Today let’s practice painting ‘Shine Bright’ and focus on those thick strokes. I would like to explain how painting letters is different from using a brush pen.
Unlike using a brush pen, painting letters gives you more ‘freedom’ to adjust the size of every stroke simply by painting lines wider. Take a look at this image of two letter H’s.
The H on the left is painted with single strokes of the brush, similar to how you would write with a brush pen. I pushed down on the brush to create the thicker downstroke. However, unlike a brush pen, I also painted the thin line of the first H as a downstroke, but I didn’t apply pressure to the brush.
The H on the right demonstrates that you can ‘paint’ wider lines using more than one movement of the brush. That really thick first line of the H is achieved by painting a rectangle using several brush strokes.
You can also paint script letters with more than one stroke to adjust the thickness of your lines. In the image above, you see the h on the left was painted with one downstroke (like a brush pen) whereas the h on the right was painted with several strokes to make the downstroke lines thicker.
I painted ‘shine’ in a script style and ‘bright’ in a block style with Deep Yellow Kelly Creates Watercolor Ink. The range of hues you can achieve by diluting this ink with water is unbelievable! It is very concentrated. It is in the ‘Warm’ Set 1 of Watercolor Inks.
Can’t find my brand of watercolour inks? You can also use this Ecoline set too!
Another option for liquid watercolor inks is the Dr. Ph Martins ‘Hydrus’ Set 1 (there are 3 sets of different colours). And remember you need a palette with wells to use these liquid watercolours.
I used the Daisy palette and size 1 lettering brush on Canson Watercolor Paper.
To practice painting letters freehand, use the heavyweight smooth Kelly Creates Grid Paper pad. (Never practice on blank paper).
To learn more about watercolor lettering, read my book The Art of Watercolor Lettering and use my workbooks, inks and supplies from the Kelly Creates AMAZON Storefront or from KellyCreatesStore.com.
You can click HERE to download and print this worksheet or click the image below. You can paint right onto your copy paper or place tracing paper on top. Enjoy!
