The Ultimate Brush Lettering Guide: A Complete Step-by-Step Creative Workbook to Jump-Start Modern Calligraphy Skills

Ok let me start by saying this review is based on flip through first impressions:1. CON - It's so friggin hard to read...like it's hurting my eyes to try to digest what is written on the pages because every single text in the book in in either a handwritten CAPITAL LETTER FONT, or in script!! And the lines spacing is very close together making it a strain to read. Like whattt?! I had to put the book down several times because of this frustration. If this book is ever reprinted, please consider using a standard san serif font and then script/handlettering so it stands out. Really takes away from the book. Less is more.2. PRO - lots and lots of practical great quality content. If you can get past #13. Great guide for beginners to intermediate, with tutorials and practice pagesOverall: I don't know if I'd recommend it because #1 is a huge distraction for me. But at the same time I really want to improve my lettering so I plan to keep it.Hope this helps :-)

I was excited to get this book and upon my first flip through I immediately thought it was a cheap bootleg or something. The cover looks like a poor quality photo copy and the pages are all pixellated like they were printed off a sad old home printer. I'm not even exaggerating. The entire book is in all CAPS lettering style and made me cross eyed after one page. I can't imagine someone holding this in their hands and saying yes print it up. I'm so dissapointed.

It's a badly produced book full of great information. I'm all excited about playing with my new brush pens now.Problems with the physical book:- at least five typos, one misaligned subheader, and a weird phantom half-printed image in one spot- printed on thin paper (not good when you're going to be photocopying practice pages; you can totally see through to the other side)- is designed in black and gray, and many many of the small gray details are difficult to make outOne of the Amazon reviews was complaining about the whole thing being written in brush lettering. I thought that would annoy me, too, but it wound up being fine. I enjoyed seeing the various ways information could be arranged with this particular art form. It's all readable, except for a couple of really elaborate example words.The information and ideas in this book are great for beginners. Even though it needs better editing and art direction, it makes me happy, and I think it'll be a good start to what will hopefully be a fun hobby.

Such a fun book! It's very well put together, albeit a little busy. But LOTS of examples of stuff to learn/try, which is great.*DON'T get the Kindle version though. I thought it would be nice to be able to have it on my iPad, but the pages aren't formatted correctly so each page I had to zoom in just to read it! Plus I couldn't figure out how to print the practice pages either and those are kind of necessary! So I returned the Kindle one and bought the physical book.

Peggy Dean is a natural teacher, it seems, and really knows how to help a person start from the BEGINNING, as in, starting with no art training. (So many other, albeit lovely offerings, jump in in the middle - argh!) NOTE: This book had an earlier edition, self-published by The Pigeon Letters. Some of the reviews here must be referring to that edition with complaints about readability, paper quality, etc. THIS EDITION: Professionally published by Watson-Guptill, with all the great content re-set more spaciously, regular book print for the text, and retaining plenty of beautiful brush letter illustrations and exercises. You can feel Peggy’s presence coming right through the page, accompanying you along the way and showing you the brush lettering ropes in a coherent, encouraging way, and without the “TMI” of many other books on the topic I have seen.Highly recommend starting with this book for a successful entry into brush lettering. The solid foundation and enjoyment you gain will prepare you well for further exploration.

Love everything Peggy does, and have been wanting this book for a long time. I am so happy with it, and have only scratched the surface! So much information and great inspiration. Here's an example of my faux botanical calligraphy (used for a Harry Potter challenge I'm doing) first go at it, after using Peggy's book 😍💜💗🌿

This is such a great purchase. I have been noticing all the cool hand lettering stuff on Pinterest and Instagram for a while now, and I've been wanting to give it a try myself but I haven't known where to begin. I was looking for a basic intro and this popped up. I've tried a few others but they seem too complicated and I never actually got around to it. What I love about this book is that it's so user friendly. I would recommend photocopying the 5 blank practice pages as suggested in the book cuz the pages are quite thin. The projects are cool though and I've started making a fun banner for my friend's birthday!

Fantastic guide (get the real book not kindle version!) there is so much more than I expected in here. Loads of room to practice for yourself. It's recommended that you get some tracing paper so you can use the sheets again and again. I'd recommend ordering this at the same time so unlike me you don't have to wait around when the book arrives! There's lots of extras in here like banners, line drawings and embossing tips and so many types of lettering styles so you can find the one best for you.Initially I was a little worried the paper was too thin but I have had no problems at all with it (just don't use sharpies!)I use my pentel fuse touch sign brush pen with this book and it's a perfect size and quite reasonably priced. I'd recommend ordering this together as you'll want to get started as soon as the book arrives!This is the only proper letting/ calligraphy guide I've bought and I am pretty confident I've made the right choice! The principles Peggy teaches are also useful to apply to watercolour lettering and pointed pen calligraphy.Overall I love it and it's worth the money!

I am so disappointed with this book. For £14 pounds I was expecting something of a higher quality. This feels very cheap. A thin flimsy cover, mine arrived bent, with dog eared corners. The print quality is extremely poor - the brush lettering is all fuzzy/pixelated and very hard to read. I have also found a few errors where the text hasn't been formatted correctly, with blocks of brush lettering over-lapping the typed text. The poor quality of the product completely takes away from the content, if this had been cheaper then I would have been happy, but I feel I could have got a much better quality product for this price. This is the first product I will be returning to Amazon, I've never felt so disappointed with a purchase before.

I have wanted to try brush lettering for some time so when I saw this book on Instagram I decided to buy it. I'm so glad I did. I'm making progress already, practicing for an hour or so each evening. Peggy explains the processes very clearly and is obviously passionate about modern calligraphy. I really recommend this book!

This book gets you off to a good start with a clear and well explained guide to lettering using a brush pen or marker. It gives you an excellent start to the basics of lettering, but not much colour or adventure so I've bought another book for inspiration called 'Doodling Art and Lettering' to plug the gap.

Great guide! Really helpful tips. I recommend buying extra paper or a book to practice in. Also really recommend following the author on Instagram for amazing inspiration and tips.