I recently signed up for a free trial of Skillshare membership. If you’re not familiar, Skillshare is a website that hosts a plethora of online courses, mostly in the creative skills. The first course that I took was Digitizing Calligraphy: From Sketch to Vector with Molly Suber Thorpe.
I already have her book, Modern Calligraphy
Why was I interested in this class?
As I’ve been working on both my pointed pen calligraphy and brush lettering, I’ve also been working on techniques to digitize the projects.
What I got out of the class?
About half of the lessons are about layout design (pencil sketches and inking) leading up to the second half working in Adobe Photoshop first and then Adobe Illustrator. The layout and sketching part was interesting to see because it really showed that even an expert goes through half a dozen iterations before settling on a final design.
The Photoshop component was the part I was most interested in, with Molly showing how to create true black, transparent words, and then remove blemishes for the scan, and then adjust the writing itself by cleaning up edges. After Photoshop cleanup, she moves the drawing into Illustrator to vectorize it. I don’t have Illustrator, so I didn’t end up using this information.
Overall Impressions
Pretty useful stuff. I took notes to go back to while I’m working on my own projects. I might also have it replaying while I have Photoshop open, so I can follow along while I’m working.
The links provided for this Skillshare course are referral links. If you sign up for a Skillshare membership using these links, I will receive a free month of membership. This will allow me to view and review even more courses on the blog.
Amazon links are affiliate.
