So busy and so far behind on blog posts. I will catch up eventually when the flood gates close.

Source

Source

Some random watercolor sketches I did yesterday using watercolor pencils. I really like using them on wet paper rather than drawing dry and then painting over them. Using them on wet paper makes the colors super intense and gives you lots of nice texture.

Last week, I worked on some custom typography for the mixtape I posted on my blog on Friday. Since it was my first time doing handlettering, I wanted to document my process and show how I came to the final product.

I began by writing the word a couple times in my sketchbook to give myself some variants to choose from. After a few failed attempts at a stylized look, I decided to just try my own handwriting. I wrote the word out several times, quickly and without much thought to composition. I then picked the one I liked most and took a picture to trace in illustrator.

Then I outlined the sketch in illustrator with the pen tool, matching the original as closely as possible while smoothing out the curves. I also eliminated any whispy “connector” lines to help clean up the word and make it easy to read.

After I had it all outlined and pretty well smoothed out I started to add thicks and thins to the stroke using the line width tool (new to Illustrator CS5) which I’ve reviewed before in this post. I went through each letter and added varied widths, then I massaged the entire word to make sure it was consistent. Once I had the widths set, I adjusted any curves that might have been thrown off and did some final tweaking before arriving at a finished product.