This was a great guide to learning about lettering and calligraphy, starting from the materials need to projects to have a go at, which I did! It will please anyone artistic, beginners included.

This book has lots of fun types of hand lettering. It was fun to go through it and try them out. I found some new favourites that I will be using in upcoming art projects of mine.
I would recommend to anyone looking for ideas or just looking to perfect their hand lettering craft.

5 out 5 stars

This was my first Calligraphy book every.

The part of the book I really enjoyed was the History on types of Calligraphy.

I have realized that I suck at Calligraphy and I gave up.

But overall if you new to CAlligraphy then this will teach you all the ins and outs.

Just practice.

I have always been interested in calligraphy, but my regular handwriting hasn't even been pretty. I enjoyed this book because it starts out helping me first informing me of the tools I need to create beautiful letters or letterforms. Then it goes into great details on how to create such beautiful special effects of different types in lettering. There are even more ideas in creative handwriting that I thought about. Now I don't know if I'll ever be able to create such beautiful lettering, but this guide will be very helpful. I know it is inspiring and give me hope that with work it is possible for me -- you too, perhaps.

This was a decent guide but it didn’t help me as well as I’d hope it would have. Still looking for a good hand lettering tutorial for newbies.

My Review: This was an easy to follow guide for beginners and those with skills. I really liked the practice sheets. I ended up grabbing a finished copy of this one to take a real good look at it because the eARC was kind of choppy. I do wish that the practice sheets would have given us a little more but for what I got it worked. If you are looking for something that is for both the novice and not so novice check this one out. Because this one is great for all skill levels.

This book was a great step by step introduction to hand lettering and calligraphy. Different tools and techniques were outlined throughout.

It always makes me proud to see fellow Filipino artists get recognition internationally. It's probably a Filipino-thing. LOL. Anyway, I've been to one of Abbey Sy's workshops in Manila and her passion for lettering is contagious and inspiring.

I have her first book and use it as references for my own lettering journey. And this book is definitely a great addition to my collection of art references.

I feel like a proud momma bear seeing all the other artists whom I follow on Instagram, especially Geli Balcruz whom I also attended a workshop on calligraphy, show their works to the world!

A must have book for anyone who is interested in exploring lettering and calligraphy, this book has tons of tips and activities that can help hobbyists and artists alike to discover different ways to expand their knowledge of the art.

Wow--This book was SO inspiring, it really gets those creative juices flowing! One of the most important thing about master any of these forms of lettering is PRACTICE, and I feel like having this book is an asset for that, because whenever you need inspiration to practice, you can flip through these beautiful pages and get inspired all over again! This book is very thorough, in my opinion. It covers quite a lot of ground. It addresses a little bit of history, tools and materials, various styles of lettering and "industry" terminology. It then goes on to provide instruction in 4 different types of lettering--classic calligraphy, modern hand lettering, decorative lettering and digital lettering. Each section also includes some actual project ideas for additional inspiration as well, which I didn't expect but really liked. The book finishes with about 40 practice sheets, a section on resources, a glossary and an index at the back. ONE CAVEAT: I have a digital edition of the book, which is glorious and how I prefer the vast majority of my books these days; however, this is one book that I highly recommend you pick up in the physical format. Primarily for the practice sheets, but also for physically tracing various pages and quotes for additional practice. You're paying for the practice sheets, and while you can usually print from digital books, not all formats allow for this, and it's just not the same as the sheets provided. Just a suggestion.

At any rate, for anyone interested in learning about hand or digital lettering, I thought this was an excellent resource. I'm left handed, so I am finding lettering especially challenging; the beauty of the photos in this book is helping me stick with my practice.

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.

With the recent interest in hand lettering and calligraphy, this book will do very well commercially. Full of clear, simple advice and great illustrations, it will be popular with anyone looking to fancy up their invitations and signs. Well done.

Here are some of my thoughts on this one… I thought the author did a great job with helping to get those creative juices flowing in the marketing/creating/inspiration area of helping to influence the projects I am interested in doing. IN addition to amazing lettering options, this author added nice drawings that can be added to dress-up whatever I am working on. She added some card-making ideas to which I could add my lettering, too. Beyond all those wonderful things, my favorite part of the book was the corkboard ideas and the wood slabs. Those were very inspirational and I hope to make something soon.
I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

SUCH A BEAUTIFUL BOOK!!

The Complete Photo Guide to Hand Lettering and Calligraphy is one of the best lettering books I've read(and seen). I can't think in another lettering book so complete like this one. Whether you are a newbie or an expert in calligraphy and lettering and want to improve your skills, this book will surely help you. Not only has practice sheets and teaches you alphabets and techniques, but gives you examples to add special details to your creations, whether you like hand or digital lettering, and boost your creativity.
The book is really easy to follow, it has clear steps, many pictures and gives you inspiration with projects of other artists(like Risa Rodil, I love her). Really, really awesome and practical if you are a beginner(I was so bad at lettering but reading this book and putting in practice some things helped me T-T

This book is a well written and easy to use guide to hand lettering and calligraphy. The instructions are very clear, the photographs are very helpful and the examples are beautiful. The only problem I had with it was that I was reading an ebook and it would be much more useful to have a physical copy of the book.

This is an easy-to-follow guide full of beautiful pictures and helpful instruction. I am an absolute beginner in hand lettering and calligraphy. I can't say that this book made my skill perfect, but I was surprised at how good my writing looked following this guide. Practice will make perfect, and I'll continue to use the book as a guide to perfect my skill in the future!

This is the second hand lettering book that I've reviewed here on my blog. The other was Lettering with Purpose.

The Complete Photo Guide to Hand Lettering and Calligraphy had short chapters and sections dedicated to more than just hand lettering. There were sections on the history and different types of calligraphy, fonts and font types, and even a section for digital lettering. The history bits were actually interesting to me where history isn't always my favorite subject.

I particularly think the section about digital lettering will be helpful in the future. Although I love the look of hand created art, I'm also quite a perfectionist. Digital renderings allow you to take art you've hand drawn and perfect it. Unfortunately this requires Adobe Illustrator which is quite expensive. This is likely not something you'd want to pay for a hobby alone, but if you were hoping to sell your art pieces then it might be worth the investment. Personally, I'm not quite there yet.

I didn't have some of the tools needed in order to actually practice some of the calligraphy styles, but that's okay with me for now. I can see myself investing in them in the future. For now, I'm practicing brush lettering. The book highly suggests that you use practice and drills to acquire muscle memory, but I didn't feel like this was emphasized quite enough. When I first got interested in hand lettering, I jumped right in trying to create hand lettered quotes or pieces of art, but I just didn't have the fundamentals down. I'm still very much learning, but I've taken to doing drills every day and I can actually feel the difference in the muscle memory that I'm creating even if my drawings aren't anything I'd want to share yet. All of this to say that once I feel a bit more accomplished in the style I'm working on now, I'd like to branch out to some of the other styles and fonts featured in this book.

Even though I said drills weren't emphasized, approximately 40 pages of this book are actually practice sheets. In my opinion, that is quite a lot of practice sheets included. This is a pro in my opinion for those looking to purchase this book. For me, they weren't as helpful as they could be because my review copy was an Adobe Digital Editions version with the function to print turned off. Sure, I can mimic the drills as best as possible simply by looking at my computer screen and trying to copy on my own paper, but a bit of the purpose and functionality of the practice sheets is lost in doing so. I will say that even with 40 practice sheets, that's basically one sheet per style...this isn't a book that has pages upon pages for you to practice one style. The book just covers so many styles and fonts that each style taking up one-two pages is this long.

In the section for hand lettering (or brush lettering), I didn't find any real new information for me. But that's okay. This book covered so many other styles and fonts that I found plenty new (to me) information in the other chapters. The Complete Photo Guide to Hand Lettering and Calligraphy gets 4 Stars. Have you read The Complete Photo Guide to Hand Lettering and Calligraphy? What did you think? Let me know!

Really enjoyable guide to hand lettering and calligraphy. It was easy to follow and had a range of techniques to try. Would recommend!

I was so excited to get this for review and then my mind changed by page 16. The color palette of this book is so off. The green is so bright that I had to adjust my iPad screen and found myself adjusting more I made my way through the book. I was hoping for more of a "photo" guide and hand lettering tutorial. Page 21 is directly from the internet and typed into Microsoft Word, at least that's the way it looks. Then I moved onto the Anatomy section and I was like, yes they finally get it. Only to be let down again in the Using Traditional Tools section which most of us already know how to do. Page 37 once again has pictures that all blend together that I have a difficult time separating the "paper" choices. I would work on the pictures, tone of colors in them.

*I received this book from NetGally in exchange for an honest review.

This book is an extremely good and practical book. As someone with horrible handwriting, I was looking forward to the chance to review this book, and I must say I loved it! The one drawback I had was that it seemed a little advanced for me- as I was starting with no knowledge of hand lettering or calligraphy. I found my footing though and thought Sy did a great job explaining the different techniques and showing them throughout the book!

I thoroughly enjoyed flipping through the pages of this hand lettering book. I have loved the art of calligraphy since I was young and found a dreamy watercolor piece with a lyrical quote that fascinated me in my basement; it was an art project done by my dad when he was in high school,

Now, about ten years later, my younger sister has taken an interest in hand lettering. Modern calligraphy is full of thick brush strokes, but the sharp angles of flat-tip dip pens is striking in its own way.

Also, look at me knowing the names of hand lettering tools! All thanks to Abbey Sy's conversational tone. I loved the learning experience - I came into this book knowing nothing except that I like to look at pretty lettering!

Black letter and italic fonts remind me of my dad. Brush pens and chalk remind me of my sister. Sy covers the broad spectrum of lettering in this book, so I was able to learn more about the different styles.

The best part is that the book includes practice sheets that you could write directly on (or copy and print so that you can reuse) and also has many different projects for which to use your newfound lettering skills.
I may end up attempting a few of the projects because they're irresistible. The journals are so cute!

Definitely give this one a read, even if you are not an artsy person by nature. Sy will guide you through it!

This book is so helpful! My handwriting still isn’t great but... it got better! Haha, but seriously thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this book, I found it really worked for me!