If you’re like most folks, you don’t have very good lettering skills.
Your penmanship may look like you’re writing on the deck of a rocking boat or that the third grader down the block has you beat on legibility.
Adding words or phrases to art is fairly common for cityscapes.
The signage in the window of a store, the billboard above a building or a banner hung across a roadway are all cases in which you need some pretty concise lettering skill.
Still life paintings may also have elements that have lettering. Seed packets, book covers, postcards and fruit crates all have lettering with varying degrees of perfection.
You’ll also find abstract paintings that use words, letters or numerals as part of the design concept. These can be used for textural fill or to add a recognizable element to the composition.
1. Down And Dirty Copying
If you have a word processor and a printer, you can easily print out your lettering in the font and size you want for the finished piece. You may need some trial and error to get the correct size, but once you’ve got that figured out, print out a copy.
Cut out the section and use a soft pencil to cover the back of the paper with a thick coating of the graphite. If you have tracing paper, that eliminates this step.
Position your cutout on your support and secure with tape. You can simply trace over the printed surface to create a light sketch of the letters. Voilà! You’re ready to paint in your lettering.
2. Hand-Lettering
If you’re more of a purist, you can create your own hand-lettered words and phrases. If you’re working from life, take a few snapshots of the lettering. Take the photos at the same angle at which they will be seen in your work. That way you can see the perspective required to fit in the plane of the painting.
Choosing Your Font
If you’re just ad-libbing it, look at text around you for inspiration of style and fonts. Photos on the internet, books and magazines are all good sources of inspiration.
A simple font choice is much easier to reproduce than a fancy one. If you have a lot of text to reproduce, choose a simple font that doesn’t require a lot of free-hand swoops and scrolls. A plain font is also easier to read.
Save the fancy calligraphy for single letters at the start of a phrase or as a large fill-piece in an abstract design.
Laying Out Your Lettering
Even professional sign painters don’t work without a net. They use a ruler to lay out guidelines for both the bottom and top of the lettering.
If you’re using perspective, your lettering should reflect that as well. Figure out the angle and vanishing point for your lettering, just as you would for a road or a building.
You also need to center the phrase on the guideline. Count the number of letters and spaces of the phrase and divide in half. Now you can see which letter in the sentence should be placed at the mid-point of the guideline. Now you can work both forward and backward with your lettering to achieve perfectly centered lettering.
Use a hard lead pencil for these lines. You can make them legible but very light without the risk of smearing. A 3-H to a 6-H pencil is good for this purpose. Just be sure to use a light hand and don’t use a lot of pressure.
Consistency Is The Key To Professional Lettering
Your vertical lines should parallel each other. Whether you are using an upright font or lettering that’s in italics, the vertical lines should have the same angle consistently. Use a ruler to keep your lines perfectly straight or leaning at the same slant.
Horizontal lines should not only be straight, they should all fall at the same height. Crossbars on letters like E, F and H should be similar as well as the crossbar of A and G. Consistency with all horizontal lines and connections on the B, K, P and R will make your lettering neat and more professional in appearance.
Fill In Your Lettering
Once everything is in place and you’re satisfied with the size and shape of your letters, it’s time to complete them. If this is a small watercolor or acrylic, you may be able to use India ink and an ink pen to complete your work. You can also use other colors or even white ink. However, if the lettering is large, you’re working in oil paint or want to maintain a painterly appearance, you should use your paint and brush to paint your work.
Make sure you continue to abide by the upper and lower guides as you fill in your pencil letters. The paint or ink should just kiss the top and bottom guidelines to maintain that professional look.
Practice Your Penmanship
This skill isn’t something you’re going to master this afternoon or even this weekend. Lettering is a skill that takes practice, and I’m talking about a lot of repetition and experimentation before you’re able to create beautiful lettering without developing a cramp in your fingers and sweaty palms.
Find a few fonts that appeal to you and practice whenever you’ve got a few minutes. Even if it’s 10 minutes while sitting in a waiting room or while the kids run into the library to return their books, a pencil and a lined notebook is great for practicing clean, uniform lettering. Once you’re doing pencil lettering well, painting the letters is just the icing on the cake.
