Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
/Graham Greene
If you enjoy pretty letters (the art of writing beautiful words by hand) in your art journal, this book is for you. It’s something between an inspiration book and a how-to one, collected by Jenny Doh who also made the similar Journal It!, that I recently reviewed. Both consist of samples of art journals and notebooks supplied by creative bloggers. You are introduced to their favorite way to draw letters, a handwritten alphabet and a short tutorial on how to “copy” and use their style in your own journal.
Personally I love the look of hand lettering, and I occasionally enjoy doing it. But most of the time it is not part of my artistic expression to handwrite a quote or a saying. Partly because I forget it when I am doing collage or drawing, and partly because it’s just tedious and too time consuming for me, at least when I often feel unhappy about the result in the end. I like to fill a page quickly and intuitively. Taking a break to find someone else’s quote doesn’t work for me. And forming perfect letters is a sloooow art form. If I remember to write anything it’s by journaling using my own messy handwriting. I’ve been told it looks beautiful though of course I don’t usually see that…
I think the book Creative Lettering is a fun read, mostly because you’ll meet creative bloggers, including favorite artist Aimee Dolich. I greatly admire her artful writings and poetic words. Just today I bought her new and yellow doodled washi tape, from her Artsyville Etsy Shop. Yum!
Her way of writing is to go back into longer text and “thicken up” the thin lines of all her letters until she is happy with how they look. It creates her own unique font that many of us adore.
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