Becki Clark gives a fresh and updated perspective on brush lettering. With creative strokes and designs, a little practice here and there you will be able to jump right in on the calligraphy fun!

I had a lot of fun going through this book. As a complete beginner to this hobby, I found this book to be a really good intro. I appreciated the author's recommendation of pens and other tools (I bought their basic, everyday brush pen recommendation and really liked it), as well as open yet informative written tone. The book walks readers through basic exercises, alphabets, and provides some craft project ideas using the skills you pick up.

Overall, I thought this was a really good primer for beginners. I felt that I had more luck mastering the strokes and letters by watching video tutorials on YouTube, but for people who prefer books, this is a good start to the lettering hobby. I understand that each letterer will develop their own style as they go along, but I would have appreciated the alphabets having small arrows indicating the order and direction of the strokes (almost like a kids' handwriting guide, haha). In totality, this is a fun book and a good start to hand lettering, however a lot of practice and other resources may be required to truly feel like you are making progress.

Note: I received an advanced copy of Modern Brush Lettering from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was interested in this book because I. have adored lettering projects from afar. I have even taken classes to learn various lettering techniques, but always walked away feeling frustrated. Clark shares techniques and tools for beginners (like me) and it is written in a style that is easy to follow. I am so appreciative of this resource and look forward to creating artwork for my home and office.

Put your lettering skills to great use with this book. Twenty projects are divided into the four seasons, and includes lettering on:

Place mats, ceramic bunnies, watercolour cards, cake toppers, frames, place cards, flower seed favours, pots, pumpkins, chalkboard labels, enamel cups, mirrors, envelopes, baubles, gift tags, dishes, calendars!

So you see...literally anything around the house! Or you can make some of the surfaces as well...such as the polymer clay jewellery dish (instructions are given.)

Some of these objects will make great gifts and take so little time to complete!

The artist uses brush pens (with bristles) with most of the projects but I don't see why you could not use other types of brush pens as well.

I wish more space was given to actually teaching how to handletter with brush pens though. I counted only 12 pages of actual instructions for this purpose. Because of this, I think this book is more suitable for someone who has already some handlettering skills under their belt.

Handlettering with pen brushes with bristles (as opposed to felt tip ones) takes a bit more time to master. Some grid lines and worksheets would have been nice for those who are not so masterful yet. But the author provides a couple of complete exemplars that you can trace over for practice.

The author's style is one that is free and easy and expressive with bold bouncing strokes. If you are expecting dainty and uniform lettering then this book might not be for you.

Nevertheless, I think the projects are a great inspiration. The detailed pictorial step by step instructions are nice. They also include some simple painting of flowers, patterns and motifs that are pretty and adds to any handlettered item.

Thank you Netgalley and Pen and Sword for this ARC. This is my honest review.

I was so pleased to take a look at this book as someone who is a complete beginner in brush lettering. I have some favourite quotes which I wanted to frame and this really helped me. There were plenty of easy to follow projects and I soon saw an improvement in my lettering techniques. However, I would have loved more variation in lettering styles with illustrations rather than craft projects. For a beginner, the book is helpful, with lists of tools and a distinctly personal touch. A great way to escape and relax.

This is a good basic beginners guide to brush lettering if you have at least some experience. It has helpful tips and suggestions to get you started and goes over basic tools needed to do lettering.

I don't know if I'd recommend it for true beginners because it does not have very in-depth tutorials but this book points you in the right direction and helps give you a feel for how the lettering should be done. It also gives great inspiration and ideas for embellishing your lettering so overall I think this is a very handy reference guide.

#ModernBrushLettering
#NetGalley

3, 5 stars
It´s a useful guide to start learning lettering, where we can know how to start, what materials to use and we are given tips to start our own projects and to improve our skills. However, I have missed more exercises, templates or examples for those who want to start in this world.

Es una guía interesante y útil para empezar en el lettering, donde se nos dan consejos sobre cómo empezar, qué materiales usar y se nos dan ideas para crear nuestros propios proyectos. He echado en falta más ejemplos o ejercicios, pero como introducción ha sido bastante aclaratoria.

Really enjoyed this beginners guide to brush lettering. I've followed numerous Instagram accounts trying to learn techniques and this was very helpful for me in learning additional steps and other ideas.

I don't know if I'd consider it for total beginners but it's definitely worth a shot!

Amazing book, especially at this time when people are home. I was pleasantly surprised by the step by step process to achieve beautiful lettering, Becki touched on the process, building skills and then on to projects. I especially enjoyed the seasonal ideas and themes. This provided a great opportunity for stress relief while creating beautiful works of art! Thank you 😊

This is an instruction book with tips, materials, and projects to help people create craft projects that utilize modern calligraphy. Each project idea has step-by-step instructions and a photograph of the finished product. If I'm being honest, I don't love the font/alphabet used by the author but I can apply my own style to the project ideas easily. I am looking forward to trying several of the projects, including gift tags, custom wrapping paper, cards, and herb planters.

ARC Review: Modern Brush Lettering

I am a graphic designer by day, and a book reader and reviewer by night, so I’m always really excited when they coincide, and I was hoping that Modern Brush Lettering by Becki Clark would give me nice insight about hand lettering and hopefully help me to improve in that area, so I was very excited when I received the eARC from Netgalley. Before we get into the review, let’s look at the blurb from Netgalley; I think with reviews of craft books, it’s very important to look at whether the book does what it says it’s going to do. Emphasis mine.

“ Modern Brush Lettering is a creative guide to learning how to brush letter. Becki talks through materials, mark marking, turning your marks into letterforms, joining your lettering and exercises to get you started on your brush lettering journey. There are tips and tricks for perfecting your own style of lettering and 20 seasonal contemporary craft projects to make with your new skill.

I would also like to quote the introduction here. Please keep in mind that this is an eARC, so the quotation may not be the same in the final edition.

“ We’ll begin by working through the basics mark making, the start point for anyone who wants to learn brush lettering. This will teach you the basic techniques you’ll need when moving on to lettering your first alphabet. In the alphabet section you will find two different alphabets to practice lettering. We will then move on to joining letters to create words. I’ve given you some practice phrases to copy to help build your confidence.

Unfortunately, I found this first portion of the book woefully inadequate. To start with, there simply weren’t enough photographs to demonstrate what Clark was discussing in the text; the first exercise given is to make a variety of different marks with your brush pen to get the hang of adjusting your line weight, and she describes each practice mark in detail, but the photo included only shows a few of the marks and gets cut off at the edges. Some of the more complicated marks aren’t shown at all, in favor of some ~aesthetic~ paperclips and a pen.

The book does include the two advertised alphabets, although they are both basically the same, except that one is slanted and one is not. Both are Clark’s personal style of lettering, which is somewhat… unrefined. Here is my approximation, based on what I learned from the book.

[images]

Sorry, it’s a little rough. Personally, I usually prefer a more elegant brush lettering technique, and I would have liked to see a couple different styles of brush lettering just to show readers a few options. Additionally, I absolutely would have included worksheet pages, where readers could trace over the letter forms to practice (although, maybe it’s just not included in the eARC?). I created the above examples simply by looking at the alphabets provided and copying the letterforms; you could accomplish the exact same thing right now by opening a new tab, heading over to Pinterest dot com, and searching “Brush lettering alphabet.” And you’d have a lot more styles to choose from, too.

We also really rush through the instructional portion. Clark speeds through teaching how to actually make letterforms, and I really don’t think that any reader is going to learn much from this book that they couldn’t learn in a YouTube video; Clark even admits that that’s how she learned brush lettering. Therefore, I really don’t think this book did what it promised to do; I don’t think it teaches brush lettering. If you are looking to buy this book so that you can learn how to brush letter, don’t waste your money.

Frankly, I think this should be advertised differently; it should simply be advertised as fun brush lettering projects to do. The second two-thirds of the book is devoted to seasonal brush pattern projects. They’re cute projects: paper to wrap a bouquet of flowers, table placeholders, greeting cards, frames, flowerpots, and so on. Some of them were really creative, like the ceramic Easter bunnies or table placeholders made with gold painted pears and name tags. Frankly, I thought they were a bit over the top—one involves brush lettering names directly on to lemons as table place holders, and Clark includes detailed tips for staging your table, as if anyone has multiple sets of silverware to choose from that matches their lemons—but if you’re looking for ideas of instagram-worthy brush lettering projects, this book is a great place to start. It’s not to my taste, but I don’t think that this book has absolutely zero redeeming qualities.

I’d also like to cut Clark a little slack—I haven’t exactly picked up a ton of crafting books, so it’s highly possible that this is industry standard and this book is like every other craft book on the shelves; plus, I’m sure the publisher dictated a lot of the content in this book and Clark might not have had a ton of say over what went into it. However, if this is what is standard for crafting books, they have got to step up. Any of us can learn just as much in half an hour on the internet as from this book, and not have to pay for it. Craft books need to fulfill a different nice than YouTube and Pinterest if they want to survive, and offer something more than a few brief tips about brush lettering and some over-the-top crafts most of us will never try.

This review will be posted on my blog on June 26.

Becki Clark gives a lush introduction to some brush lettering techniques along with some beautiful seasonal projects to work on including Easter decorations, place settings and quirky wrapping paper.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done any kind of calligraphy and I have never worked with brush before so I really enjoyed working through the introductory chapter and alphabet.
I would have liked more techniques and practice ideas, perhaps another couple of alphabet designs to play with but maybe that can be book number two! Becki has helped me fall in love with writing all over again.

This book is more like a seasonal craft and DIY that you can do using hand lettering than a beginner's guide. It looks and the title sounds like it's for beginners but it is not really. The book starts teaching the downwards and upwards strokes technique and I followed it using my materials. This book gives the reader a very basic introduction to modern brush lettering. The book starts with some suggestions for marks to practice to help prepare you for the projects. But after teaching you some up, down, curves and circles strokes techniques. The book doesn’t adequately show you how to do it. If you have never tried brush lettering before you might get very confused by this book. The book truthfully is devoted to the crafts. There are some ‘different’ crafts that incorporate brush lettering. This book is not instructional enough for the beginner. There needs to be more photos with more instruction.

I would like to thank the publisher, the author and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Excellent beginner book for the person who wants to start brush lettering. The supportive tone of the book encourages the idea that anyone can learn this art form. Inexpensive tools and projects will help the reader get started quickly. The detailed examples and pictures guide the reader through adapting their handwriting to modern brush lettering. Projects in the book are both modern and simple enough to fit a variety of decoration styles and lifestyle needs.

I was so excited to get an advanced copy of this book because I have been wanting to learn brush lettering for a while!

Becki Clark did a great job writing this book. It goes into a good amount of detail and step by step instruction on the process of brush lettering, techniques, drills, supply recommendations, etc. She also has a ton of really cute and easy seasonal craft ideas in the back with stunning photos and detailed instructions on how to achieve final product. The seasonal projects were very creative and definitely inspired me to want to get creative.

I’ve never reviewed an eARC of an instructional book like this before, but I felt that there were not enough photos in the beginning of the book of the actual brushstroke lessons and drills in the beginning of the book. I genuinely wanted to be able to follow along with the drills and guides with my own brush pens and was bummed that I was not able to. While chapter 2’s (mark making) descriptions of the drills and exercises were very detailed, some of them I could not understand completely due to not having an image to model off of. At first I was thinking that maybe this was because of it being an eARC, but there were tons of photos of the seasonal projects- almost more than necessary. Maybe more pictures and image guides for the drills will be there in the final edition, but based off of what I noticed in this eARC, that would be my biggest suggestion for the final edition. I also recommend that the piece at the end of the book in the stockists and resources section about specific recommended supplies be added to chapter one where Becki is already discussing brush lettering supplies within the tools section. It felt out of place when I read it at the end, and I think it would be more beneficial in the beginning to help set the reader up for success before diving into the full contents of the book.

Overall, I think this is a great book for beginner brush lettering. I definitely intend to buy this book when it is published and really look forward to seeing the final product and making these seasonal projects! 🤗

A big thank you for the publisher White Owl for granting my wish and gifting me a copy of this.

I have been interested in brush lettering and this book has fabulous tips and activities to do to help in mastering the technique.

Its inspired me to start journaling again, I am looking forward to mastering my brush lettering and this book will certainly help with that.

Thanks to Pen & Sword for the ARC!!

I've read other books about lettering before, but this is one of my favorites. I would totally recommend it to beginners. It brings some great exercises, it's all very easy to understand. And it's beautiful! *-*

Great book. it gives in detail examples of how to do modern brush lettering. It's the perfect book for anyone who wants to either brush up on your brush lettering skills or start from the beginning.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is a great book to start you off with modern brush lettering! The author has put lots of time and effort into this book for people to use as a guide to help them start off in brush lettering.
The book starts with practice pages of how to do brush strokes and form letters and words, then goes into 20 projects to try.
I really enjoyed this book and will be trying some of the projects out and then try to build from them.

For a few years now, brush lettering has been growing and popping up nearly everywhere. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, I never felt like I knew where to start. A couple weeks ago, I found Modern Brush Lettering by Becky Clark in the NetGalley list of books to review and immediately requested it!

The steps and craft tips are great for beginner in brush lettering. Included is also suggestions for which types of pens she prefers. Sections are divided up by seasons and major days. Simple items to decorate and great tips for how to complete each step are mentioned in this great book.

From steps to practice brush lettering to creating ornaments, place settings, mirrors to hang, wrapping paper, it’s all between the covers of Modern Brush Lettering. Becky Clark also provides ways readers can find her online. Her Instagram is full of great colorful ideas!

Modern Brush Lettering was provided complimentary in exchange for an honest review. I give this book five out of five tiaras because it offers simple tips that even I can follow! Go get this book and start reading while I look for some brush pens!