26 Easy Lettering Fill Styles to Try. Plus, download a free PDF version to keep on hand for easy reference!
26 Easy Lettering Fill Styles to Try
Reference materials are a fabulous way to get inspired and speed up your workflow. While lettering books, Pinterest, and social media are great sources, I’ve been wanting to create references I’ve created myself to guide my lettering work. So, I decided to sit down and try to come up with twenty-six different yet simple ways to fill each letter of the alphabet.
It took me about 3-4 hours to finish this piece. I thought it might be helpful for you all as well, so I turned it into printable PDFs you can use when you’re working on your lettering pieces!
Adding Character to Your Lettering
There are four main ways to add style to your lettering.
- Lettering Style. At the most basic level, this means using Script, Serif, or San Serif styles of letters.
- Shadows. Examples of shadow styles include drop shadows, long shadows, floating shadows, Gaussian Blur shadows, offset shadows, etc.
- Color. The possibilities with color are literally endless. Gradients, two tones, color block, painted, monochrome, and rainbow are a few of my go-to choices.
- Lettering Fill. I’m sharing twenty-six of these below but there are so many more.
When you combine the about four elements is when you can really let your personality shine through your lettering choices!
Download the Exemplar PDF
These are ©DawnNicoleDesigns.com and are for your personal use only. If you’d like to share the ideas, please do so by sharing this post, not the PDFs themselves. Thank you for respecting my copyright!
Share Your Work!
Your challenge is to create a mixed lettering piece using some of these lettering fill ideas and then share it.
- Share your work in one of the The Art of Lettering Facebook group daily threads
- Tag me on Instagram at @bydawnnicole
- Read more about getting your work featured here.
Happy lettering!
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Marie says
July 17, 2018 at 8:27 amThank you for sharing your effort with us !! I really like the colored letters on a black background: how can they be displayed in such bold colors on black cardboard – which pens are suitable for that? Looking forward to your help!
Dawn Nicole says
July 20, 2018 at 1:36 pmHi Marie! Gelly Roll Pens look awesome on black paper. They’re pretty much my go-to tool for working on dark paper.
Mariek says
July 22, 2018 at 8:11 amSorry, I`m a beginner: Did you draw all “parts” of the letter with Gelly Roll pen – also the strong background?
Dawn Nicole says
July 24, 2018 at 11:49 amHi Mariek! I actually did this digitally on my iPad Pro in the Procreate App. If I was doing it on black paper, the Gelly Roll Pens would be what I’d use to get a similar look. 🙂
Marie says
July 26, 2018 at 10:36 amMany Thanks!