3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

Owl Ink - 3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

 

Summer is here and that means… lots of pretty wedding calligraphy!

I recently created a set of 8 wedding-related calligraphy and watercolor graphics for a project, and thought I’d share 3 out of the set as a free clipart sampler.

They were created with brush pen on watercolor paper, scanned, and cleaned up in Photoshop. (side note: for a tutorial that covers how to clean up lettering in Photoshop, check out my post on How to Add Lettering to a Photo)

Owl Ink - 3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

If you are anything like me, a LOT of your friends are getting married right now. Make some pretty art as a gift for the newlywed couple! You can also try printing them out onto cards or labels.

Here are some examples of art I made with these 3 clipart files. I had fun practicing my graphic design skills on these :)

All images are from Unsplash, my favorite resource for beautiful free stock photos.

Scroll down for the link to download these files!

 

Owl Ink - 3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

 

Owl Ink - 3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

 

Owl Ink - 3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

 

Owl Ink - 3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

 

Owl Ink - 3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

 

Owl Ink - 3 Free Wedding Calligraphy Downloads

 

You can download them HERE. Feel free to remix, modify, and alter these clipart files ~BUT~ personal projects only please– do not use them in anything you intend to sell.  I made these with my own time and I hope you can respect the creative process :) Many thanks and hope you enjoy!

 

Owl Ink Tutorials: How to Add Lettering to a Photo

How to Add Lettering to a Photo

 

Today I will show you how to add lettering art to a photograph! This is a neat way to create custom graphics for your blog, portfolio, Instagram… or just for fun!

In this example, I will be using a personal photo. If you don’t have any nice photos on hand, a great place to pick up some high-res creative commons photos is Unsplash.

 


 

Create Your Lettering

 

Here, I used the Akashiya New Fude Brush to create a loose, dry brush script. I chose a segment from this quotation by John Muir:

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

I made a few different versions to choose from. Since we will be editing our lettering in Photoshop, it’s ok if some letterforms aren’t perfect! Little imperfections, like smudges or lopsided letters, can all be fixed.

 

Lettering on Photos

 

If you have a scanner, scan and save your image. If not, no worries! I do all my “scanning” with my iPhone camera. Just Dropbox/iCloud/email it to yourself to get it on your computer.

 


 

Edit Your Lettering

 

Open your lettering in Photoshop. It might look pretty dark and messy, but here’s where Photoshop magic comes in!

First, open up some adjustment layers and play around with the sliders until the image has a pretty clear contrast between black and white.

I usually use one or a combination of these adjustments:

  • Curves: This is the QUICKEST fix, but it doesn’t always work. In the Curves adjustment layer, simply click the “white” eyedropper and then click on any part of your photo that is supposed to be white. (Sometimes this washes out your image, especially if your photo was taken with uneven lighting, like mine. In this case, I didn’t use curves.)
  • Saturation: Slide saturation down to remove the yellow from indoor lighting.
  • Levels: Move the two sliders around until the black/white contrast is more clear.

I used Levels to edit this photo. You can watch me do it here!

 

imagelevels

 

Now you can delete your white background easily!

  • Go to the Magic Wand tool.
  • Make sure  “Anti-Alias” is selected.  (This makes the result less jagged)
  • Make sure “Contiguous” is NOT selected. (Contiguous means it will only select pixels that are connected. For example, it wouldn’t get the white space in the middle of the letter O, because it’s isolated.)
  • Click anywhere on your white background. You’ll see some little “marching ants”, which shows what you’ve selected to delete.
  • Hit delete!

You can watch me do it here:

 

removebackground

 

« Note: be sure to save periodically :)  »

 


 

Compose Your Lettering

 

Now that we’ve isolated our letters, it’s time to compose our final piece.

  • If you made multiple versions, pick which one you want to use.
  • Using a selection tool like the lasso, select and delete the ones you don’t want.
  • Tweak the letters to your liking. In this example, I didn’t like how “Go” looked like it was leaning too far to the left, but I liked its shape. I just cut out “Go” using the lasso tool, and rotated it (Ctrl-T to rotate) until it looked better.

You can watch me do it here:

 

transformtext

 

Now you are ready to put the lettering on your photo!

 


 

Combine Lettering and Photo

 

Here’s my favorite part: putting it all together!

  • Copy your lettering art and paste it on top of your photo.
  • Move the lettering layer until you are satisfied with the position.
  • Make any final tweaks to the spacing/sizing.

Since my photo is dark, I want to make the text white so it pops. Here’s an easy way to do that!

  • Right click on your lettering layer and select “Blending Options”.
  • Tick the box for “Color Overlay”.
  • The default color overlay  is red — change this to white.
  • Click OK.

You can watch me do it here:

 

whitetext

 

Save and admire your finished work! :)

 

goquietly

 

This post was made with Recordit, an awesome screen-to-gif software I just discovered. It’s super easy to use and I’d highly recommend it.

(I’m not affiliated with Recordit, I just thought it was really cool and wanted to share)

Owl Ink Inspiration Boards

I wanted to share some inspiration behind the site! I love reading design blogs that share their clients’ inspiration boards; in particular, I recently enjoyed THIS ONE by Breanna Rose and THIS ONE by Noirve. It’s a great way to peek into the design process — how ideas form, starting with images and color palettes, and evolve into the final product.

So, here is my inspiration board for Owl Ink!

Owl Ink Inspiration Board

I really like birds in general, but owls are my favorite! Since I wanted the name “Owl Ink”, I thought I’d stick with the nature theme and use a color palette that is inspired by the forest and mountains — an owl’s natural environment! I had fun looking for the perfect images that depict my vision for the site. The three images were found on Pinterest, and unfortunately did not link to actual sources.

In terms of fonts… well, first I had an ambitious idea to hand-letter my own font, but quickly realized I did not have that much experience yet… so I will likely save that for a future project/blog post.  Of all the free script fonts I found, I loved the slightly sharp, yet still graceful feel of Roskrift, so that’s my logo font until I can hand-letter my own! I am currently crushing pretty hard on Montserrat (it’s all over my personal blog), so that was a no-brainer. Then I picked two sans-serif fonts for the body text. It appears that Quicksand only shows up on certain browsers, so the slightly taller Trebuchet MS is my second pick.

For my logo,  I really wanted to tie the “OWL” side and the “INK” side together. I knew some awesome pen and ink related logos off the top of my head already, so i just went on dribbble.com to find some inspiring owl logos and icons.

Owl Ink Logo Inspiration

1. The Pen Addict 2. Wise Design by Mike Bruner 3. Owl Icon by Nicholas Petersen 4. Fountain Pen Day

I sketched a few ideas out in pen and pencil (A Uni-ball Signo and a soft Palomino Blackwing — my new favorite sketching pencil :D) and thought of different ways to tie the concept, name, and visuals together into one cohesive logo.  I had the idea of combining the body of the owl with a pen nib, and went from there. You can see here that the owl evolved quite a bit before I settled on the current style!

I hope you enjoyed this peek into my creative process! Thank you for reading! :)