The Art of Brush Lettering: A Stroke-by-Stroke Guide to the Practice and Techniques of Creative Lettering and Calligraphy

Before buying this book I did a quick internet search to see whether brush lettering was something I might enjoy. It was, so I ordered this book along with brush pens, papers and a blender. Unfortunately, this book doesn't contain any information which I hadn't already seen in my 5-10min search. Basically, you apply firm pressure on downward strokes and light pressure on upward strokes and try to make the transition between the 2 as smooth as possible. Somehow the author manages to stretch this information out over most of the 160 pages of the book. She goes through every letter of the alphabet - upper and lower case - repeating this same information for every stroke of every letter. I thought the small chapter on creative techniques near the end might redeem the book, but it's just very ordinary things like drawing shadows on the letters. Although brush lettering may take a lot of practice to get it looking consistently good, there are no advanced techniques in this book and I'm left with the impression that there's not very much to brush lettering, unlike calligraphy or typography. I don't know whether that's true or not, but this book left me feeling disappointed, uninspired and genuinely amazed that someone would charge me £14 for such little information. I recommend that you spend your £14 on some brush pens and paper, rather than this book, and do a quick internet search instead.

It’s ok but there are definitely better books on this subject. I’ll be returning my copy mainly because I found the posture, mindfulness and meditation elements a bit flowery and unnecessary. Someone else might love it but I just wanted to learn how to do brush lettering and for me there’s just too much surface/ filler stuff here and not enough real content. I’ve bought Lucy Edmonds’ “Modern Calligraphy” instead which I’m finding much more useful and informative.

Extremely helpful and easy to follow guide to brush lettering. Delivery was on time and this is what taught me how to do calligraphy in less than a month. Now I love calligraphy and improving all the time yet I still reference to this book as it is so useful and helpful.

Just started reading this, looking forward to practising.

A brilliant reference for those interested in calligraphy.

As described

Great book and fast shipping

I am reviewing this book for Kelly Klapstein, Quarto Publishing, and NetGalley who gave me a copy of their book for an honest review.I’ve never used a brush pen before but had some in the cupboard. The instructions were clear and easy enough to follow and I tried out several of the styles. I will certainly be trying to do more with it. Lots of information about which pens to choose and use, what paper to buy, mediation and posture advice – in fact lots of things you wouldn’t generally assume you’d find in a book dedicated to art.