Illustrated Letters

Every now and then, someone asks me what my hobbies are or what I like to do for fun. Drawing, sketching and lettering are usually the answer I give (of course!) Here are a few letters I've created over the last couple of years.

It all starts with a rough pencil sketch that goes through several rounds of revisions to get the design down that I have in mind and then gets more refined through several layers of tracing paper until I'm finished with the design. From there, I take the drawing, tape it behind a sheet of Arches Hot Press paper and then I draw the black outlines with a Pigma marker and paint the colorful bits with metallic ink. It takes a lot of time, as you can imagine, about 50-70 hours from beginning to end.

The letters D and R were painted for my parents, who have them framed and hanging in their hallway, which makes me feel like a little kid all over again. At least they're not taped to the refrigerator!