How to Draw Signs and Lettering in Your Urban Sketches

Ian's sketching the Laurel Inn in Robin Hood's Bay when he spots a small sign on one of the bollards. He can't read it from where he's sitting, so Cam reads it for him. It's asking dog owners to clean up after their dogs.

Ian looks back at his sketch: "I think the sign's working really well because I've not been able to draw any in this sketch so far."

Even the smallest sign has something to say about a place. A pub board, a street name, a shop front painted by hand. They're some of Ian's favourite things to draw, and here's how he puts signs and lettering into his urban sketches, so you can too.

Why signs belong in your urban sketches

Signs tell you where you are.

On Matthew Street in Liverpool, surrounded by bars and barbershops, Ian says, "I love doing lettering because lettering is just telling a great, a great story of the place."

In the Cheshire village of Lower Bunbury, it's a pole covered in road signs: "these signs are really important because they are telling the story of the place and whenever I can see a sign I've really got to try and get them in because they're just great."

They tell you when you were there, too. Sketching Tanners Wine Merchants in Shrewsbury, Ian spots a little board on the pavement with an arrow on it.

"We've also got now open, with an arrow. And I've got absolutely no idea what's open. But I know it's open."

In it goes. The old beams on Tanners belong to the past. The Now Open board belongs to the day Ian sat down to draw.

And sometimes a sign earns its place for the name alone. On Brighton Pier, Ian puts in a Slush Puppies sign he can't even see from where he's sitting. He remembers it from an earlier visit, and in it goes, "because it's such a great name."

Write the words first

During that same Brighton workshop, Ian explains why he never starts with the fancy version: "if you try and make it fancy you'll either spell it wrong or you won't fit it all in or you'll do both."

So he writes the words in plain, ordinary letters first, usually in pencil. That gives him the size and the spacing before any style goes on. On Tanners he pencils the shop name inside the space the sign will take up: "That's nice doing it in pencil, because it means I've just about fitted it on."

And if a word still won't fit, he rearranges it. On a street sign for Beeches Lane, he stacks Beeches on top of Lane "so it fits in with the picture better."

Two lettering techniques from USC+ training

In one of the USC+ training lessons, Ian shows two ways of turning plain letters into sign lettering. He uses words you'll find in almost any town: FOR SALE and ICE CREAM.

Chunky letters

For FOR SALE, he writes the word in capitals with a brush pen. Then he goes back and thickens it.

"So you start off just by writing it, and then I'm going to thicken it, but I'm not thickening it in quite the same way all the way around. Can you see? Some parts are a little bit thicker than others."

Next he draws round the letters with a fine liner, using the brush pen marks as a guide. Then a darker brush pen goes behind them: "A bit like a shadow, and it just makes it a little bit more three-dimensional."

Three-dimensional letters

For ICE CREAM, he starts the other way round. He draws the letters in three dimensions with a fine liner from the start. Then he shades the gaps between them with a brush pen, so the shading connects the letters together.

Practise on a spare page

Ian's advice is to try both on a spare page before you use them in a sketch: "Practice it first." Once you've had a go at FOR SALE, he says, you can take the same style to "a different word, a different name. Could be a street sign or could be the name of a shop."

Our USC+ members did exactly that.

A 0.05, a 0.3 and plenty of patience

You don't need a special pen for lettering. Ian uses the fine liners he draws everything else with, and picks the size to suit the sign.

The Smugglers pub in Robin Hood's Bay shares its corner with an ice cream shop, and there are signs and boards everywhere. Ian letters them with "my thinnest pen. This is the 0.05." Then he swaps to a 0.3 for "the black negative space around" the letters, and he's honest that this part "takes quite a lot of time."

On Church Street in Shrewsbury, he letters the Wildlife Rescue sign with a 0.3 to make the words stand out. Then he adds, "I could quite easily do this with a point two and it would still be absolutely fine."

Light on dark, or dark on light

Real signs come both ways. Some are dark letters painted on a pale board. Others are pale letters on a dark one. Ian swaps between the two depending on what the sketch needs.

At Tanners, he fills the gaps between the letters in black so the words read as light on dark. The real Tanners sign is gold, but as Ian says, "I haven't got any gold paint."

In Chinatown in New York, he paints the space behind the Chinese writing on the banners, leaving the letters white: "we've got a white lettering against the dark background so I'm just trying to reverse the two really and hopefully it'll just look visually more interesting."

And on Church Street, he reverses the Wildlife Rescue sign on purpose, just to show you can. Perspective, he says, needs care. Lettering is different. Once you've marked out the space it's going to take up, "You can really kind of play around with this part."

Make the lettering match the rest of your sketch

A sign drawn in a different style from everything around it sticks out. In the USC+ lesson, Ian says the lettering "has to fit and marry in with the style" of your sketch, "otherwise it just doesn't work."

That's why he doesn't make his letters too tidy. Back at the Smugglers, he explains: "Don't want it to be too sort of neat and precise, 'cause obviously it's got to be compatible with the rest of the picture."

Finishing the Laurel Inn sign, he sums it up: "lettering and drawing, they're all part of the same visual language."

Painting letters with a rigger brush

Lettering doesn't have to be all pen. On Brighton Pier, Ian paints some of the letters with a rigger, a long thin brush he describes as "sort of ideal for drawing in paint."

Then he does something that's easy to miss. Once the paint has dried a little, he goes back over the edges of the letters with clean water to soften them: "this is just to bring the lettering back into the picture, so it's not floating in space, it's integrated back into the scene."

Check your spelling (yes, really)

This one catches everybody, Ian included.

"When you concentrate like this on lettering, you always spell it wrong," he says at the Laurel Inn. In the USC+ lesson he puts it down to concentration: "you focus so much on the style of doing it, you end up misspelling it."

So Ian checks as he goes. Lettering the Dollies sweet shop sign in Robin Hood's Bay, he spells it out, D-O-L-L-I-E-S, and adds, "make sure we spell Dollies correctly."

Once the style's on, read your sign back letter by letter.

Leave time for the lettering

Ian often leaves the lettering until near the end. At Lower Bunbury, with the road signs still to do, he admits, "I've been putting this off, but it's the final little bit that needs to be done."

But once the sketch is built and the space for each sign is marked out, the lettering is where he slows down and enjoys himself. On Church Street he calls it "the bit which you can treat yourself to." On Wyle Cop in Shrewsbury, shading round the letters on a whisky board, he describes where his head goes:

"So whenever I'm doing this kind of lettering, I go really quiet because I'm just totally switched off. I'm just completely in the zone."

Here's what that looks like in a student's sketchbook. Wendy P drew this at our Brighton retreat, with SM5 painted on the boat, a Jellied Eels board and The Old Net Loft over the door.

Try it next time you're out

Before you choose your spot, walk the street and look for one sign. A pub board, a street name, a menu chalked up by a door.

1. Pencil the words in plain letters, inside the space the sign will take up.
2. Check they fit. If they don't, stack them or squeeze them.
3. Go over them in pen, chunky or three-dimensional.
4. Decide whether the sign reads light on dark or dark on light, and fill in the space to match.
5. Read it back, letter by letter

Ready to learn more?

Want to watch Ian do this from start to finish? He letters the Tanners, Church Street and Wyle Cop signs in our Beginner’s course , all three filmed on the streets of Shrewsbury

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