So I'm trying something new: I'm lettering by hand in Photoshop with my digital tablet. This started by necessity, because I couldn't seem to get my lettering fonts to look right when I put them together. But when I letter by hand it came a little closer to what I was going for, so I'm going to give it a shot for a while. Anyone else given this a try? Any advice?

--M

I've gotten to the point where I can draw with the tablet, but it's still too sloppy to letter with.

Having a draw-on tablet monitor is definitely an advantage. It's not like lettering with a wedge pen, of course, so I have yet to get it looking like it does on my construction documents. But it's better than a font, so far. Until I get together a font in a way I like, that is...

--M

I lettered by hand for a very long time. I don't know your work process, maybe you're doing that already, but it helps to draw guidelines both for the baseline and for the top of the letters (I used to neglect that at first and boy were the results sloppy). You have 3 factors that will affect the texture of your text (aside from the style of the lettering): letter height, leading (the space between the top of one line of text and the bottom of the one above it) and the thickness of your pen. Experiment a bit with variations on all 3 so you can get the texture you wish, before going to the comic itself. A mere millimeter makes a huge difference.