Urban Sketching:
Lettering & Signs
Signs are everywhere, and lettering that doesn’t match your sketch sticks out. These exercises give you a simple method for lettering in a style that belongs, from a For Sale board to Fresh Fish on a Brighton kiosk, and show how sandwich boards sit between a building and the ground.
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What’s Inside
Lettering that belongs
The style of your lettering has to marry with the style of your sketch. Two techniques on familiar signs. A For Sale board: write in capitals, thicken unevenly, outline, back-shade, add black accents.
Fresh Fish, the three steps
The Sea Haze kiosk on the Brighton promenade has Fresh Fish painted on the side, chunky and direct. The technique is three steps: a single line version of each letter, thicken the outline, then back shading.
Fresh Fish sketch
What I call chunky and funky. With the N95 brush pen, sketch Fresh and Fish using the brush end for variation straight away. A 0.3 fine liner is the refinement pass, held loosely so you find the shape rather than retrace.
Lettering in a scene
The Brighton boats sketch shows lettering in context: Crab in black on white, the shop name reversed in white on dark, SM5 on the boat, Brighton Souvenirs. The letters have thicker verticals and thin horizontals and diagonals.
Sandwich boards introduction
I never miss a sandwich board. They sit in the junction between the vertical face of the building and the pavement, breaking up the space and pulling the composition forward.
Sandwich board sketch
A quick, clean line drawing with the N15 to understand the angle and the construction. The top is almost horizontal, the lines run towards a vanishing point, and the shorter back support is parallel to the same lines.
Sandwich boards in a scene
Two finished Brighton demonstrations. In the Victorian Bandstand, a Fresh Crab board tucked next to a bike, with a hatched backboard to push it back and tone between the letters.
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Questions about this bundle
What is in Urban Sketching: Lettering & Signs?
7 short video exercises: Lettering that belongs; Fresh Fish, the three steps; Fresh Fish sketch; Lettering in a scene; Sandwich boards introduction; Sandwich board sketch; Sandwich boards in a scene. It costs £8 once and you keep lifetime access.
Do I need to have done a painting workshop first?
No. A bundle is a separate, self-contained set of exercises on one skill. If you later want to see skills like this used in a whole painting, my painting workshops do exactly that.
When can I enrol?
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Can I get a refund?
Yes, within 14 days of purchase, as long as you have not gone beyond the introduction or first lesson, because by then you have received the digital content. Email mike@artyfactor.com with the bundle name and the email you enrolled with. The full wording is in the Refund and returns policy.
How long do I have access?
It is one payment of £8 and you keep lifetime access.
Where this leads
Want to see the whole picture?
This bundle covers one skill. My painting workshops show how skills like this come together in a finished painting, one stage at a time.
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