Tag: Hand-drawn Fonts

Fontself

drawing a typeface

The Fontself font creation program enables you to draw and scan a font or to draw each letter on the iPad as a vector image.

my first fontself font

What I’d like to do is draw the font on paper and then convert it to a vector font, as bitmap fonts are rather limited compared to regular fonts.

bitmap font creation

So far, I either end up with a bitmap font or an error message informing me that my particular version of vector image isn’t acceptable to Fontself.

vectorised image
Vectorised photograph, reduced to 26 colours in Adobe Illustrator for iPad

I’m sure that I’ll work it out and in the process I’m learning a bit about Adobe Illustrator, such as how to vectorise an image using ‘vectorize’ on the iPad version or ‘Image Trace’ on the Mac.

Link

Fontself

Adobe Illustrator

Like Trees in November

Like Trees in November

I used the typeface Bondini Italic (just visible through the layout paper) as the basis of my font.
I used the typeface Bondini Italic (just visible through the layout paper) as the basis of my font.

As a starting point for this hand-drawn font I’ve taken a character from Watership Down: Cowslip, an effete but vaguely sinister rabbit, given to reciting poetry, including ‘Like Trees in November’, which provides the title for the Cowslip’s Warren chapter in the Richard Adams’ book.

I got to know this character when I spent two or three months drawing the backgrounds for the Cowslip’s Warren scene for Martin Rosen’s 1978 movie. I drew in dip pen in Indian ink, which I felt answered the brief of ‘creating the atmosphere of a claustrophobic Victorian vicarage’. Another background artist added the colour.

Filling in.
Filling in.

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