movements of sign lettering/process

• Being able to have a comfortable posture is really important to allow flowing movements.

• The sign painting brush creates strokes that are similar to those found in Brush Pen Lettering, however they work in a different way.

• You’ll notice you will have to make different movements to achieve the same strokes with a brush instead of a pen.

• In sign painting, there will be a lot less whipping about and pushing strokes, and a lot more pulling and dragging strokes.

• Many of your gestural, fast swings will now have to be calculated and careful movements

• Because of the brush’s hair shape, if we simply lay it on the surface and begin to pull our stroke, the edges will look blobby and messy.

• We lay the brush down gently, on an angle, onto its chiseled tip.

• You then gradually begin pressing down, expanding the brush’s hairs resulting in a wider shape that is easier to maintain.

• Then we immediately begin to pull the brush, and you’ll notice that the stroke is nice and even, as the tip has kept its shape.

• A big part of getting the right brush shape is using the adequate paint consistency.

• Paint consistency will affect your stroke’s flow and coverage.

• We use individual, careful strokes to piece them together.

• When you’re painting a downward stroke, this exerts pressure on the tip – Resulting in a thicker

• stroke as it’s hairs widen on its way down.

• When sign painting, you can do upstrokes by pulling upwards on the side angle of the brush, or you can (sort of) cheat by shaping your brush a little differently, paletting on its side, and downstroke applying a little less pressure than usual.

• To keep our strokes starting and ending neatly, we enter strokes at an angle, pressing to form a flat shaped tip, and then pull the stroke.

• To exit a stroke, we pull out to a side of the stroke, just as we are lifting the brush and peeling it away from the surface.

• This will result in hairline ‘kicks’ or ‘tails’ at the start and end of strokes and are a byproduct of the way we enter and exit these strokes and how we twirl the brush.

• Lovely ‘snaps’ or ‘kicks’ on strokes are telling of a talented or experienced sign painter!

• Unlike lettering, sign painting is not painted in a continuous motion – the strokes that compose a letter and its connections are all painted individually,