Learn Lettering | Lettering Style
BySarahEnsign
Many hand lettering beginners struggle to feel good about their lettering. If this is how you feel, you are not alone. It changes everything when you love your hand lettering. You will be able to practice hand lettering with confidence which helps you feel even better about it. When we see all the other people who have been hand lettering for years, we can feel discouraged and feel like we’ll never be as good as them. That’s simply not true, and that’s what I want to share with you in this post. You can feel confident in any stage of your lettering whether you’re a beginner or more experienced. Feeling confident in our lettering doesn’t just come naturally. It is something we have to focus on.
Here’s the video that goes with this post if you want to see the pen in action:
How to Love your Hand Lettering
Why is it so hard to love your hand lettering? Just like when you’re learning any new skill, you don’t have much experience to draw on. When you don’t know if you’re doing something right or not, it’s easy to feel like you’re doing it all wrong. The thing about lettering is that yes, there are some basic rules of hand lettering that can definitely help you improve, but in the end, there really is no wrong way to do it. It’s about being intentional in the way that YOU do it uniquely. Here are 5 things you can do to love your lettering and feel a little more confident in it.
1. Find what pen you love
Do you have a go-to pen that you know will always make you happy? If you are just starting out, you might not yet and that’s ok. Just know that everyone is different and has different preferences. When people ask me the best brush pen for beginners, I have a few that I recommend starting with but I know how important it is to explore and find what pens make you the happiest. Knowing what pen makes you feel the best about your lettering can help you when you are in a creative rut. My go-to brush pens are Crayola markers. Not everyone loves them as much as me, but they always make me happy. I have a lot of pens and I always share different types of pens so you can see which ones might work for you. I always love going back to my Crayola markers.
2. Recognize comparisons in hand lettering
It’s not as easy as it sounds to simply stop comparing. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t compared their lettering to others at some point. However, comparing ourselves to others doesn’t help us because there will always be someone better than us and there will always be someone worse than us. A better practice is to compare ourselves to where we came from. The reason why we started lettering and the trials we’ve faced to get to where we are is unique to our own story. That story says more about us than anything visible. So the next time you start comparing yourself to someone else, try giving them a genuine compliment and then give yourself a genuine compliment as well. It takes practice.
3. Do things differently
When I started lettering, there was one person that I followed on Instagram that I thought could do no wrong. Everything she did was perfect and I wanted to be just like that. I soon realized that I was losing sight of my own uniqueness. I could love what she did without needing to be exactly like her. That’s when I started to do things differently and learned things that made my lettering just as good, in my own way. Don’t get caught up in what everyone else is doing. Try things for yourself and decide on your own if you actually like it or not. Your unique lettering isn’t going to look like anyone else. It might have aspects of others, but the combination of details you use is all your own. That’s what makes it so cool.
4. Be realistic
Know that you aren’t going to reach all of your hand lettering goals overnight. It does take time to learn and practice. Take small steps. If it takes you all week to complete a lettering piece, take all the time you need. Don’t feel rushed that you have to create a perfect lettering piece each day. The better practice would be to create a lot of imperfect pieces to learn as much as you can. Then you will have all of that experience as you create something that takes a little longer. As you create imperfect pieces, analyze what went well and what didn’t. It’s easy to feel like it’s all bad, but it may not be. There is a lot of good in being able to see what you like and don’t like in your own work. This helps you see the things you want to change in future lettering pieces.
5. Find friends who uplift you
It can be so encouraging to have supportive friends who help you feel good about your lettering. Instagram is a great place for this. The lettering community on Instagram is amazing and there are people with all different interests. In order to have a friend, you need to be a friend first. Look for others with similar interests as you and start uplifting and encouraging them. You will start to notice people doing the same. Having a support group where you can ask questions and share tips and tricks is a great way to feel more confident in your lettering. Everyone is trying to learn and do their best with their lettering. Let’s uplift each other instead of thinking that we’ll never be good enough.
Free Lettering Practice Worksheets
What do you think of my list? Will these tips help you love your hand lettering a little more? What have you done to love your lettering? If you would like to practice the words you see in this post, you can download the free lettering worksheets when you sign up for the Insider Scoop. 🙂
Enter the Insider Scoop to download the free lettering practice sheets.
