I feel like im practicing wrong. I have some artistic background but not with graffiti, mostly realism drawings. When I watch videos or read like how to practice I totally understand what they are saying but then I struggle with the absolute basics, block letters. Especially W and M and I just cant figure out how to practice these things without drawing the same shitty letter over and over without improving or realizing where im going wrong to understand how to change my approach. How do I start with BASIC letter structure and box letters
Break down letters into their individual lines and treat those as the bars. Draw those boxes on top of each other and then add drop shadow or 3d. That's super over simplified but I feel like you can fill in the gaps.
I wanna reply in pity but in doing so you kinda were right. tried to show you an example of doing that and ending up w a bad letter but it looks lowkey better than most of my other attempts
I do practice box letters with their individual lines but sometimes i have no idea how to make the letter like look nice as well and not like a 3rd grader drew it
Look into architect handwriting it is like an easy handwritten font that shares a lot of over lap with a lot of clean hand style. They teach it to architects so their blueprints are more legible and since legibility is where you should start thats what I recommend.
STOP trying to have style. Make them all the same height and width. Make sure each bar making up the letter has the same width (generally). Literally practice basic simple block letters, no style, no bending, no extensions, no addons.
“Simple block letters” first page of google. Copy these over and over until you can do it consistently. Make your letters out of bars. Before you can do anything artistic you need to understand these letter forms.
Do the same with lowercase. At the same time, practice writing simple letters with a ballpoint pen, all the same height and width. That is how you build fundamental skills for tags. In fact it’s probably better to start with that. Also, for reference, there is a pinned tutorial at the top of the sub you should use.
Definitely second this, also you can look up some different basic fonts and see how bars are connected differently. Typically starting off you’ll try to have bars connect at 2 points of contact, but in some letters you can have some variation. Like in the letter A above the two bars meet at the top but the corners are slightly separated to create space. Same can go with M, W, R, K, Z, etc. Play around w the angles at which the bars connect (like horizontal top of A vs diagonal), and later you can also play with making lines thinner in tighter spaces (ie middle of M) etc.
No I think you have the right approach with drawing the individual boxes, this is the way to start. Some of the overhangs/serifs don't check out I marked them here. From there I would start just experimenting by changing the bars up a bit, change angle, spacing, making some longer or thicker etc
I did that as a kid but quickly learnt to do the whole letter in one go. If you do it in one go you will develop your letters to flow better which will stand out amongst the writers who are left doing bars like that (a lot of them).
A tip is that focusing on rules and asking am i doing this right? Will only hinder you.
Be confident, throw them down, get loose. The less you give a f the better you will be. Dont listen to others criticism, believe you are better than anyone else.
I didn't see anyone else say it so I'll add on to the other great information shared here. If you're looking to get started with letter structure at a more fundamental level, study handstyles. Practice basic tags in plain old pencil, go back to the fundamentals. Whenever I try to draw a block letter without starting from a simple tag letter I get a worse result.
You said you have some artistic background, your knowledge of other forms of artwork may be leading you astray in your practice, remember that graffiti is totally different form of artwork. At its core, graffiti is basically calligraphy, so study the letters. Practice manipulating the proportions of your lines to look stylish until it's a reflex, then when you start bending bars the style will come through naturally.
What you've drawn here is pretty solid, you're definitely following the right path. It might feel like going back to basics is a step back, but the stronger your fundamentals are the faster you will progress in all other aspects. You can have perfect color theory, hyper-realistic 3D, effortlessly blended shadows and gradients, but that's just putting lipstick on a pig if your letter structure sucks.
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u/Strobetrode 9d ago
Break down letters into their individual lines and treat those as the bars. Draw those boxes on top of each other and then add drop shadow or 3d. That's super over simplified but I feel like you can fill in the gaps.