Scotty Russell- Hand lettering workshop
It’s my pleasure to introduce all of my readers to the Lettered with Love, hand lettering workshop instructor, Scotty Russell of The Perspective Collective. Scotty took some time to answer a few questions about his life as an artist and tell us a bit about what we can expect from the workshop experience. BE SURE TO READ ALL THE WAY DOWN FOR A LITTLE SOMETHING SPECIAL!
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m a Waterloo native and have been drawing for well over 20 years. Art has always been a way for me to express myself and I have a passion for creating and teaching others.
I label myself as an illustrative lettering artist as I combine detailed illustrations along with hand lettering. It helps give my work that extra depth and provides a narrative to the viewer that solely illustrations or lettering can’t always deliver.
How did you first become an artist and get involved with hand lettering.
I can remember drawing way back to kindergarten — I was quite a wizard with the crayons. 🙂 I was constantly trying to draw my name and other peoples names in different styles growing up so I guess you could say I was doing hand lettering early in my life.
I officially became obsessed with it late 2013 and early 2014 and devoted a lot of focus to studying and deliberate practice. I rekindled my love for working with my hands and started to drift away from doing everything digitally. Hand lettering allows you to appreciate that human imperfection that a computer can’t give you.
Many people see hand lettering and think calligraphy but the two are not the same. Can you tell us the difference(s)?
Calligraphy is the art of writing while hand lettering is the art of drawing lettering. Calligraphy is a single pass of the pen/tool to write as a form of art. It is more perceived as decorative handwriting.
Hand lettering is much more focused in the drawing process where you begin with sketching, revisions, inking and sometimes digitization depending on the final purpose of your work.
Hand lettering is becoming more popular, why do you think there has been such a resurgence in this art form?
Everything is cyclical. Hand lettering is making its resurgence because everything had switched to the digital world causing you to lose that personalized human touch. With the rise of social media like Instagram and Pinterest, it was easily shared and consumed sparking a huge rise of popularity.
Businesses are more than ever are trying to find ways to stand out amongst competition and hiring a hand-lettered artist assures you have a customized, one of a kind piece to use within branding and advertising.
What can a participant in the Lettered with Love expect to learn?
If you’ve been interested in getting into hand lettering then this class is perfect for you. I really want to educate and present the basic process of how to take your sketches and turn them into a final piece to share with the world.
First we will go a little more in depth of what hand lettering is and how it differentiates from Calligraphy and Typography.
We will also be doing an overview of the basic tools you will be using throughout the class.
Next we will pick a desired word or short quote based not he theme and focus on making thumbnail sketches of the composition. We will stress the importance of starting off small and experimenting on the fly which is impossible to replicate on a computer.
We will cover the basics of using guides and building our thumbnails into larger, finessed compositions.
Once we finalize our base graphite drawing, we will explore the inking phase as we strive to get a polished piece that we can present or give as a gift.
The overall goal is to provide you with a final piece to share as well as build the necessary skills where you can succeed in hand lettering outside of the workshop.
Be sure to visit Scotty and check out more of his work and visit his inspiring blog.
To celebrate the 2016 and the kick-off of our workshop series, I’m offering $25 off registrations to the hand lettering workshop through Monday! Just click here to register and enter the code hooray! to receive your discount. As an added bonus, if you and a friend register together, you get $30 off each of your registrations. Just email me at madelyn@madelynridgeway.com and I’ll send you the unique code for you and your co-registrant.
Lastly ……..drumroll please……………….. You have the opportunity to win a free seat to the workshop! To enter, leave a comment telling one thing you’d like to create after learning to hand letter . The contest ends Monday, January 11th at 9 pm cst. and the winner will be announced Tuesday, January 12th. If the winner has already registered, your registration fee will be refunded to you.
(limit one coupon code per registration)
