Lettering challenge 2

This is my second lettering project. I'm excited to share my results and some tips for you. Now that I think about it, the best thing to do to get better at lettering is keeping a habit of creating at least three times a week.

Project description

For this week's challenge I had to refine a previous lettering project, something I had done at least a few months or even a year or more ago. Since I don't have many years or months of experience in lettering, I just did a project two times, improving some things in the second try.

Materials

For this project I used:

• A Leuchtturm dotted notebook size A5 or half letter for the first attempt
• A Fabriano dotted notebook letter size for the final project
• A 0.6 fine point black marker
• 2B pencil
• Eraser and pencil sharpener

Choosing what to letter

I used a quote that I had written down in one notebook, unfortunately I didn't jot down the author and I'm not sure were I heard it...The thing is, anytime I hear something that resonates with me, I write it down. It might have come from a video, because I follow a lot of youtube channels. It might have been my own thought actually. I truly don't remember.

Anyway the quote is translated from spanish and it goes something like this:

"Have Certainty. Believe in yourself. The potential is there. Start now."

I love this quote, despite it's choppiness, because it sums up how I got into Steemit. I thought so much about joining and I was scared of not having enough to share, but finally I did it. I am so happy I did, because since joining Steemit I have been more productive than ever, and my freelance career is picking up. Right now, I've met very encouraging Steemians like Hive account@rocking-dave, Hive account@shinyforest, Hive account@yabapmatt and Hive account@embity, to name a few, and I really hope to meet much more artists, designers and kindred spirits along the way.

First try

I quickly jumped into the first iteration and got a not so great result, so in the second round I focused on improvement.

How to figure out what to improve?

There are a few things that need to look pretty tight when drawing type, some of those are:

• Keeping the thickness of letters consistent.
• Maintaining an optically refined letter-spacing. This means that some letters need less space between their partnering letters and others need more space. For example, an "i" will need less space before and after, while a letter like "k" might need extra room on both sides.
• Making harmonic letter alternates and flourishes. Flourishes are ornamental features given to some letters. For example, that weird curve that comes out of the "t" in the word "start" is a sort of flourish and it doesn't look harmonious at all, so, that is something I wanted to fix in the second try.
• Keeping straight lines for the sans serif font.

Second try

On the second try I changed some things:

• I used a bigger paper size to feel more comfortable drawing and switched from A5 to letter
• I used the first lettering beneath the second paper to trace the quote while I fixed the spacing and other details
• I tried to keep the same inclination in the ascenders in the letters "t,l and b"
• I drew some of the letters using a ruler for straighter lines
• Finally, I kept in mind all the things in the improvement section

I started the second artwork making sure the pencil sketch was as perfect as possible

Then I went over everything with the marker and tried to fix the outlines, thicks and thins, inclinations, etc. and got this final result

Overall it took me at least 4 hours to make the second one and I'm pretty happy with the result. Here I show the after on the left and before on the right (I'm left-handed) that made sense to me ;)

What would I have done differently?

Next time I will change some stuff up that I think will help anybody get better at lettering:

• Use tracing paper to fix word and letter-spacing before going over with the marker
• Stick the work to a wall and look at it from afar to make sure everything is straight
• Use a finer point marker, like 0.1 for the outlines to avoid shakiness in the lines
• Practice letters that are more challenging on a separate notebook

If you are an experienced letterer tell me what you would've done differently? Leave your tips in the comments section below. I would appreciate it if you help me to improve my skillz. If you want to start lettering with me please post a link to your projects below so I can give you some beginner's feedback. I would love to see your projects.

I'm not sure if my images uploaded correctly, but I've been working on this post for hours and some of them wouldn't preview. I will be working on this post throughout the week to make sure the images become visible.

Thank you for visiting my post and have a great weekend.