How Long Does It Take To Learn Hand Lettering

So you are wanting to learn the art of modern calligraphy but specifically hand lettering. 

One of your questions is how long does it take to learn hand lettering? Well, right now that is exactly what I am going to be talking about.

But anyway if you are of course in a hurry, which I know most of you probably are here is the short and quick answer.

Hand Lettering in my opinion can take just a day to learn the very basics of this modern lettering art form. But you have to consider the types of materials that you are going to be using for hand lettering and the effort your willing to put into it.

Since that was just the very short answer here is a quick summary of what we are going to be talking about today.

• What is Hand Lettering
• More Into How Long It Takes and Mastering It
• What It Takes To Learn The Art Form

Now let us get started.

What is Hand Lettering

I just really feel that a lot of people don’t know the exact definition of what hand lettering actually is. So I am just going to be explaining it very quickly in this section.

Hand Lettering is a form of modern calligraphy/ lettering. Hand lettering is considered a way of drawing letters, like modern calligraphy. More specifically is t is drawing letters with any type of materials. For example brush pens, pencils, dip pens, anything you can think of.

Now that we have the short answer out of the way let us dive more deeply into it.

First of all, I want to cover the idea that hand-lettering is just a way fo lettering with different writing utensils. 

I just want to point out that a lot of the times a lot of people have different definitions.

So hand lettering you can do lettering with a brush pen, pencil, regular pen, dip pen, or anything you can draw/write with.

Hand lettering or any type of lettering in its definition also explains how it is NOT a way of creating letters through computer software or other technologies.

The main points that you should take from this are that hand lettering is just any type of lettering with any type of art medium that is not considered traditional calligraphy.

If you want to learn more about what is traditional calligraphy I talked more about it in my article about brush lettering vs. regular calligraphy.

More Into How Long It Takes and Mastering The Art

Now that we have gone through more explicitly of what hand lettering is let us go more in-depth on how long it takes to master this art form.

When learning hand lettering I am assuming you are talking about learning one of its types of forms like pencil calligraphy or brush lettering.

Well, each different from you are going to learn some different things but in all types of hand lettering, you are going to need to learn the basic strokes.

HOW LONG IT TAKES TO LEARN THE BASIC STROKES WITH UTENSIL

Mastering the basic strokes can take from 2 hours to a full week. Depending on how long you are practicing each day and the effort that you are putting into your hand lettering.

Basic strokes if you don’t know what they are, are just strokes that you can form into letters. 

Some other things that you are going to need to take into consideration are how long it is going to take you to learn how to use/hold the writing utensil that you are going to be using.

With almost all of the utensils that you are going to be using for hand lettering, you’re going to have to learn how to hold them a different way. 

This means that holding the utensil is going to be different than the way you would hold them for writing with them.

Now let us move onto some other things.

HOW LONG IT TAKES TO MASTER THE ART FORM

There is a big difference between learning the basics from actually mastering the art form.

So then how long is it going to take?

Well, again it depends on how much you are practicing every day and the effort that is going into it.

But if you are practicing every day, on the correct things, for at least 30 min you should get there in about 6 months. 

Again I am not making any promises because it just depends on all these other factors like when I said if you are practicing the correct things

What I mean by that is when you are barely starting out you should start learning how to actually hold and use the art medium.

Don’t just go into lettering with it.

Learn exactly how to hold the utensil and keep on practicing until you master that.

The second thing you should start doing after that is the basic strokes.

A lot of people would just think, oh let me just start practicing letters and phrases now.

That is wrong you should be practicing the basic strokes. 

Why?

Well because you need to know how to format your letters first. Practicing the basic strokes will help you when it comes to the next steps.

After mastering the basic strokes now we could start learning how to format our letters.

For example, you are going to learn that an oval plus a downstroke is going to get you a lowercase A.

I know that may be confusing so let me give you a picture of the basic strokes.

Now let us look at my example with the letter a.

Do you get what I mean now?

The basic strokes are going to help you format your letters the correct way. I have noticed a lot of people just get into it without realizing that they are formating there letters wrong. Maby they just think it is cursive.

Well, let me tell you calligraphy is nowhere near being cursive. If you are confused I give you a full explanation all about it here.

After mastering each and every letter now let us learn how to connect the letters which is a whole entirely different thing.

Now you get that every single part of hand lettering has its own processes and steps which you need to take. Depending on who you are it may just take 6 months or it may take over a year.

What It Takes

So what does it take to learn this art form? I am just going to be talking about and giving reasons for what it takes.

PRACTICE

In my opinion, I feel that you have to, you have to, practice lettering every single day if you are going to get better. 

I get it you might have time every day but at least grab your pen for 5 min and practice.

Now, this leads to my second point…

PERFECT PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Think about it people always say practice makes practice. This isn’t totally true. 

The actual truth is perfect practice makes perfect. You have to be practicing the right way so that you can actually get better. If you are practicing the wrong way you are never going to get better.

This applies to calligraphy also.

You have to be holding your pen correctly so that you can get better. You have to first practice the basic strokes first so that you can get better.

If you are not holding your pen correctly or not practicing the basic strokes then your not going to get anywhere.

Final Thoughts

You have just learned how long it is going to take you to learn hand lettering.

You have not only learned that but you also now know what it takes to learn this type of art form and how you can master it.

If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback feel free to comment down below. 

I also have some free calligraphy practice sheets, witch, you can get here.