Letterbashing

[Bill Gill]

Thanks, Greenie. You're right, Corel Draw can do everything and probably more that Inkscape can do. Corel is an excellent program. I mentioned Inkscape (and previously GIMP) because both are free, open source, work on PC and Mac, and are accessible to modelers like me with a very limited modeling budget.

I'm still learning what GIMP can do. For me it seems very similar to Photoshop, although you will read widely varying opinions on that. That is not the point, however. If you have Corel and Photoshop, you can do everything shown here, they are the tool, not the technique. Inkscape has been on my computer for some time, but I've just started using it and finding what it can do. Right now I'm still stumbling along and some of the methods I've come up with at present are awkward and more complicated than need be, this is a technique in progress.

Both GIMP and Inkscape also have a tracing feature, which also sort of works. A lot depends on the contrast and resolution of the image being traced. In the color photo of F.B. Peck Coal Co. above, none of the tracing tools would give a usable copy of the letters.

Beyond copying and tracing, one basic idea behind "Letterbashing' is that you can also create original signs that look hand lettered instead of computer generated. The 'LETTERBASHING' sign on the brickwall above is a simple example. The computer font letters were individually tweaked in a way that a sign painter might do it to to fit the space they are in. That example was done with GIMP for a workshop I presented. Small differences were introduced to most of the letters so that no two are exactly identical. An understanding of handlettering's capabilities compared to typography is fundamental and that is the very core of the "Letterbashing" approach. Voyager noticed that the two "O"s in the Peck Coal sign were different and postulated that the sign painter probably couldn't back up far enough to see his work. That's very possible. Deliberate asthetic adjustments combined with accidental variations are what gives hand lettering its distinctive look.

What I am finding with Inkscape is that subtle or major differences between letters like that example can be achieved with more control than using GIMP. The oval with ' "The D&H" Lakawanna Anthracite' is an example. That was done by vectorizing one of the orange and black circular signs, tweaking and reshaping it. That was much easier than constructing it letter by letter as I would have done with GIMP. And as mentioned, once that lettering had been created, the whole sign could readily be adjusted for size without compromising the resolution of the letters - so for example, Voyager could create the lettering for his truck and then resize it for the wall of the shop where the truck comes from. That's an unlikely case, but you get the idea. With GIMP the range an image can be resized is more limited.

Depending on the scale personal small muscle control and other factors, modelers may not be able to actually handletter a convincing sign. This is a developing technique that I hope can help address that. All suggestions and comments are welcome.

Greenie, What do you do for signs? The NEB&W has an ALPS printer, but no driver. In the past they printed some excellent entire brick wall decals that included both actual signs and added signs.

[voyager]

Without hijacking this too much  this is the Mack in 1/25th. The trailer lettering was hand painted in one shot onto clear decal paper then applied. With weathering, I think it looks "ok" but the door and hood lettering was too small for me to paint so as I say, they were hand drawn onto A4 paper and scanned into Word and printed onto white decal paper on my inkjet printer. Of course the red "fill" was drawn in so the shading is different to the paint plus there is a white edge where the paper is cut I had to touch up. So Russ' first comment of getting them printed on an Alps is probably the best solution!







The new project is the Emhar Bedford tow truck.

[Bill Gill]

Voyager, Not hijacking at all. Thanks for joining in. Nice lettering, nice truck.

I saw your photos of the lettering and logo on the cab and your hand drawn design master for the door. They look pretty good to me. How much larger is your drawing than the decal?

Besides printing on an ALPS, another option that can work with your ink jet printer is to paint a white circle on the door that is a hair smaller than the outside red ring around the design. Print you design on clear decal paper and apply over the white circle. That will hide the white edge.

If you are not happy with the way the lettering itself looks, you can use your design as a template and revise it using GIMP and/or Inkscape (or whatever similar programs you might have).

The scroll and the circle are fairly elaborate designs on the cab. The signpainter who would have done them would have been a skilled craftsman. That can be an advantage because any differences in the individual letters would be the result of deliberate adjustments rather than accidental mistakes. Good type faces with small alterations can work well there.

One source I like for identifying type styles is   Identifont: http://www.identifont.com/   It can help you find type styles similar to the lettering you want as a starting point for fiddling with them to look closer.

You can find many free fonts online, some very fancy that would pass as truck lettering - CAUTION: several graphic artists have warned that many online free fonts come with malware. I have not downloaded any fonts, so cannot substantiate or disprove that warning, but pass it along as a cautionary note.

You can probably find or adapt fonts already on your computer to look very close to your design. A complete explanation of how to do that is a bit much for posting here at this time, but if you are interested, email me. I can give you more information. to get started. a lot of it is

[voyager]

Thanks Bill. The door logo was on A4 so around 8" across but reduced to around 3/4" on the decal. Obviously this hides some of the descrepancies in my artwork but still gives a "one off" feel, although I did use the same design on both doors as you can't see both at once to compare! The scroll on the hood is handed so they were done individually. The idea of painting a white background for the decal is a good one, thanks for that.

[Bill Gill]

On Saturday, May 30th I'll be doing a workshop on Letterbashing at the New England/Northeast Railroad Prototype Modelers Meet in Collinsville, Connecticut http://www.neprototypemeet.com/Welcome.html
There'll be some background on signpainting, comparisons of type vs handpainting, and an introduction to using GIMP and Inkscape for making model signs for all scales and time periods.
I'm not a signpainter, but here are some 1:1 signs I did at a history museum:

[marc_reusser]

Cool.

[Ray Dunakin]

Nice work. What museum is this?

[SandiaPaul]

Nice signs Bill and yes where is this?

[Bill Gill]

Thanks, Marc, Ray & SandiaPaul, it's Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT.
Here's the lettering project that was the biggest challenge there, and in a way it started the whole concept of "Letterbashing". I had to paint the name on the transom while standing on a scaffold on a raft as both the raft and the Morgan danced to their own tunes.
An initial paper pattern for the name was made with, for that time, 'cutting edge' technology using a Gerber Scientific Signmaker plotter. Using old photos of the Morgan, I modified the plotted letters to be as close to what was in the photos as I could. I'm not a skilled letterer or signpainter, so to have drawn the pattern from scratch would have taken more time than allowed to finish the job. I didn't think about it again until several years later after noticing some model signs just lacked a certain handlettered look that, at least to me, made them more interesting to look at.

[Allan G]

For someone who's not a sign painter (or is a sign painter) your work is great! Allan