The Purple Guide to Learning Hand Lettering in 10 Days

Chapter 1: First Day

Welcome to day one. If you're reading this, you're probably at that stage where you see hand lettering everywhere — on coffee shop chalkboards, in wedding invitations, on album covers — and you've wondered, at least once, whether you could do something like that. Maybe you've even tried to copy a letter you liked and the result looked wobbly and awkward, so you assumed you just didn't have the talent for it. Let me stop you right there. That wobbly feeling is not a sign of no talent. It's a sign that you've never been taught the physical process of drawing letters. And that's exactly what we're here to work on.

So let's talk about what today, your first day, actually looks like. I want you to set aside any idea of creating a beautiful finished piece of lettering today. That's not the goal. The goal for today is much smaller, but it's genuinely important: you are going to draw a series of simple lines and curves, and you're going to get an honest look at what your hand does when you try to make those lines consistently. That's it. No letters. No words. Just lines and curves. I know that might sound a bit boring, but I promise you, the entire skill of hand lettering is built on these movements, and getting comfortable with the motion is the single most useful thing you can do on day one.

Here's what you'll need for today's session.