Brush Lettering workshop
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon to be inside, not because the weather was particularly crummy, but because I got to learn Brush Lettering at the UPPERCASE magazine studio.
Upstrokes and downstrokes
I didn’t have a clue about any of it, the Tombow pens, the upstrokes, the downstrokes, the swishes (this may be my made-up term) but Christopher Rouleau made all of it seem easy. Christopher is a graphic designer, letterer and visual artist based in Toronto.
A desire to take things back to paper
There were about 12 people in attendance from all sorts of backgrounds. Some were graphic designers, a couple of journalists, a few educators and artists…then there was me. A girl who likes writing letters and thinks brush lettering is beautiful. But all of us had in common the desire to take things off screen and back to paper.
Practice, practice, and practice
Now, back to the bit about it being easy. Not so much. Chris made it look so graceful and natural, but to me the novice in the room, I soon realized it took much more concentration, focus and practice than you might imagine. I wasn’t particularly talented at it, but all the same, I loved it.
Learning the A,B,C’s
The act of putting pen to paper, the weight applied or angle of the brush could really alter what appeared on the page. It was fun to experiment and learn to write the A,B,C’s all over again.
Just the sounds of the pen
I found the whole experience to be challenging and slightly therapeutic. You could hear the scratch of the pens moving on the paper. From time to time a voice would be frustrated over the ‘k’ not looking like it should and then back to just the scritch, scratch of the pens.
Have you tried brush lettering or calligraphy before?
