The Progression of a Hand-Lettered Quote

Since my first blog post two Septembers ago, I've developed my own process for hand-lettering. It's been fun! So, on this snowy day I thought I'd share a little bit of that process via photos--here we go!

First, I sketch the letters in pencil. Once I have the lettering at a good spot, I ink it with pen.

Next--sometimes, I'll instagram my sketch and leave it at that, as you'll see in the bottom left photo. But often, I decide to take it a step further and digitize the letters! In this particular case, I was in the zone when I finished instagramming and decided to digitize the quote as well. To do that, I first clean it up in Photoshop.

After that, it starts to be really fun! I take the cleaned up sketch into Illustrator and make it digital. I often spend a good bit of time cleaning up the curves, but in this case decided to leave it be. Then I play with the letterforms & decide whether to leave them blank or fill them in, what color they should be, and whether I'll add any illustrations or photography.

This time, I decided to use a photo I took of the ocean last summer as a background, because I wanted to experiment with gradients and it fit nicely with the quote.

At some point in my experimenting, I land on a design I love and decide it's finished (sometimes that takes me a while!). Once it's finished, I create print-ready files, take a trip to the printers, and then photograph my work, as you'll see below. I hope you enjoy it!

Lastly--for the first time, I decided to turn my lettering into a lock screen (you can see both below)! If you are interested in the lock screen, feel free to contact me (you can text, email, or submit a form through the site) and I'll send you the file! :)