Tonight's the Night to Fake It

Or tomorrow night, whenever you get around to it. Of course, by "fake it" I mean use Photoshop to make something awesome that only looks like you spent hours meticulously writing with chalk.


My mom found this quote and asked me to lay it out and print it for her. She wants to put it in her office because she has difficulty telling people no at work. Or ever.

At first I was just going to pick a pretty font and be done with it but when I found this tutorial by Foolish Fire on how to fake a chalkboard effect I knew I had to try it. I will leave the Photoshop instructions to her, but my basic process was this:

1) I laid out my text in Illustrator. I used a variety of different fonts to create the composition you see above.

2) I printed my file and traced everything onto white trace paper. To add to the chalky texture I used a pencil (both HB and 2B, for you art supply nerds) instead of pen and added dashes and fills to give extra differentiation to the fonts.

During this step I also gave some extra personality to a few parts. The "but" didn't have the curled line work so I free handed it. The "please everybody" didn't curve like that so I tweaked each letter by hand. I just drew a curved guide-line in Illustrator so I knew where each letter would need to extend to.

3) I scanned the hand-drawn artwork and made some adjustments in Photoshop, following the tutorial. If you're comfortable with Photoshop this is a simple process, but if you're just learning it's probably a little more difficult. Either way you really do need full Photoshop for this, a simpler photo editing software won't cut it.

So that's it! I just need to print this bad boy and pop it in a frame then I will have some free and (mostly) easy art for my mom. What have you made lately?

P.S. - If you like the artwork feel free to download it for yourself! It is sized to an 8x10 but you could scale it down if you'd like it smaller. Leave me a comment telling me where you plan to hang it, and please don't use it for commercial purposes. Thanks!

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