Got a whole box full of brushes and about 20 gallons (yes...gallons) of One Shot....and I've practiced for about three hours. I'm going to attend my first Letterhead meet somewhere next year and hopefully I can suck up enough info to let me know where to even begin. My biggest hurdle is I keep wanting to form letters with the same kind of strokes I use in painting and it just doesn't work.
Pat, some people will paint with a solid stroke of the brush, while others literally build or form a letter.
Generally, when lettering, you don't want to make many strokes and build letters in oil based paints. As time goes by, that will eventually look like crap as fading takes place. You want to keep a solid pressure downward stroke and snap it when you reach the bottom and then take your brush across and finish it off. Whether using quills or flats, the technique is still pretty much the same. Building of letters works better when doing shocard or interior tempera type work. They generally aren't made for the long haul.
I have all the quills and red sable flats you can think of, along with fans and pig brushes for walls, but I always felt the most comfortable with a 1-1/2" red sable flat. I could make the widest of letters or all the way down to an 1/8" stripe. It's all in the wrist and twirling it with your fingers when lettering.
You never really want to sketch with a brush the way some people sketch with a pencil or piece of charcoal. In fact, you never really want to do it in any medium. A little trick is, when you see someone making several strokes to conduct one main stroke, they are a hack in most hand-painters eyes. You should be able to make a stroke from point 'A' to point 'B' in one single stroke.... not several. Making several lines and attempts just means you are unsure of what your eye-hand coordination is. This bleeds over to your hand-painting also.
Try this. Hand-write a sentence on a piece of paper with a ball-point pen and see how many times you re-stroke any of the letters ?? Probably none. So, why can't you do that with another apparatus in your hand ?? It only takes practice.
When I was in school, to break us of this sketching habit, for a year we had to do all drawings and assignments with a ballpoint pen. You were taught to know where your pencil or pen was going to go. A vary valuable lesson, not only in lettering or drawing, but in your life. Know what you want and go directly to it. Don't beat around the bush.
Unless you're just talking straights and some curves, but no real crazies going on in the striping.
