Recently some good people on different social media asked me if I can help them learn calligraphy as well as hand lettering. Some of my friends were asking tutorials from me since long ago. So I have finally decided to come up with my first tutorial on GaiJatra Typo for our facebook group Calligraphy Nepal.
I will be describing what I generally do in order to create custom Type Design. In this article I will be discussing simple and easy techniques and tools to create Devanagari letter forms using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. This article might be useful for beginners of Graphic design, Calligraphy, Typography and hand lettering. It can be interesting for enthusiasts who find beauty in words itself and their artistic representation. This article will try to demonstrate the process of custom type making and importance of calligraphy/hand lettering for the overall process. Later on I will be writing about my experiences on calligraphy and tutorials too.
Remember! Techniques and tools described in this tutorial may not be the perfect and correct way of doing it. And this is not an advance tutorial. I am presenting just an easy way of doing Custom Devanagari Typography using both manual and digital techniques.
So, let’s begin the Gaijatra Typo tutorial not wasting much of our time.
Inspiration is the Mother of creativity. You can’t create awesome things unless you are inspired and have a passion to present your imagination. For Gaijatra Typo we need to know what Gaijatra is all about. We need to understand what is the mood and feeling of it. Is it sad? Is it Happy? Angry? Formal? Jolly? What is it? Hit Google with Gaijatra on its search bar and go for images. It is helpful to understand the appearance of Gaijatra. See what people are already doing about it. Reading articles on Gaijatra would also be a good thing to do. Explore your mind. See what you already have in your mind about Gaijatra and look around.
Since we celebrate Gaijatra in order to bring smile on faces of sad people, I came up with this idea of being funny and creating a typo that somehow looks funny. In this Jatra people try to be funny doing different things. Some appear with wired funny dresses. Some appear with funny makeup and so on. This is the baseline on what I am working on. Funny makeup and funny visual appearance. And the cow is important too.
Step 2 : Put your concept on paper
Starting your work on paper is always a good idea. Your mind is friendlier to one of the very basic, powerful and common tools of doing Art. However if you are friendly enough with digital platforms it wouldn’t hurt. Starting with a pencil is good. You can easily get some good ideas in minutes.
While pencil gives you the basic framework, Try to write with different tools for variations. I generally use round and flat tip markers, Brushes, Bamboo pen etc. Each tool gives you a different style and this is all about it. Don’t try to be perfect here; later we will be modifying it in Illustrator. Keep writing until you are satisfied with your basic style.
Another thing you would need to keep in mind is along with this writing process you are developing a specific style of stroke patterns. You need to consider the thickness and thinness variations of your strokes. You need to develop some specific styles of brush strokes. This comes with the process of writing. In my case I have considered to go round on both edges and thick on one side. We will be creating brushes later on Illustrator based upon this style.
Step 3 : Go digital with Photoshop and Illustrator
Once you are satisfied with the basic layout of your text, prepare to go digital. Here the magic begins. Scan your basic layout and open it with your Photoshop. Don’t worry if you don’t have a scanner, taking photos of your work is also Fine. Even a simple mobile phone camera will work.
Open your image in Photoshop, you need to trim the unnecessary parts and save only what you need. You can use Lasso tool or crop tool. I have cropped it.
Now you will need to adjust some contrast in case your image is not properly visible. Go to Image>adjustment>Levels or shortcut Ctrl+L to open the Levels panel and play with its values and press ok. Make sure your image has well contrast with white paper or whatever color your background is. Here you can play with other settings such as Brightness/Contrast, Curves, and Color Balance too as required. Our goal is to create contrast between paper and text so that they are easily distinctly visible.
Now you need to adjust your image size. Go to Image>ImageSize orShortcut Alt+Ctrl+I. Enter width to 15 cm and press ok.
Save it to jpg format and open it with Adobe Illustrator.
Now in Illustrator, you need to adjust the canvas size according to your opened image. Go to file>DocumentSetup press Edit Artboard or shortcut Alt+Ctrl+p and double click your image.
This will trim unnecessary white area and make your canvas fit to your image. Now select Selection tool or press V.
Double click on layer1 on your layer panel and name it to Reference. Check the boxes Lock and Dim images to 50%.
This will make your images look faded and it is easier to work further. This will lock your layer so that it doesn't move accidentally.
Create a new layer clicking the layer icon on layer panel. It will create Layer 2. Double click on it and name it to Strokes. Leave other settings as they are.
Now we need to define some brushes on illustrator based upon our manually created stroke styles in step 2.
select Ellipse tool or press L. Click and drag horizontal and fill with black.
Zoom in and edit some of the nodes using direct selection tool from the tools panel or Shortcut A. I had earlier decided that my lines will be thick on one side and thin on the other.
Now press F5 or window>Brushes to open the brushes panel. With your shape selected click new brush icon at the bottom of Brushes panel.
Select New Art Brush and press ok.
In new dialogue box choose direction from left to right and method to Tints. Name it Stroke 1 and Press OK.
Likewise create some other variations of brushes using same method.
We are now good to start digital calligraphy.
For this step using a graphic tablet with pressure sensitivity is good. If you use a tablet then you might consider creating your brushes with pressure enabled settings. But here we are doing simple calligraphy without pressure sensitivity with a mouse. You need to have a little bit Patience and use your mouse with a flow.
Select brush tool from the tools menu or press B. Choose a brush stroke we created earlier from the brushes panel and start drawing over your reference text image.
Remember the art is using only one stroke for a continuous line. You must not add breaks to a single continuing line. It is somehow just like writing with a ball pen on paper. Think about how you would write on a paper with pen. This way it is easier. However you can be creative too depending on your needs.
Use different brush styles created earlier depending upon desired shape. After drawing them all, hide the reference layer by clicking on eye icon and see what the result is. If you are not satisfied enough select all, delete and redraw them again.
Decide where you want to go thick and where you have to b thin. One way of deciding is to zoom out and see if lines look close and narrow or if they look like touching each other. Make them breathe freely. Add some space between them or if they look far drag them closer. Keep these processes repeating until you are satisfied with the result.
So this way you have the vector calligraphy basic framework. Now it’s time to arrange them properly and adjust kerning, Stroke weight etc.
Use Selection and Direct selection tools to adjust nodes and stroke positions the way you want.
Here’s a video tutorial on Adobe Illustrator’s Selection tools by Lynda.com
Now it’s time to color the artwork. Since we are working on a happy theme we should chose bright and vibrant colors. I use Kuler for color guide.
Open color panel and select different color for each strokes.
Now we need to add some extra ingredients to make it look interesting. I decided to decorate it with smiling faces where possible. During the sketch I already had related the cow along with text roughly. We will now draw the cow based upon same assumption using similar brush strokes but with a bit of thin weight.
I drew some shapes with pen tool too.
Still the illustration looks dull somehow. So I decided to add some more elements to it. Be creative with this part.
Ok. So it looks a bit interesting now.
We have here nicely drawn vector artwork. Now it is time to do the final touch ups.
Step 4: Finish with Photoshop
Open a document of 720px by 540px in Photoshop. Go to Illustrator and press Ctrl+A. This will select all your artwork and press Ctrl+C to copy. Go back to Photoshop and paste (Ctrl+V) your artwork.
Now we need to add some textures to the plain background to make it look a bit more interesting. I have used my favorite Photoshop inbuilt Handmade Paper Texture. to use this texture select your background layer and go to Edit>Fill>Pattern>Hand Made Paper
Now we need to add some shadows bellow the artwork. Select Elliptical Marquee Selection tool and click drag to create an oval shape bellow the Gai-Jatra Text.
Press Ctrl+Shift+N to create a new layer and then press D for default black color. Now press Allt+backspace to fill it with black. Press Ctrl+D to deselect and use Ctrl+T to adjust height and width. Hit Enter to apply the Transform command after you are satisfied with the black shape. Now go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur
Go to opacity on your layer panel and change it to 20%. Now change blending modes of all layers to Multiply except the Background Layer. This will make the artwork Mixed with the texture and create good visual appearance.
After this stage we are almost done. You can play around with other Photoshop effects if you like to add more spices.
I hope you did find some helpful tips about calligraphy, Custom Type Design and working with Adobe Illustrator Brushes on this tutorial. Please feel free to ask questions and suggestions are always a welcome. Hope to see you on my next piece of writing. Cheers!
Images used in this article are subject of copyright. No commercial uses without permission.
