4H Hand Lettering Class

At school, we have an amazing 4H After School Club program. These clubs are designed to give students the opportunity to experience things they might not usually get to experience or learn! I thought it would be so much fun to do a hand lettering class this year, and it definitely was a hit!

I had five sweet 5th and 6th grade girls sign up, and they had so much fun experimenting and learning this new art form!

We started with the basics. These students hadn't practiced cursive since they were in 3rd grade, so we did some drills with lower/upper case cursive letters. It was fun to hear them talk about which letters were their favorites to write. 

During our next meeting, we talked about "modern calligraphy," which is making cursive letters look like calligraphy without using any special calligraphy pens. You just thicken the downstrokes! This takes a lot of practice, and the students did a great job! We all started out with the word "love" and then practiced thickening any stroke where our pencil moved in a downward direction. 

After we practiced this skill, we moved on to an even more challenging way to make your cursive look like calligraphy. By using a brush pen or a marker, you can apply more pressure when you make a downstroke and less pressure for an upstroke. This creates "Brush Lettering" and it takes a lot of thought and practice. These girls did such a great job!

After more and more practicing, we painted some wooden signs with our base colors (either black or white), and the girls decided on what they wanted to write on them. Then more practicing!

Then, it was finally time to letter our words and phrases onto the sign! They were so excited and definitely nervous to start! 

Here are the final products! I had so much fun getting to know these girls,  and I loved watching their progress throughout our 5 sessions. It sure was fun! 

I'm planning on teaching another class for students next fall, but I would also love to do an adult class! I have no idea where, when, or how that would work--but is anyone out there interested in something like that?

Comment below!

grace & peace
Mairin