in those principles and rules, as I was taught to appreciate the beauty of every perfect line and distinctive curve that formed each individual letter. It’s by mastering the basics that I was able to veer off the “conformity course” and create my own signature hand lettering.