The Monoline Technique

A little trick for controlling your brush lettering strokes.

Creating great contrasting lines is probably one of the hardest things about lettering. Learning that muscle memory for creating quick transitions from thick to very thin, is sometimes the thing that takes the longest to master.

THOSE DANG UP STROKES, Y’ALL!!?

And here’s the thing. It’s allllll about pressure. With a paint brush, this can take some practice to get the control piece down. Hopefully what I am about to share with you will help you work through some of this!

The monoline technique is something that I started using back at the beginning of my lettering journey, and it was super helpful for me, and really helped me understand how to use my brush correctly and see the mistakes I was making.

Step 1:

Start off by lettering any random word or phrase with any kind of solid tip like a ballpoint pen, pencil, etc. Looking something like this:

Here’s why: Once I started doing this, I realized that there were actually some other problems in my lettering, besides just the obvious thick and thin strokes, that was actually part of what was making my lettering look so wonky in the first place! Seeing my lettering written out without any contrasting weight like this, allowed me to easily see some things that needed to be changed in the structure of some of my letters.

Step 2:

Now. look at the monoline word you have written on your paper and think about which strokes are going up(thin lines), and which are going down(thick lines). You can draw in little arrows if you want, as a reminder!

Here’s why: Just being able to see the word already written out the paper helps to visualize your brush path. You can see all of the lines, how long the word is, and the correct sizing of your letters. It minimizes the other things to think about, and allows you to just focus on following the path.

Step 3:

So now we’re ready to try this out! Take out your brush or brush pen and get ready to letter right over top of your monoline word!

Except this time, remember to add thickness to the downstrokes by pressing down on your brush. Then return back to the path for your upstroke!

See?! Easy peasy.

(and it’s okay if it doesn’t follow the line exactly or you can still see the pencil line underneath! You can simply just erase them, and before you know it, you won’t need the guides at all and your muscle memory will know exactly what to do!)

Have you tried this before? Were you able to see improvements?! My lettering improved almost instantly after I tried this.. not kidding! Something about it just clicked.

xo,

G