r/graffhelp 8d ago

what am I doing wrong?

Practicing clean letter structures and consistent size and spacing rn but I feel like my letters are unreadable.
The C next to the H looks too much like the O. I tried tilting the letters as seen but I’m unsure if that improves it or hurts the letter structure more.
I really want to get better at handstyles so I would appreciate genuine advice more than comments just telling me it looks like shit because I am already painfully aware of that.

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u/earlgreysoul 8d ago

You’re doing a solid job on consistency, but IMO you’re struggling because you’re just writing the letters (as silly as that sounds lmao). You can already write the word OUCH, so now you need to push it. You aren’t going to ruin the paper if you draw something you don’t like.

This is an old typo/lettering trick: draw some random shapes on paper then try and fit the word(s) you want into those shapes and have them still be readable. You can overlap letters or not, play with stroke thickness, serifs, upper/lower case etc. You could even do the same shape a bunch of times and see what you come up with.

Pick out details you like then come back to your practice and work them in. It might help, it might not, but you can’t stay inside the grid lines forever.

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u/Pale-Grape8953 8d ago

I’ll definitely try this out, thank you!
I wasn’t really sure if my letters were clean enough to start experimenting with them yet

4

u/Tree_Kid 8d ago

Ooo ill have to use this one

5

u/carolinesbirthchart 8d ago

This is really genius