Lettering Lessons 2018: Have Fun with Hand Lettering and Marie Browning

Marie Browning’s Lettering Lesson is full of fun ideas for hand lettering and for embellishing hand lettering with design and color. You’ll fall in love with brush-tip watercolor markers when you learn Marie’s tricks for making the marker work for you in creating artful designs and flourishes.

Add color and interest to your hand lettering with Marie’s tips and tricks.

If hand lettering has you stymied, Marie’s Fat Font letters will give you the confidence you need to create all kinds of hand-lettered art. Begin by drawing some guideline, then pencil in a word or phrase using Fat Font letters. Use a ruler if you’re looking for perfection, or jump right in. You’ll see my hand-lettered Fat is a little wonky; I used a ruler for writing Font. The fun begins when you add doodles and line within the letters. Notice I used a different design in each of the letters here.

improve your hand lettering with Lettering Lessons
If you’re a doodler, like I am, you’ll love choosing an array of designs to fill the letters.

Add Color to Hand Lettering Designs

Adding color to hand lettering adds to the fun. I wanted these letters to stand out, so I used lots of different colors, filling some of the letters more than others to mix it up a bit. I also added “is fun” in cursive to complete this piece.

improve your hand lettering with Lettering Lessons
Mixing different fonts within hand lettering adds to the interest of a hand-lettered design.

Hand lettering is always fun, but not quite as much fun as adding embellishments with a brush-tip marker. I was amazed how easy it was to create these designs, as well as how much they added to the piece. For “Grateful,” I wrote the word with a brush tip, used a fine-tip marker to draw the branches, then added autumn berries and leaves with the brush tip.

improve your hand lettering with Lettering Lessons
Make your markers work for you, creating all kinds of marks and designs as well as artful letters.

I loved the look of Marie’s strings of holiday lights, so I surrounded the word joy, creating a festive holiday piece. A fine-tip marker was used to create the string and a brush tip for the holiday lights.

improve your hand lettering with Lettering Lessons
A brush-tip marker is perfect for adding creative designs to hand lettering.
“Bee” Patient

“Bee happy” was a lot of fun to create, but I learned a lesson: Let the first marker layer dry before adding the second. The black lines on my bees bled because the orange was still wet. So, a little patience is in order for layering color. I created the bee’s bodies with Marie’s oval technique, and the teardrop technique was used for the wings. Their flight patterns were created with a fine-tip marker. I was disappointed that the lines bled, but will remember this lesson for sure.

improve your hand lettering with Lettering Lessons
Add color, shapes, designs, and more with watercolor markers. Just remember, sometimes you have to be patient when hand lettering.

Whether you’re new to hand lettering or it’s a daily activity for you, it’s always fun to add to your technique arsenal with new tools and ideas. The techniques in Marie Browning’s Lettering Lesson will keep you creating and happy for quite some time. Looking for more inspiration? Check out more Cloth Paper Scissors Lettering Lessons.

Happy lettering!
Barb


Try more Lettering Lessons to improve your hand lettering techniques.

Categories

Art Journaling and Lettering, Blog, Mixed-Media Techniques

About Tammy Jones

I'm the online editor of Interweave Jewelry and Cloth Paper Scissors. I love making metal and metal clay jewelry, enameling, mixed media, and collecting and creating with found objects. I also enjoy knitting, paper crafts like card making and scrapbooking, cooking, traveling, beachcombing, and snow!

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