Here’s my take on a dangle design monogram using the Lombardic Capitals lettering style.
I drew the design in pen using Uniball Unipin pens on dot grid paper. After scanning the pen and ink design into my Microsoft Surface Studio I removed the dot grid and created a transparent background.
Then, I coloured the design digitally, using a Microsoft Surface Pen and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
The Lombardic Capitals are very medieval in style and so I wanted my dangle designs to reflect this. I spent some time yesterday researching medieval, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic jewellery, floor tiles and ornamentation, which I then used as inspiration for the dangle designs.
I chose jewel-like colours for the design – these colours are often used in medieval manuscripts.
I must admit I’m not sure either about the blue background behind the letter A or the green border to it. Working digitally means I can easily change my colour choices here once I work out what I’d like to do with them.
The final step was to add some texture to the colours, some drop shadows and to create a background in colours and pattern reminiscent of vellum.
I say it every time but I mean it – I really did enjoy creating this one!
I woke this morning with a dreadful migraine. Two emotionally draining days – therapy on Monday, an anti-stigma talk for Time to Change Wales yesterday – can cause such a reaction in me. It’s my body’s way of saying ‘Woah there Angela! Enough! Time out is needed! Self-care! Nothing else stressful for today at least, please!’.
So I’m heeding my body’s message. I was due to take all my accounts stuff to my accountant, but my vision and concentration is impaired enough that for now I don’t feel safe to drive. I know that with a quiet day and a nap later on I’ll recover.
Even though my eyesight is affected a bit, doing art actually seems to help with the headache. I think it’s a mindful activity that lets my mind and emotions relax.
So, I wanted to complete my days of the week in a Lombardic style script, and here’s my work in progress. You can see my pencil lines, both as a guide for letter heights and for the shape and spacing of letters. By drawing the outlines in pencil first it means I can easily make adjustments as I ink them in.
Next steps, when my head has cleared a fair bit more, will be to add the patterns in the letters. This really does help to define the letter shapes I think.
I definitely want to try some of these letters with dangles on them. Perhaps that’s what I’ll do while I’m waiting for this migraine headache to shift somewhat.
A quiet start to Monday morning here with a spot of hand lettering and dangle drawing.
This is my first draft of a design, which is a bit wobbly in places and there are some ink smudges too.
I pencilled in the basic shapes of the letters, inked in the outlines and then added the inner decoration.
The dangles were drawn with pen directly on paper. The use of dot grid paper helps to keep things vaguely level usually, but this morning that’s not quite gone to plan. Of course as it’s December I’ve gone with December themed charms and a Moon for Moonday Monday!
I have a few tasks to do and then I may just re-draw this, or at least colour it in. Colour makes all the difference.
This could be a bit of a big dangle design to use in a BuJo, but just the word with one dangle to the left would make a charming header with dangle for a day. The beauty of dangles is that you can just add to them as you go through the day. If the charms are small enough you could even add ones that will go with your BuJo entries – event, note, task and so on.
I think that would work well for a big and busy day.
I did go away and create this sample BuJo page showing the kind of thing I meant above. The hand lettering has worked out a lot better. I also like the blue gradient I’ve used to colour the letters with. A grey shadow was added to the left and bottom of the letters too. I also like the cute little date box. The ornate ends on the bar through it give it a ‘feel’ that goes with the lettering.
I did have fun doing this. It’s maybe not something I’d do everyday in my BuJo. My BuJo is very much a working one, with lots of mistakes and rubbishy writing going on as I scribble down things. However, I do enjoy hand lettering, especially more so as I’m beginning to accept that I have to accept my own way of forming letters is perfectly acceptable and that I can work with that.
I have to remember that others don’t see my hand lettering (or art) as I do. They see it with fresh eyes, without the close up work that goes into it, without the small flaws that I see and are magnified by my inner critic into hideous blemishes and fatal errors in the work.
I can quieten the crtiic when it comes to my drawings/art, mostly. Except on any bad days I have in terms of my mental and emotional health. Because hand lettering is something that is a new focus for me, the inner critic feels it’s empowered to be hypercritical of anything I do. It’s only by doing, by doing what I can not to ignore the critic, but to check what it’s telling me as being valid or invalid and learning what I can from the valid points to improve in the future.
It’s Friday so it’s #dangleday. Today, I wanted to share a Christmas Dangle with you from my book ‘A Dangle A Day’. In the book I show how this design was drawn, step by step.
When I created this design, I first drew it in pencil on dot grid paper. The next step for me was to scan it in to the computer and then re-draw it step-by-step, saving each step as I went. For the book, the final step was to colour the design and then write the instructions to go with the images. My tools for this were a Microsoft Surface Book, a Microsoft Surface Pen and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
I wanted to include as many Christmas-themed charms to create the dangles as I could and still keep the design balanced. I also kept the length of the dangles uneven. The waviness in the ends of the dangles echoes the waviness of the fairy lights above the hand lettered word ‘Christmas’.
What I did this morning was to print the black and white line art design on an A4 sheet of paper. Then I used Chameleon Duo Tones and Color Tops markers to colour it in.
These pens make it easy to create gradations of colour, such as on the hand lettering. These gradations add ‘dimension’ to the charms and dangles. I keep the darker shades to the left and bottom of the designs so that there’s a consistency across the whole image. I also used a pale grey marker to add drop shadows to the left and bottom of the design elements; again this helps to add dimension to the design.
Finally, I added some highlights with a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen. I also added some sparkles around the fairy lights and individual stars with a gold glitter Uniball Signo gel pen. After all, it wouldn’t be Christmas without some sparkle!
Used individually with a monogram or Christmassy image the dangles would make lovely book marks. Printed at A5 in size, the design would make a fabulous BuJo page for the big day itself. It would also make a lovely design for greetings cards or note cards.
Of course, it would be easy to change the word at the top to, perhaps, Winter or Yule and use fewer dangles to suit the length of the word. Personally, I like to use an odd number of dangles wherever possible – it gives a more balanced design.
A knock at the door, a Fed-Ex delivery driver asking me for a signature before handing over a parcel. I saw it was from Lydia at Quarto so knew it would be a copy of ‘A Dangle A Day’. So excited to open the package and see the book in a solid, tangible form.
I’ve seen the pdf versions of the book as it was put together before going to print. But, it’s never, ever the same as having that book in my hands.
Even more so today as this is my first book with words and art done by myself. I trust it won’t be the last.
About the book
I had a lot of fun creating this book. I’m so excited about helping others to create their own dangle designs and to gain confidence that they, too, can create lovely designs for use in all kinds of ways – BuJo pages and spreads, greetings cards, note cards, framed pictures, scrapbooks, planners, journals, bookmarks, place cards, and more.
I’ve done my best to show you how to create monograms and dangle designs in easy steps both visually and with some supporting words.
Suggestions about how to approach hand lettering is scattered throughout the step by step instructions for the dangle designs.
Examples of dangle designs in use in bullet journals and more are included – with all their imperfections. Remember, work created by each of us will be perfectly imperfect. It’s those imperfections that make it uniquely ‘you’.
There’s lots and lots of examples of designs and dangles and charms that you can use as they are or as inspiration for other designs. There are designs for all seasons and many, many different events throughout the year.
I’ve included suggestions for color palettes, media to use.
A short primer for bullet journals is included; I’m no expert on bullet journaling but I do make use of one and find it very useful not just in organising my tasks for the day but in recording ideas, reflections, memories and more.
This has put a big smile on my face this morning, and that smile will continue for a long while. I never thought I’d write and illustrate an art tutorial book. I’d thought I’d like to, but didn’t have the confidence to think it would be so.
Why I chose to use digital tools
I made great use of my Microsoft Surface Book and Microsoft Surface Studio along with a Microsoft Surface Pen and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to draw many of the designs. Working digitally made editing designs, breaking the design process down into simple steps so easy.
I used to think, as many do, that digital art is simpler, easier than traditional forms of art.
It’s not.
The skill set required is different. I wanted my digital drawing and coloring to look like I’d done it with traditional media.
Digital drawing is no easier than drawing on paper.
What is easier is correcting mistakes, smudges and removing pencil lines. It removes the frustration I experience in scanning images in and spending a lot of time cleaning the image up for the publishers. Scanning can be a frustration for me too, which would’ve been worse if I’d had to scan in step after step after step. And having to re-draw if I’d missed a step out, or re-scan would’ve driven me nuts.
What I didn’t want was artwork that looked too perfect, too inhuman. I wanted digital drawings that looked like I’d drawn them on paper. So, I worked hard to set up pen ‘brushes’ that would mimic how my favoured drawing pens would look when drawn on paper.
Also, I rarely used any line smoothing tools for any of the work so it has that slightly ‘wobbly’ line appearance that my pen and ink linework has. I also kept the design elements, called charms, imperfect just as they would be if I’d drawn them with pen on paper.
In fact, each and every design started out as either a pen or pen drawing on paper which was scanned in so I could re-create it, step by step, digitally, saving a file for each step to the computer.
There were plenty of revisions/edits required and colour changes. Again, working digitally make this a less onerous task than if I’d had to do everything with pen and ink on paper, scanning in each step all the while worrying I hadn’t missed a step as I got engrossed in the process of drawing.
Working digitally did not make the drawing any easier or simpler, what it did was allow me a different way to draw the steps.
Coloring the designs digitally was no quicker than with traditional media, in fact it took me longer! I learned a lot about this process by doing this book, and I think it was the book that allowed me to become more comfortable with digital art and how to make it look like I’d drawn with pen on paper, in my own style.
Of course, I can print out the line art and colour it with any media I choose. I also can redraw any using traditional media. And of course, adjusting the size is so easy.
I did use some circle, oval and hexagon templates to help me design the wreaths and snowflakes. The dot grid paper helped me draw mostly straight lines for the dangles.
I did sketch them in pencil first before inking them in with a Uniball Unipin pen. Colouring was done with various Tombow dual brush pen markers and some sparkly elements added with Uniball signo sparkle gel pens.
These would look lovely as greetings cards. In fact, I’m thinking of redrawing them digitally and using them to make my own christmas cards this year. Printing out the black line work and then colouring them with traditional media. In the past couple of years I’ve designed my christmas/winter/yule cards digitally and had them printed professionally. This year, I think I’ll do it the way I suggest in my book ‘A Dangle A Day’.
They’d also look great as note cards or as pages in a BuJo, planner, scrapboook or journal. They’d lend themselves to cute bookmarks too.
These relatively simple and small dangle designs are perfect for practicing hand lettering too. And in these four dangles I’ve used four different lettering styles.
I’ve also kept the finished designs simple by not adding any drop shadows, except around the ‘HO! HO! HO!’. Not only that, a lot of the colouring is very simple too.
I do hope you’ll have a go at designing your own, maybe using these as a bit of a guide. If you do, I’d love to see what you’ve created.
Today’s hand-lettering is just a variation on the one I posted on Monday.
For this one, I’ve used simple patterns to fill the white space in the letters and added a ‘line shadow’ to left and below the letters. To do this I used a Uniball Unipin 0.5 pen.
I like the graphic nature of just black and white as well as the intricacy of the patterns.That intricacy is something that warms the cockles of my artistic heart.
I didn’t only add details to the letters – I’ve added details to the dangle too! Simple additions but add a feeling of complexity.
I feel at the moment I’m in a position both in terms of demands on my time but also in how I feel about myself and my artistic nature to explore hand-lettering so it’s an ‘Angela’ thing that I’m comfortable with.
Not just comfortable, confident in my skills too. So, re-working a fairly open hand lettered word like this in different ways.
So, it’s possible you’ll see variations on a word appearing on this blog, my Instagram, deviantART, Twitter and facebook accounts as time goes on.
We’re rapidly approaching December so it’s time for a number of personal artistic pursuits :
my christmas/winter cards for 2018 need to be designed and printed
‘freebie’ templates need to be designed for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group.
BuJo spreads and design elements
I’m sure there’s some other things that need doing, but this morning they escape me. Of course I’m going to note these things in my BuJo.
I’ll also be starting work on a new book for Creative Haven by Dover Publications.
So a nicely ‘busy enough’ time ahead.
Yesterday, I had a lovely day out to Aberglasney Gardens for lunch with my pal Liz. It was hammering down with rain during our journey there, but the rain cleared up by the time we’d finished a leisurely lunch.
It had been many years since I’ve visited Aberglasney and I’d forgotten how interesting it is. I’ll return sometime soon with sketchbook in hand for sure!
My evening and night until well past midnight were taken up designing a birthday card for someone. The design was finally uploaded to Moonpig ready for posting today near midnight. To say I was, and still am, shattered could be an understatement today! Still, I can have a semi ‘self-care’ day today to recover.
I woke up early today and thought I’d organise my ideas about basic hand lettering into a reference sheet, and this is what I’ve come up with.
The foundation of hand lettering, to my mind at least, is to practice, practice, practice drawing your basic letter shapes, both upper and lower case. Bullet journaling can be a good way to practice hand lettering and to try out variations in letter forms and styles. My current bullet journal is very functional and minimal, but I do use different letter styles in the headings for each day and collections and so on. Mind you, I could do with a lot more practice.
Notice is said your basic letter shapes, not my basic letter shapes The reason I say this is that the more I’ve struggled with my hand lettering and it not looking like other peoples, the more I’ve come to realise that it’s MY hand lettering, my style, that I need to work on.
Yes, I draw inspiration from other people’s work, but at the end of the day I’d like my hand lettering to be mind, with my ‘stamp’ on it, my uniqueness, my quirkiness, my imperfections.
I struggled with this idea in the early years of my artistic journey, and now I’ve realised I’m having the same struggle with my hand lettering.
Hand lettering is exactly that – done by hand, not by machine. If I want perfect letters, then I can use fonts on the computer. What I can’t have is perfect hand lettering as in perfect like a computer font.
What I need to work on accepting is that my hand lettering is good enough, it’s human, it’s an expression of myself.
I spent a lot of time and effort in my teenage years to change my handwriting. I realised it looked a lot like my mothers. I didn’t want to be anything like my mother, even down to my handwriting, which actually is more like fast hand lettering as I really do draw each letter. I gave up joined-up cursive writing at this time too. My handwriting isn’t entirely print, some letters do get joined up.
I came up with my own style of writing that I like, mostly. It’s usually teeny-tiny too, so writing BIG is a problem for me.
Hand lettering is, for me, an extension of my own style of printing/drawing my letters.
This doesn’t sit all that well with me at this moment, but it feels more authentic to me.
I want to use my own letter shapes as the basis for my own hand lettering, along with all the imperfections that my bring. After all, it’s all the little imperfections in my drawings that make them uniquely mine, that make them human. Even when I draw digitally I make sure that there are imperfections in my work – the slightly wobbly lines, the imperfect circles and shapes and so on.
I am working on having the same kind of attitude towards hand lettering and stop thinking that mine has to be perfect like computer fonts, that it is just another way of artistic expression and perfectly imperfect.
Notice that I say this is about me and my attitude towards myself and my hand lettering. I’m not criticising anyone who has different opinions. I just know I can be incredibly hard on and brutally critical of myself.
It’s so easy in this day and age with so much available on social media that you compare yourself to others and judge yourself as seriously inferior or a failure. As my inner critic already believes that I am a failure and useless at anything I do and tells me this, it can be a lot harder for me to believe that what I create is good enough. I believe that about my drawings, I don’t believe that about my hand lettering, yet.
What I’d like to achieve is hand lettering that stands out as being ‘Angela Porter’ and for me to be comfortable with my hand lettering, not worrying that it’s nowhere near even good enough.
Today’s blog post is a different kind of one from me, and it’s a sheet that’s full of hand-lettering ideas. Ideas I can use in my BuJo or in illustrated quotes, greetings cards, note cards, dangle designs, monograms, and so on.
Earlier today – around 5 hours ago by my time here in the UK. I started to watch a video on YouTube by AmandaRachLee and I liked some of her ideas there.
So, I thought I’d create a reference sheet of ideas for hand-lettering to add to my arty reference folder/visual dictionary. This sheet is the result. I’ve numbered the ideas/variations that refer to the notes below.
I’m going to start, however, with the last examples first! I realised when I finished the sheet that I hadn’t included examples of my basic hand lettering.
42 – My lower case hand lettering showing how I like to make all the letters the same height. This gives a cute, whimsical feel to the lettering. 43 – My upper case hand lettering. 44 – Variations on how I sometimes form some of the letters, whether I do that as a conscious choice or not. 45 – My lower case cursive script. My cursive is my least favourite of my writing types.
All of the other examples on this sheet are based on this hand lettering.
What I’m coming to understand is that my hand lettering is uniquely me. I don’t want it to be like other peoples, though I do want to be able to vary the style to meet different needs. That means I need a bank of ideas of how I can do this to refer to.
So, onto notes about the ideas.
Draw the letters with a broad pen. I used a Crayola Supertip pen. Next, I added thick black lines to the left and bottom areas of the letter to create a shadow.Look carefully at where the black lines have been added so you can see where the bottom and left areas of the letters are. My preference for shadows is always to the left and bottom; you could choose a different combination, such as to the right and top.
This time I added lines to the left and bottom of the letter mirroring the shape of the letter. Look carefully at how this is done in the centre of these letters.
I drew lines from the corners that extend to the left and angling downwards to create a box around the letter and coloured them in black. This gives a very heavy, graphic box-shadow to the letter.
This shows how the lines form a box-shadow around a letter. Leaving the areas uncoloured gives a ‘lighter’ feel to the letter.
I used a black pen to outline the letter. This really defines the letter. It also allows you to smooth out any imperfections in the letter drawn with the broad pen.
This is just like version 2, but the shadow lines have been doubled up. If you spread the letters out more you could add more repeats of the shadow lines.
A variation on the box shadow where diagonal lines have been drawn without an outline for the box. This gives a lighter feel to the shadow. It’s not at all fussed on it, but I included it as it may be appropriate to use at some point.
A box-shadow where lines are used to fill in the outline.
Seriously heavy drop shadows here. You can even draw them without outlining the letters and let the negative space form the letters, as in the ABC example. You can also see how lines were drawn to form the box-shadows here.
Choose a point above or below the letters. Draw lines to this point from the corners of the letters. It gives a great sense of dimension.
I drew the letters with a broad pen. Then, I added black lines within the letter re-writing it.
Instead of solid black lines I used dashes and dots inside these letters. The dashed lines give a feeling of the letter having been ‘stitched’ onto the pate
White lines instead of black, with the E having the white lines added as highlights to give the letter a sense of dimension. This would be increased somewhat if black lines were added to the left and bottom of the letter.
White inside black; the inner lines really show up. White highlights on a black letter gives a sense of dimension.
Black solid lines, dashed and dotted lines within the letters, as well as partial lines as highlights.
More rounded letters with a shadow and highlights. These have a fun almost comic feel to them.
Write the letters using a broad pen. Use a fine pen to draw a line around the shape formed by the word. This line could be in any colour you choose.
Outline the letters in black gives a bolder feel to the lettering.
Doubling or tripling up on the outline gives a different feel. There’s also opportunity to colour between the outlines or to add patterns there, or shadows.
An example of cursive faux-brushpen hand lettering. This time, the outline has had a shadow added to it.
Here, the letters have had a black outline added. Look at how the lines help to give the illusion of dimension to the letters.
Draw outline letters then use a broad pen to write the letters again, but offset them.
The outlines have been filled in. I prefer this one as it gives clarity.
Instead of a solid outline usde a dashed line.
Fake brush pen lettering. Write in cursive. Then, add an extra line where the downstrokes of the letters would be.
You can leave the spaces in the fake brush pen lettering blank, or colour it, or fill it with black or even a pattern such as horizontal lines.
Fake brush pen lettering doesn’t have to be cursive! Just thicken the downstrokes of any letter you write.
Combining drop shadows with various ways of filling in the outline letters.
Colouring in the outlines and adding lines, both solid, dotted and dashed gives different ‘feels’ to the letters.
Add a bold box-shadow to the letter gives a great deal of weight to it.
Drawing a smaller version of the letter inside it and adding texture again gives a different feel to the letter.
Outline letters are perfect for adding colour or, in this case, patterns. The patterns can be simple lines to more complex ones. They can be dots, stars, hearts, leaves, flowers, anything that makes your creative heart sing! Shadows help add variety to the letters too and here you can see how the shadows ‘lift’ the letters.
Serifs are the little lines placed at the end of lines forming the letters. The simplest way to achieve this is to hand-letter your simplest letters and then add lines. Using a broad coloured pen to write over these letters add interest.
Serifed letters can have their downstrokes thickened too. The serifs can become triangular in shape too. Adding a drop shadow helps to lift the letter.
Adding white dots inside the letters adds a different feel to the letters – much more whimsical and less serious than serif letters can be.
You can add serifs to outline letters. This allows patterns to be added. I particularly like the F in this word.
Hollow letters are perfect for adding colour and here are some simple examples of how to do that. Putting the darkest colour at the bottom adds weight and the letter feels more ‘stable’.
Ombre colour fills from bottom to top and also from one side to another. You could also do them diagonally.
Sunburst lines have been added to the word. You could also add them all around the letter to make it feel like it’s popping or exploding.
Wiggle lines added to make the word appear wiggly!
Big, bold block letters with circles inside create a marquee letter.
A bold, black letter with white lines drawn across give a different kind of graphic feel.
Curlicues can be added to the letters at the start and end of words. They can also be added to letters with tails or the crossing of a t.
That’s a lot of words! Believe it or not, it’s a lot easier to do hand lettering than to explain how to do it.
Of course, I could start a YouTube channel myself and show how I do this … I’m thinking about that. Either way, I hope my reference sheet and words give you some inspiration. I think I’ve managed to cram a lot into an A4 sheet of dot grid paper!
Would you like to see more like this? Let me know!
It’s Friday so it’s #dangleday! E is for … echinacea (cone flower), envelope, earphones, Earth, eight (or eleven, or eighteen or eighty – you get the idea), eight-sided octagon, eighth-notes (semiquavers).
Purple and gold are complementary colours so I chose them for the pusscat, the monogram and the octagon with my initials in it. I chose silver as the colour for the frame around the monogram simply because it’s my favourite metal and I fancied a change from gold beads and so on. Pink hearts and earphone accents. Yes, the headphones had to have cat ears on them, and yes, I have a pair like this, but the ears are blue.
Cute kitties, cute charms and letters. Looking at the monogram now, the letter could do with a shadow around it, but it’ll do as is.
I sketched the design on dot grid paper. After scanning the sketch in, I inked it in using a Microsoft Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface Studio screen. When I was happy with the line art, I added colour and texture to the dangle design. The final steps were to create a coloured and textured background and a drop shadow for the design.
A nice way to spend a couple of hours on a cool, grey, damp Friday morning.
If you like dangle designs and would like to try your hand at drawing your own then my upcoming book ‘A Dangle A Day’ is available to preorder ahead of it’s release in January 2019. In the book I take you through drawing monograms and dangle designs in easy steps. The book includes lots and lots of examples and ideas for designs too.
Art is the Adventure 