Hand Lettering Tools for Beginners

Last week I took a hand lettering class for beginners and wanted to share my class experience with you. Learning the basics of hand lettering tools for beginners, basic hand lettering techniques and best hand lettering pens was super helpful.  I’m not a natural and so if I can do hand lettering techniques you can too!  

Hand Lettering Tools for Beginners

Last week my husband and I took a class on the basics of hand letterings.  Hand lettering for beginners is not near as hard as I thought – I’m not a natural when it comes to art and hand drawn lettering…my husband on the other hand is.  So I jumped on this class because I thought well it can’t hurt to try and learn something new.  I had heard that if you have a few basic rules/tips you’ll be just fine…so I took the plunge and I am NO pro but I was impressed with the outcome if I can say so myself!

To get started you need a few basic Hand Lettering Tools for Beginners –

• Sharp Pencil
• Good Eraser
• Ruler
• Graph Paper

We’ll talk a bit more about particular pens down below but these are the basic tools you need for hand lettering.

Hand Lettering Techniques

I want to step you through what we did in our class in hopes you’ll be able to surprise yourself…kind of like I did – I surprised myself.

1. Using Graph paper start with a simple word – as you can see we started with hello.  
2. Write the word “hello” in cursive – using a sharp pencil
3. TIP: biggest tip here is to space out your cursive letters a bit more than normal.
4. Add your own style by using your own cursive hand writing.  It doesn’t need to look exactly like mine.
5. Now that you have your word “hello” lets add a parallel line next to all of the down strokes you made.
6. Now color in the parallel line with your pencil, to thicken up the stroke
7. Optional: You can add a little flourish at the beginning and end of the word – a little twirly!

You can see I got a bit ambitious and tried the word “smile”using the same step by step tips above.

Hand Lettering ABC

We used our cursive font to start with and then we transitioned into a more traditional print/blocked font. Here are the step by steps for a print font

1. Tall Skinny Letters
2. If you have horizontal lines to a letter then place that horizontal line towards the bottom of the word.  So my horizontal line in the “H” I put lower than normally in the middle.
3. Your down strokes need to be thickened just as in our cursive font above but thicken the parallel line to the inside of the letter.  

Hand Lettering Pens

1. Felt Tip Pens are the BEST
2. Gel pens are OK

• Use Pencil first and then trace over with a pen or marker.
• Once your marker/pen is VERY dry you can take your erase and lightly erase your pencil marker….you can see mine here below on the card we made at the end of the class.
• You can mix fonts – do one word in cursive and one word in print.
• Try overlaying the two fonts
• If you mess up, it’s ok…hand lettering can be very forgiving!

I am tempted to grab some hand lettering books for beginners- great suggestions here.

Hi I’m Erin a Southern mama from South Mississippi, owner and chief editor of Sixth Bloom a blog helping mom-tographers capture their kiddos and life, as well as talking all things home, parenting and how we navigate through life. You will find me living life to the fullest with my mister (aka husband) and our little three year old preschooler, Miss E, in our 500+ sq foot cottage as we build our dream house on our two acres!  We are blessed beyond measure… we love to travel and love being involved in ministry opportunities at our church.