Episode 40

Hello, dears!

Unfortunately I couldn’t make my Art Lab post on Friday, but I have time (and data XD) to do it today! In this post I’ll show you a few tips and tricks on lettering, plus show you plenty of font inspiration to copy or use to think up your own fonts. (Because I usually run out of ideas after, like, three fonts. XD) So. Ready? GO!

Technique: Hand Lettering

Hand lettering is super fun, and also very useful for when you want to spiff up an envelope or gift tag or any number of things.

Fonts

Let’s start with one of my the most common and prettiest fonts in handlettering: fake calligraphy. Lovely name, isn’t it? 😛 That’s because it allows you to get a calligraphy-like effect without using any special calligraphy tools. It’s also super simple to write. See?

Step One: Write out your desired words in the neatest cursive you can.

Step Two: Find the downstrokes. Downstrokes are the places in a letter where you move your pen down the paper, like the little pink arrows show in the picture.

Step Three: Widen and color in the downstrokes to get the look of a calligraphy pen. Ta-daa! Pretty, isn’t it?

This is a great base font, especially when paired with a simple sans or serif.

So basically sans doesn’t have the little “tags” on the ends of the letters and serif does. I like writing all caps sans and all lowercase serif. 🙂

And now, here are a bunch more simple fonts I wrote out to look through and use as inspiration or copy yourself. Which is your favorite?

Accents

Now that you got some fonts under your… um, pen XD, it’s fun to add little accents and flourishes to fill in the space beside the lettering. Here are a few ideas to get you started, and you can find a bunch more on Pinterest and the “Doodly Accents” section of PicMonkey. 🙂

Inspiration

Still need some more ideas to get your creativity flowing? Here are a few of my recent (and not-so-recent) lettering pieces.

You can hand letter with any medium you wish! Here I used my watercolor brush pens which are super fun for lettering.

 

Quote from Jane Austen’s Emma

For this one I used a blue notebook marker + a blue ballpoint pen. I love adding vines to letters, but it does take a bit of time and patience. 😉 Another fun thing to do for fonts with thick, solid bars of color like below is to add zigzags or circles or other patterns inside the bars for more interest.

Quote from Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth

This is the first page in my second bullet journal. I like how the mix of colored pencil and ballpoint pen looks together. 🙂

Not quite the right season for this, but hey, it’s lettering! XD I think it looks really neat to overlap some letters, like I did with the ‘y’ and the ‘o’. Also a little extra line of a different color beside the downstrokes adds a shadow effect and makes it look more special.

And lastly, a lovely Bible verse that I copied completely in blue ballpoint pen. (By the way, these Pilot G2 pens are practically THE BEST PENS EVERRR. They write super smoothly and you can get them in a range of point sizes.)

That’s all I have for today, so hopefully you’re inspired by now. 😀 If you did make some hand lettering inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Check out how to help us fill our art gallery here.

***Allison**

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Art Lab #39

Hey there! Have you ever wanted to give that extra special someone an extra special valentine? Giving a unique and pretty card is both fun and shows that you care about the other person! Today I am going to show you a super cute card idea that involves personality and just plain adorableness! Excited? I certainly am.

Episode 38

Hey, guys! Welcome back to another episode of Art Lab. 🙂

Today I want to show you how to draw “spaghetti mountains,” which is what I decided to call this certain doodling technique. 😛 I think it looks so neat in the end, and it’s quite fun and relaxing to draw.

Art Inspiration:

{via}

Isn’t this gorgeous? I love it! I made a similar piece using this as inspiration, and also made you guys a little tutorial if you’d like to try it yourself. 🙂

Materials Needed:

• Paper, an ATC, canvas, etc.
• Black pens or markers (I used varying sizes of Micron pens + a black brush pen)
• A white gel pen (optional)
• Some time

1. Draw some jagged lines for mountain ridges with your thickest pen (I made the lines thicker later). Make some ridges in the background and foreground.

2. Take your second thickest pen and start filling the first mountain with “spaghetti.” XD Draw some curvy lines that all start and end at the same point, and follow each other closely. Like so.

3. Add more spaghetti in a different direction, and connecting to the noodles you already drew.

4. Keep adding more spaghetti in all different directions until you fill the whole mountain ridge.

5. Now for the ridge behind it. Use a slightly thinner pen to show perspective, because things (like spaghetti) look smaller when farther away.

6. Keep it up! After you finish that ridge, move onto the one behind, using a thinner pen each time and making the lines close together. Doesn’t it look so neat thus far?

7. Add a sun behind the last ridge. I left a white space, but you wouldn’t have to. 😉

8. Next we’re going to make the “rays” of the sun. Using your thickest pen, fill in the space above the sun with rows of dots or ovals.

9. Make the dots in each new row bigger than the last…

10. Ta-daa! You’ve filled the whole page!

11. You can definitely leave it like that, but I added a bit more embellishment with a white gel pen. First I colored in the sun black, (weird, I’ve never seen a black sun before, have you? XD), and then rimmed it with dainty white dots.

12. And lastly, I added some white circles to the black dots, just to break things up a bit.

13. Ta-daa! You’re finished!

What do you think? I think… strange but neat. 🙂 I hope you get a chance to try this, because it’s quite fun and I love the end result.

If you DO make art inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Check out this page to see how you can help us fill our gallery.

Thanks for reading, dears, and have fun making art! 🙂

***Allison***

Episode 36

Hello everyone! Happy first day of December! Welcome back to Art Lab, today I will be sharing this super fun idea for making a wintery Artist Trading Card! Get on your snow gear and lets build a snow man!

So first you are gonna paint the card a very light blue

Next print out this template. Cut out the circles and trace them onto felt. Cut out the circles from the felt.

Once the paint is dry glue on the felt circles in the shape of a snowman. I just used a glue stick.

 

(cringes at the terrible photo)

Add a face and maybe some buttons with different colored sharpie’s!

And I just wrote, “Let it Snow!” on the front.

And now you have a cute and easy ATC!

If you were inspired by this art and would like to share it please click here

I hope you enjoyed reading and Merry Christmas!

-Hannah

 

Episode 34

Heyyyyy, guys, and welcome back to Art Lab! Today I’m going to show you three super simple and fun techniques for creating art with watercolors. These ideas are great for art-starters, warm-ups, or even as finished pieces. I used ATCs for my canvas, but you can use whatever paper you like (though watercolor paper works the best, if you have it). Also note that you can use watered-down acrylic paint instead of watercolors if you need too.

Alright, let’s do the easiest (and perhaps most fun) first. 🙂

Technique #1: Magic Islands

I discovered this one by accident and I just LOVE doing it!

1. Lay down some plastic wrap and drop some water in one corner. Dip your wet paintbrush in watercolor and mix it into the water.

2. Load up your brush with the diluted paint and splatter it onto the plastic wrap.

3. Lay a paper of some sort on top and smooth it out, then pick it up (obviously 😛 ).

4. Wait for the paint to dry, then trace around the splotches with pen.

5. And you’re done!

I think this technique looks like islands, don’t you? This would be a fun way to make a map:

Technique #2: Bubble Maze

This technique produces a fun and striking result. The translucence of the watercolor lets you see the colors overlap which makes a really neat effect.

1. Start by painting some dots. Overlap them and attach them to other circles so that the colors bleed into each other.

2. Continue adding dots of different colors until the page is mostly filled.

3. Fill in the white areas with black Sharpie or pen. And you’re done!

Technique #3: Splatter Trees

This is a great way to give the impression of leaves without drawing ever single leaf.

1. Splatter different complementary colors (I used fall colors, but you can use whatever you wish) onto your paper. Try to keep it roughly in a tree shape, but don’t worry if the splatters get a little out of control.

2. After the foliage is dry, use a slightly damp brush and brown paint to add in some branches and a trunk. Don’t draw all the branches the tree has, just a few poking out for effect. 😉

3. Add some grass and a few dots of fall color if you’re doing an autumn tree. And you’re done!

And there you go! Three fun and simple ways to make some watercolor art.

Which technique was your favorite? If you make art inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Click here to learn how to help us fill our art gallery!

***Allison***