50 Days of Lettering

My name is Chloe, and I'm a 21 year old art direction student. I've always wanted to learn how to create hand-drawn scripts and type. This blog is for documenting my progress as I attempt to do so. I'm starting off pretty much as a beginner, so this blog is sort of a study to see what constant practice does to my ability over time. Click through on each photo to read more about that day's process!

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 14

Hi everyone! I'm doing this again.

So even though I haven't posted in like a month, I have actually been practicing a buttload and felt like I should post something. This is my attempt at self-control-- I am posting this piece without editing it or cleaning it up with Photoshop/Illustrator at all, except for bumping up the contrast. It's pretty flawed due to this BUT I am proud that I got it to look OK just with my hands and a flat-edge pen marker thing. God I want so badly to go in and smooth out some of the lines but I WON'T because that ruins the whole point of today's endeavor.

I will most likely go back and edit this and color it because it's fun but in the mean time, here it is. 

I chose this word for unknown reasons. It may have been a subconscious Harry Potter reference, so let's say it is, in honor of the new little story JKR put out yesterday. Yay!

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 13 - PART 2

Here's my third attempt at that same quote! This one might be my favorite. I feel like I am in a total rut with my scripts though. I have trouble sticking consistently to different styles and always kind of end up back here. Something to work on! (one of many things)

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 13

So, I did this quote recently but I really didn't like how it turned out, so I decided to try it again a couple more times in different styles. I like this one way better than my first attempt. Yay!

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 12

I felt like doing a one-word piece so I chose a word everyone loves to hate.

Drawn by hand but cleaned up and edited / colored on Photoshop, also I drew most of the shiny bits on Photoshop too (the white blobby shapes.) 

I'm going to hopefully be getting an online course soon to learn how to do this stuff more seriously. I also want to purchase some brush pens and other tools that I'm lacking. To be honest I lack mostly every tool. I really enjoy doing this stuff and feel like it would be worth it for me to step up my game and learn more.

Thanks again for reading!

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 11

Yesterday, at long last, I finished my watch-through of The Office in its entirety. The Office is a show that meant a whole lot to me when I was in high school, but I never ended up finishing the show (I never saw the last three seasons.) I know a lot of people rag on the post-Michael-Scott era of the show, but I honestly thought they did a fantastic job. Sure, the show was different, and maybe there were one or two choices they made that weren't great, but each episode was still so, so funny and never really lost me or made me stop caring. I cried a lot during the last few episodes... And Pam's speech at the very end was perfect. This show will always remain in my heart as one of my favorite television series of all time.

This quote is the first half of the last line of the series: "There's a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn't that kind of the point?" My heeaaarrrt.

Anyways! This lettering isn't my best. I tried writing BEAUTY so many different ways and still don't like it. I think my downfall was that I drew it with a regular ol' knockoff Crayola marker (I usually just do things with Microns but wanted a thicker stroke so i went with the first thing I found in my house). I need to invest in actual good calligraphy tools and brushes so I can get the effects I want organically instead of trying to mimic brushes, and so I can be more precise with my strokes. Microns can only do so much... and regular chubby markers are not a great option unless you're amazing at this (which I am not) and can use any tool and still produce quality work (which I cannot.)

Positives: This is my favorite capital "B" i have done so far! i hate capital Bs for some reason. i can never make them look good. so yay!

Thanks again for reading!

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 10

Hi again! So life kind of made this project take a little pause. I had to finish up my ridiculous six-course semester and then basically immediately started up my summer semester (my last two classes of my college career whaaaaaaaat.) Anyways I got super distracted and busy and now things have slowed down so yay! Lettering! This is so boring.

My favorite part of this one is the word "Sorry" and the "H" in Hiatus. "the" is messy and I would do it differently if I did this again.

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 9 (version 2)

This is the version I put on Instagram. Because it was so vertical it looked bad stuffed into a square, but I liked how it looked when I added a creepy looming Littlefinger. But then I had to make the text all white to make it still readable, so I don't have the same coloring I had in the original piece (and I like those colors better.) Hence, this thing.

Littlefinger is an asshole but I get it.

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 9 (version 1)

Contains minor spoilers for Game of Thrones (show only)

For today's quote, I went with an especially evil one-liner from the most dangerous man in Westeros. (For the record, I may have screamed when Littlefinger's face appeared on the screen during Sunday's episode of Game of Thrones. Did not see that coming.)

I really wanted to work on my script so I included two script words in this piece. I tried to make the line thickness be thin and thick but consistent. I think it's the nicest script I've done so far. However, I did mess up on the "c" of silence-- the stroke I made thick should be thin, and vice versa. But it's ok! 

I also felt like drawing a heart and came up with this weird patterned illustration.

It's fun picking a quote or word to draw every day-- I feel like looking back on this you'll have a pretty comprehensive list of Things Chloe Likes.

Thanks again for everyone who reads these blurbs. You're awesome.

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 8

Sorry about not posting, like, anything this week. It's been a doozy.

For today's quote I went with something from one of my favorite musicals of all time-- Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods.

This was my first time trying to do representational lettering (the rope.) I think it looks kinda cool. Thanks to Katie for her emotional support through this journey (meaning she sat next to me and helped point out when I fucked up the linework and didn't realize.) 

"Slotted spoons don't hold much soup, but they can catch the potato."

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DAY 7

Sorry for the lack of posts these past few days-- things have been hectic as butts. This is for an ad campaign I'm working on for a class. I can't really provide much context because it's supposed to be ~a secret~ (for some reason the class is structured very competitively? i dunno.) Anyways, enjoy!

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 6

For today's lettering, I went with a quote from Bob's Burgers. Tina Belcher is one of my favorite characters on TV.

I drew Tina's head while watching Bob's Burgers last night. I drew the lettering while in the car today on the way to Ohio. I'm in Ohio right now. My brother and I just went to a "Mexican restaurant" near our hotel for drinks. The beers were all $1.50 each, but they used American cheese in my quesadilla. I feel like that sums things up a little bit.

I got off track. Lettering! This is my first time trying a slab serif for this project and incorporating a little more illustration / attempting a more creative layout. I tried to retain the hand-drawn look of Tina and the text but still clean it up.

I'm having so much fun with this project. I get excited to draw every day. I feel like I have been using the computer as an artistic crutch and this has been a great way to force me to put pencils / pens to paper again. I do use Photoshop to clean the pieces up and color them, but I don't think that negates it at all.

Thanks so much to everyone who has been so encouraging about this little venture!

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 5

"G...arol, you seem like, so great. I can just tell from this interaction."

This is my favorite one that I've done so far! My lovely friend Janine suggested I draw something from Broad City, so I went ahead and did just that. This piece is dedicated to Garol and all of her yogurt.

Seriously though, watch/follow broadcity like, right now.

I am really trying to work with script and I think I'm doing a better job of keeping the weight of the characters more consistent now. It was fun adding curlicues. I wanted "you seem" to look like a simple sans serif but with a little bit of personality.

I used Photoshop to clean up and colorize this piece.

Yaaay! See y'all on North Brother Island.

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 4

Decided to go ahead and start experimenting with digitizing and coloring today! Kishi Bashi is an awesome musician (he does crazy things with his violin and a looping pedal) and today he made a post asking for t-shirt designs, so I figured I'd play around with his name. Using color is so fun.

I have to once again give credit to the book I'm using for inspiration/guidance because I know some of my letterforms are greatly influenced by what I'm seeing. I try my best to make sure each piece I make is unique and of my own creation, but sometimes it's hard to make sure my work doesn't reflect what I'm being taught from. In this case I tried to draw my lettering as a funkier, swirlier version of the "Playbill" examples in the book. And using gradients as a fill is definitely something I picked up from the book--I can't help but love how it looks.

Thanks for reading y'all! I'm gonna come up with a more fun format for these text portions of the post. Maybe I'll tell jokes or something. Only time will tell.

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 3

I decided to experiment with mixing styles. I wish I had picked styles that went better with what this song is about (it feels too cartoony and wacky for such a sad song) but setting that aside, I like this and it was fun! I may or may not have drawn this instead of studying.

Edit: Cleaned this up in Photoshop and fixed some spacing.

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 2 - PART 2

Decided to post two things today. Actually, I will just make it a general thing that I will try my best to post more than one thing on every day I post. I figure why not, right? More stuff! I had made a K I liked and wanted to make into a word, and the first K word I thought of was Knope. I like how the n and the I interact. I hate the descender of the L in Leslie. I tried to make it look like it was wandering around the word but it looks too weird and wormlike.

Dotted the i with a waffle because I feel like Leslie would be ok with that.

Edit: Cleaned this one up a bit in Photoshop.

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 2 - PART 1

Practicing fun variations on the letter K.

[50daysoflettering]

DAY 1

First post for this project! This shows I practiced filigrees, and tried some serif type and shading. Super messy and nothing special but it’s a start!