Yesterday, I got the box my editor very graciously sent me of things I could write about. Wacom accessories, educational materialsβincluding a book of drawing exercises by our partner (and frankly, genius) artist Peter Han, that I hope to write about soonβpens compatible with the Wacom One to reviewβ¦ but among them was a Japanese handwriting practice book.Β
Inside, guidelines for side-by-side translations and proportion grids to practice kanji and kana:
Pretty cool, but I wasnβt aware what I was supposed to do with it. Learning Japanese isnβt on my immediate to-do list, since I hear you canβt do it in an afternoon. Not to mention Wacom pens donβt work that well on paper.
But it reminded me of something you can do right now. If you have some pen-and-paper drawing ability but arenβt used to the feel of a tablet, writing on it is a good way to start adjusting.
So today, weβll be making a font.
Iβm doing this on the Wacom One with Staedtlerβs Noris Digital Pencil. My first impression of the Noris is that itβs more comfortable than any tablet pen Iβve tried yet. By ratio, Iβve still spent far more of my drawing βcareerβ using graphite than not, so itβs amazing how well this mimics a #2.
Enough product placement, on to the exercise:
There are a few sites you can use to do this. Iβll be using Calligraphr.
Step 1: You have to register for it. Do that. Youβll have to confirm your email address. Do that too.
Step 2: Click Minimal Englishβand Minimal English onlyβto populate your blank template with letters and a few punctuation marks.Β Β
The free version limits your font to 75 charactersβnot enough for caps, lowercase, numbers, and symbols. So youβll have to make one font for letters and another for numbers and punctuation. Oh well, the price is right.
Step 3:Β Hit Download Template, and keepΒ βdraw helplinesβ checked.Β
Download them as PNG’s, which are much easier to work with than PDFβs when you’re drawing digitally instead of printing them out.Β Save one version with the Characters as Background option onβthat adds faint gray characters where the letters are supposed to be, making it far easier to get the proportions rightβand another with it off.Β
Name them 1 and 2, A and B, whatever. Iβm doing Foo and Bar.
Step 4: Open your image editor. Iβm using Clip Studio Paint (a trial of which comes with the Wacom One), but the process is identical in Photoshop.
Open Bar.png. (Whatever one has the gray characters on.)
Step 5: New layer. (Ctrl+N)
Step 6: Write the alphabet over your gray letters. Iβm just going to be using Darker Pencil, my go-to for all clean lineart, but by all means, experiment with different brushes. Make sure your stabilization is turned up, or else drawing straight lines and smooth curves will be rough. I kept it at 100, because I keep it π―. And because I have shaky hands.
Iβm making them as neat as possible because Iβm not using alternate characters for this one: Noticeable imperfections would show up the same every time I use that character, making it more obvious this is a font instead of handwritten text. If you go with letter alternatesβhow to do that is outside the scope of this tutorial, but itβs laid out on the websiteβbe as free and loose as you want.
Step 7: When youβre done, select all (Ctrl+A), copy the layer, open Foo.png (the blank one) and paste it. Itβll go perfectly, theyβre the same size.
To steal a joke from a friend, I write in all caps because everything I say is important.
Step 8: Save or export it as a png.
Sorry.
Step 9: Submit this version to the site: MY FONTS > Upload Template. Uncheck βAutomatically clean templatesββsince weβre not working on paper or submitting the one with the gray outlinesβand submit.
Youβll see a preview.Β Β Donβt worry, the final version wonβt be anywhere near as aliased as the first render.
Step 10: Go to Edit Font details, name it, and make any other adjustments you want. Hit Build Font. Give it a catchy name, not something like this:
Hereβs your final preview. It scales well:
Download the TTF. Open and install it.
Bonus Step: Once youβve downloaded it, delete it (from the site, fool), go back to templates, hit Remove All, and add βminimal numbersβ and βminimal punctuationβ to the blank slate. If you need any currency symbol besides the dollar, those are in miscellaneous. Repeat process.
And you have your font.
January is Month One, dedicated to the Wacom One. Β Released January 7th, the new version is a drawing monitorβour lowest-priced yet, offering all Wacomβs build quality for half the cost of a Cintiq.
For those of you who might be getting the One as their first screen tablet, those of you who use it for things like graphic design, or those of you who could just use a brush-up on the basics, I’ll periodically drop some one-hour, one-day, or in one upcoming case, one-minute exercises you can use to practice the fundamentals.
Since we started late (I got my One halfway through the month), Iβll be extending this theme into February, so make sure to check back.
And while youβre at it, check out the Wacom One.
About the Author
CS Jones is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and illustrator. That’s all he’ll say, because “According to graphology, all-caps writers are uncomfortable talking about their personal lives.” βWriteChoice
His work is best seen atΒ thecsjones.comΒ orΒ @thecsjonesΒ on Instagram.