So you’ve started your hand lettering journey, but you’re not loving the results? It’s possible you are making some of these common hand lettering mistakes. But no worries – I’m here to help! I was a beginner just like you at one point, and now I’m happy to share some tips with you. So without further ado, these are my 5 hand lettering mistakes to avoid.
Related: Best Hand Lettering Supplies
Mistake 1: Not Picking Up Your Marker
Hand lettering is different from cursive in that you pick up your marker after each stroke, instead of one continuous line. If you don’t pick up your marker, then you may run into an issue with your thin strokes not being so thin.
Make sure you are picking up your marker after every stroke or letter, shown in my example of ‘hello’ below.
Mistake 2: Not Doing Thin/Thick Strokes
Remember to do thick downstrokes, and thin upstrokes. Any time the brush is coming towards you (or down) you will want to apply heavy pressure. Any time the brush is going away from you (or up) you will want to apply thin pressure. Practicing those drills will really help this feel natural.
Practice your lettering with hand lettering worksheets
Mistake 3: Changing Angles
Changing your angles between letters is a hand lettering mistake that may take a while to notice. But once you know to look out for it you will start noticing it everywhere! One way to test if your angles are too drastic is to draw lines through them and see if those lines intersect.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend my lettering is 100% perfect… there’s always going to be some slight variations in the angles but as long as they aren’t too extreme your lettering should look decent.
Mistake 4: Writing Too Fast
Hand lettering is an art form, and unless you’re going for a very specific look then writing fast isn’t what you will want to do. You’ll find the faster you write the less you’re picking up your pen and the less differences in thick and thin strokes.
You can see in my example below where I’m trying to write fast, there isn’t much variation in thickness and the letters are looking a little wonky in some places.
Mistake 5: Not Practicing
And last but not least, not practicing. Hand lettering works muscles in your hands that you need to practice using. The more you practice the more natural it will become. If you’re just starting out, I would make a goal to practice lettering 10 minutes a day. You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll start improving with just a few minutes each day!
Bonus tip: Don’t jump into large brushes too fast!
I know it’s easy to feel pressured into needing the “best of the best” but sometimes those brushes just are not beginner friendly. Take Tombow Dual Brush Markers for example. In the lettering world, everyone knows these. Everyone talks about how great they are. But they’re not good beginner brushes because they’re too flexible and too large. They take more practice to gain control over, so if you jump into the large brushes too quickly you might give up on yourself.
I hope you learned something from this list of hand lettering mistakes. If you have any questions about hand lettering, please leave a comment below! If you’re wanting to learn more about hand lettering check out the rest of the blog posts, as well as my Youtube channel!