Hi everyone,

if you've seen my two previous chapters in this book, you might've noticed a new 'theme'. I've been obsessed with lettering lately and how pretty it looks.

But today I'm going to show you how you can fake this style for those of you, who don't have brushpens and don't feel like buying some just to try it out.

This is what I mean.

All you need for this, is a fineliner pen.
I'm using these as they are very common and popular here, but there are tons of other brands you can use.

As you can see, they have a short thin tip. 0.4 mm in this case (don't ask me how much that would be in inches, because I have no idea)

If you're a beginner, I suggest you start out by drawing four horizontal lines that are evenly spaced out to create a guide for you to write/draw in.

Like so:

Use a pencil for this and make the lines very light, because you're going to erase them in the end.

As you can see, we have created three rows. This is where we will place our letters and the lines will help us maintain equal height for our letters.

The middle row is going to be for the x-height of the letters. This is like the base of every letter.

The top and bottom lines will determine our ascenders and decenders respectively. These are the parts that go above or below the x-height on some letters.

Here's another picture with some sample letters.
Notice how the a, e and i are only in the middle row?
The h, l and d extent above because they have ascenders and the g, y and j extend below because of their decenders.

At this point I'd like to mention that there are obviously a lot of different ways and styles to write a certain letter. You can make it more straight or more cursive, you can add flourishes or leave them out. It's up to you to find what you like best, so don't be afraid to take a sheet of paper and just fill it with different versions of one single letter.

Alright, now you'll write your letters with your fine pen, using the lines we drew before as guides.
It should look something like this

Try to maintain even pressure when you're writing.
Take your time and don't rush it, but don't press down on one spot for too long or the paper will soak up too much ink and you will get uneven patchy results.

When writing, try to make the letters even in width and also connect them to each other to make it look as if it was written in one single stroke.

When you're happy with how your text looks, you'll take your pen once again and add another thin line next to each downstroke of every letter.
A downstroke is the line you create when writing when your pen moves downwards.

You should get something similar to this:

It might take you a while to determine which lines you need to thicken and which ones you should leave thin. It can help to watch your own movements when writing and after a while, you will notice how your hand moves up and down when writing certain letters.

Now all you need to do, is fill out the little spaces between those two lines and erase all guidelines and you're done.

Pretty easy, right? And the result looks really cute.

Did you find this tutorial useful? Easy to follow?
Is hand/brushlettering something you might want to do?
Let me know in the comments below.

Also, if you try this tutorial I'd love to see your creations!

Thank you for reading ♡