Painted sign writing produced on a retail outlet fascia for a fine art gallery by Traditional Signs of London.
The clients had re-painted their premises in a differing shade of colour to how they had it previously & wished for a re-installing of the same branding & wording but set a different scale to suit the fascia & present better.
.
.
.
.
The clients had previously used a shade of burgundy. The fascia & fascade had become tired & worn and due a re-fresh.
Apparently the Clients actually intended on a similar colour to the previous but a mis-communication & mix up with the decorators meant the shade was more a hue of plum. I must admit throughout painting on this project I did keep thinking of a wine shop, perhaps due to that shade being more prevalent with wine merchants, also possibly due to there being a wine merchants next door!
The typefaces were to remain the same, but produced at altered scale, with the main branding to be bigger & more stand out, with the sub text to remain more subtle.
.
.
.
.
The first stage in producing painted sign writing isn’t what most people think, especially with the modern era of branding. Its actually firstly requested measurements of the fascia from the painters/building contractors.
The branding is then requested in digital form & sized to the ideal measurements before its printed or produced on paper. The large paper layout is then taken to site where its used as a form of template.
The fascia is then measured again with markings made for centre lines & other lines of use. The paper template is then positioned to align with these markings. The template itself also having centre lines & other useful measure points.
The lettering is then reliefed onto the fascia panel by tracing or pouncing off in chalk.
.
.
.
.
The differing sizes of lettering require different sizes of specialist brushes. The method in painting is the same. When creating neat lettering, its stroke building to create letters rather than single strokes.
So for example, the most simple letter . . . I, will be built up with 4 strokes rather than 1 single brush stroke. Doing this creates a neat crisp edging to the lettering.
The larger lettering was completed first. The reason for this being that it allowed dry time to go back over the lettering with a second coat, as generally a pale colour such as white or light grey, can still have ‘grinning’ on a dark surface, so a 2nd covering makes the letters fully opaque.
Speed was of the essence with this project simply due to the weather conditions & time of year. It was fading light by late afternoon. The weather was overcast leaning towards drizzle, which isn’t ideal for external painted signs.
Oil based paints are used. Water can’t penetrate the paint, and doesn’t affect the lettering already painted. Its just problematic in terms of the sufrace being wet to apply fresh paint and the equipment becoming wet so a health & safety issue.
.
.
.
.
.
The second coat of paint was able to be applied to the larger brand name painted sign writing, before a smaller specialist brush was used to create the painted sign writing of the sub text, which due to being smaller would only require a single coat of paint.
This meant it could be painted at a good pace with less strokes & more like a one stroke method. This was usefual as the daylight was reducing fast.
.
.
.
.
.
The sub text completed also completed the painted sign writing. All that was left to do was wet wipe the fascia to remove all the chalk markings which was produced when pouncing the artwork onto the panel.
The client was impressed & pleased with the outcome of the work produced.
.
.
.
.
Hand Painted Traditional & Contemporary Sign writing in London
Sign writer: Traditional Signs of London
info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk