5 Lettering Tips For Beginners – What to Know Before You Pick Up Your Pen

Starting Your Handlettering Journey?

Are you starting your handlettering journey? Or do you feel like a kid outside a candy store admiring all the sweet talent everyone else seems to have effortlessly? Yeah, I felt like that, too, before I picked up a pen. I even felt like that after I’d been lettering for a while. So I’ve compiled five lettering tips for beginners to get you headed in the right direction for starting your lettering journey.

But Remember: I want you to know that no matter the pen or the paper, it will take a lot of practice. So don’t get frustrated – keep going.

There are still brush pens I can’t get the hang of using – even after several years of practicing lettering. I hate to admit it, but there was one time I swept everything off of my desk in frustration, leaving a pile of crumpled paper and strewn about markers all over the floor because I wasn’t ‘getting’ it fast enough.

Originally Posted November 2, 2021, updated October 17, 2022

How I’ll Help You Get Started

I’d love to help you avoid that type of frustration. Here are the beginner’s lettering tips I’d like you to remember. Remember, you can review them as much as you need. Bookmark this page and come back to it.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what to write – I’ve compiled sets of (mostly short) inspirational quotes – perfect for practicing.

Do Not Compare – Lettering for Beginners: Tip #1

Please remember, do not compare your starting point to someone else’s middle. Though I can’t say it enough, I’ll say it again. Do not compare yourself to others.

However, I didn’t say you shouldn’t compare at all. By all means, compare your progress. Date your work to compare yourself to your own progress but not to anyone else’s progress. You have no idea how long they have been working or how much. I’ll show you my own example above. The first image shows the beginning of my lettering journey before I learned how to create the letters and form thick and thin lines.

How Long Did the Examples Take Me?

P.s. In case you’re wondering – I wrote the 2nd example quote (in the box) 10 times before accepting the outcome. Not only did I write it several times, but I also sketched it several times with a pencil and wrote it several more times. Even though It’s not perfect, I like it nonetheless. Moreover, it shows a great style transition and represents a great deal of time and effort. I can’t wait to see what it looks like when I return in a couple more years. I’m sure you’ll be excited to see your own progress, and that’s what matters!

By the way, if you don’t know which quote to start with, choose from my ever-growing list of inspirational quotes when you begin lettering quotes. An excellent way to measure your progress is to recreate the same quote every six months and see how far you’ve progressed over time.

Daily Practice – Lettering for Beginners: Tip #2

One of the biggest overlooked lettering tips for beginners is creating a daily practice. Set aside a few minutes a day to practice.

Are you worried about fitting it into your schedule? Practice for 5 minutes while you wait for your kids at soccer or basketball practice. Do what you can to get those 5 minutes in. Bring the supplies with you. Schedule it out. I don’t allow anyone in my family to say that they ‘don’t have time’ for something. Instead, they have to admit to themselves that they haven’t made (insert task/item here) a priority.

Recommended Post: 5 Steps to Learn a New Skill (and Keep Your Life, Too!)

If you can do 20 minutes, do 20 minutes. Writing in any form takes muscle memory. Just like going to the gym every day will do more for your physique than spending 2 hours at the gym once a week. Or eating right all week will do more for your health than dieting all day on a Sunday (is that a thing?).

Make the Shapes – Lettering for Beginners: Tip #3

Each letter is created by adding different components to each other or strokes. For instance, the letter A is composed of an entry upstroke, followed by an oval, complete with a tail (underturn). The letter n is composed of an overturn stroke and a compound curve.

Lift your pen between each stroke. You are not writing a word or writing a letter. You are using different shapes or strokes to form each letter. Practice the shapes of each letter instead of trying to write the letter itself. Learn which shapes create each letter. This will help you develop your own style and create cohesiveness throughout your lettering.

Confused About the Strokes? Start With My Workbooks!

These workbooks are made especially for beginners. And includes illustrations, tips and tricks, reminders, and lots of space to practice. The first book will teach you the basic shapes. Then the second book will teach you how to combine those basic shapes to create letters. Choose from small brush pens or large brush pen formats.

Go Slow! Lettering for Beginners: Tip #4

Go sssssslllllllloooooooowwwww. Really slow. Escargot slow.

You’ll be shaky, but you’re learning to create the shapes of the individual strokes. Do not rush. Get the form of the stroke correct, then do it 1,000 times. Do it 10,000 times! Then practice it some more. Get that shape in your head.

Once you have the marker stroke in your head, practice will then build muscle memory in your fingertips, in your hand, along your arm, up to your shoulder, and into your brain. Muscle memory is a real thing. Just like building muscles by lifting weights, it takes time.

Practice! Lettering for Beginners: Step #5

Practice everything. Then practice more. Practice everywhere you can. Create a habit of practicing. Take your brush pen and a notebook with you to practice. But practice the right way – practice the individual shapes and go slow every day.

And remember: don’t compare your ‘practices’ to someone else’s final.

What Should You Take Away from These 5 Tips?

Realize that learning this new skill will not come immediately. Know that there may be times when you want to throw all your pens in the trash in frustration. Take a break, then come back and start at it again. Compare yourself to your own progress, but not to anyone else’s progress.

Finally, my last piece of advice: practice, practice, practice. Work on the skills that you are trying to build. Practice means it’s a slow progression, not an immediate success.

I hope these lettering tips will help you as a beginner or if you’re more experienced. Handlettering provides me with so much joy, and I love creating beautiful words using thick and thin strokes with my brush pens. I hope you’ll find joy throughout the process of learning as well.

What Supplies Should You Use?

Are you lost in the sea of supplies? In this post, I’ll highlight the supplies you need to get started and what each one does. But nothing beats trying them out.

In the meantime, here are some supplies I like:

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