How to "flow"?

[DMarie]

Hi all. I have been abing t shirts for a high school thing. They look OK, but the words aren't very good looking. When I see the work of others, I wonder how they can get their lettering to flow so well. I find if I am up close to get the fine lines, my hand shakes and the line is wiggly. I have also tried to hold my breath to get the lines nice and smooth. What's the trick? Thanks in advance!

[admin]

There are really no short cuts that make up for practice, practice and more practice

To steady your hand try very lightly resting your little finger on the painting surface (very lightly, sort of drag it along as you paint)


This is the best picture I could come up with on the run but notice how the little finger in the left hand is resting sort of on the painting surface. Play around with technique when your are practicing.

[yardartnut]

Good post Don...

also treat the Abrush like a plane with landing gear making touch and go landings...

as you come in gently let paint flow, as you leave out let up on the paint....
daggers daggers, and more daggers...daggers even in your sleep...

But what you did is not so bad!!!!!!

[fontgeek]

Also shown in Don's picture, but not stated, try using both hands. One holds the brush, the other hand holds the airbrush hand.

You may find that tracing the letters out lightly with chalk or charcoal first will help you get your spacing down and your confidence up, and always remember to check your spelling BEFORE you lay down any paint!

Think of your letters one stroke at a time, and remember you are drawing each letter, not writing using a cursive style you might with a pen or pencil.

Going slow gives your had a chance to shake, so speed up your action a good bit. By practicing going faster, you will find that your lines smooth out, and that there are really only a few different shapes used to creat the whole alphabet.

Keep some sample sheets of your alphabets up where you can easily see them, you may find that putting notes on how you created those letters will help, even if it is just arrows and numbers showing the direction of the stroke, and the order in which you did them.

Nothing replaces practice, there is no getting around it, so you can use the tools listed, but practice with them like you do with any other drills for your airbrush, practice, practice, practice!

[Kaiilla]

To help with what Fontgeek says you can look at how to caligraphy books. They will give you a step by step for making letters with direction arrows included for each stroke.

[fontgeek]

Oh yeah.
Relax and have a good time with it, it makes a lot of difference.

[stormer]

I've started with shirts too and lettering is the hardest thing. I have always had a "doctors handwriting" and that's how letters look in my mind so trying to get readable letters on a shirt is hard! But, practice practice practice does help. Now I can get some readable letters, especially when practicing. When doing "the real thing" I get nervous, slow down and start to shake just like you describe. So I guess it's just for you and me to...practice

Niclas

[fontgeek]

Calligraphy books can be a great aid for doing cursive / script lettering, but keep in mind that the instructions in those books is based on the use of a brush, quill, or calligraphy pen, and that for getting wider strokes with those is the opposite of doing it with an airbrush. When you push down on a brush, the bristles splay(spread) out from the ferrel, so you get a wider stroke. With an airbrush, if you pushed the airbrush closer, your line gets finer and finer.

But the pattern and directions are perfect. There are several great articles in the Airbrush Techniques magizine, and lots of DVDs out on the same subject, Kent Lind's are pretty well done, but there's lots of stuff out there.
Once you have the method down, you can pretty much apply it to any style of lettering. Visually taking each letter apart, and seeing it as individual strokes, lines, etc., rather than one continious line or path, lets you work without worry. I find doing the basic lettering on a piece of paper first lets me see if my design will work or not. It also lets me mentally plan out my strokes, and see if there are any difficulties I will have to deal with.
Don't worry about drop shadows, sparkles, highlights, etc., when you start, just get the basic strokes down, and you will do fine!
Once you have those done, you can practice your highlights, your drop shadows, the sparkles, textures, etc.

Still have doubts, post some of what you do, or want to do, and we'll walk through it together, you can do it!