Bettering Your Lettering: What You Need to Know

You have to start somewhere.

I find it so annoying when I put a piece of work up for the world to see where I feel I dotted all my i’s and crossed all my t’s, and later, I look back and still see things I should’ve fixed before posting.

SO annoying. 🙄

Case in point, I usually make a thumbnail (or three) whenever I make a lettering piece. But, with every piece, there’s usually some issue that I find in the final piece I post…

See?

While I don’t mind seeing the hand at work in my drawing of letters, that “Yo Momma” part is off-center a bit. For me it is the equivalent of running my nails across a chalkboard.

Meh. I still think it serves a few purposes.

• One, it helps to remind you to not get too precious about your work anyway. While you will always want to be striving to produce your best, learning lettering will be a forever thing. I’m 100% certain one can reach a masterful skillset-and even mastery of any skill related to letters. But, I’m just as 100% certain that nobody truly reaches perfection.

• Two, it helps to remind you to better your lettering next time around. If you have the time, give it a bit to rest and then see it with fresh eyes later and revise, if necessary.

• Three, and this only works if you’re okay with keeping your old work around…it helps to leave older work up so that later on down the road, when you’ve improved, you can see how far you’ve come. There are many well-known artists that have left their work up from their earlier days like Ian Barnard (who is as amazingly great at calligraphy as he is handlettering), Lauren Hom and Stefan Kunz. It’s great that they do that to show others that everybody starts somewhere.

So, suck it up buttercup. The journey is part of the process.

Keep going.