24 Aug 2020

Hand lettering is a form of art within the visual arts category.

This particular art form has a proponent in Mookane-born creative artist, Ms Sharon Monnana, who has, since her childhood years, taken a liking to it and has, through years of practice, grown to near-perfection with the art.

Ms Monnana, a blogger, poet, and also a published author of two anthologies titled It’s The Devil You Know and 36 Kisses, has always been fascinated with her handwriting and it is from this fascination that her eventual love for hand lettering was born.

“There is something good about having beautiful handwriting especially in this digital world. It’s something that can even uplift one’ self-esteem,” she says in an interview.

The wife and mother of two, and most probably the only Motswana who does hand lettering, describes the art form as both beautiful and catchy.

“Hand lettering is a writing art that involves adding zest to handwriting.  Though some people confuse it with cursive, it actually goes beyond cursive as it has upstrokes and down-strokes that make it catchy,” she explained.

Since starting doing hand lettering in earnest in 2017, she has over the past three years seen her skill in the art grow and has in addition to writing on paper, moved on to include writing on porcelain mugs and canvas.

“I also introduced writing on mugs. I did this because as much as I liked writing on paper, I realised that our names do not appear on anything,” she said, explaining how impossible it was for one to find people’s non-English names engraved on anything.

Since she started doing hand lettering on mugs, she has seen a steady inflow of orders from people wishing to have their names written on mugs.

“You will notice that while you can come across the name Sharon written on a mug, you would actually reach a dead end if you were to try to find a name such as Omphile on a mug. Because of this, people have come forth to have their names written on mugs so that they could have something with their name on it,” she said.

On what goes into having one’s name or short message of their choice written on a mug, the Palapye-based artist explains that the process starts with her buying a mug from a shop, which she then washes and dries before she writes, free-hand on it using porcelain pens which she orders on Amazon.

“In the course of my trial and error with hand lettering, I discovered porcelain pens, which I get from Amazon.

 I believe if I look hard enough, I could get them in South Africa,” Ms Monnana noted, explaining that her search for the pens locally has been futile.

Ms Monnana does her artwork from home, thereafter bakes the mug on an oven to help the ink set and then set it aside to dry for an hour after which it will be ready for collection by the customer.

Though she has not been aggressive in marketing her hand lettering art works, Ms Monnana has so far enjoyed good feedback in the social media platforms that she has been using to advertise her work.

“I advertise my work through WhatsApp statuses as well as on Instagram and on Facebook.  Friends and family also support me quite a lot,” she adds.

The artist, who hopes to one day start doing hand lettering on denim so as to broaden her range of products, also made a mark when she made it into the Top 10 out of over 500 entries of the 2018 edition of The Writivism Literary Initiative, a Ugandan short story competition.

In addition to her love for creative arts, Ms Monnana is also an avid reader, who in acknowledgment of her love for reading has included bookmarks in the products through which she showcases her hand lettering prowess.

When the country went into its nation-wide COVID-19 lockdown in April, the artist had just stocked her bookmarkers at Sebilo Books, a Motswana-owned bookshop in Oodi.

Ms Monnana, an accountant by profession and presently a reservations manager for Drive Botswana, would be happy if people loved the bookmarkers the way they did mugs.

To her, reading is crucial as it broadens one’s horizons and enhances personal growth.

“We need to cultivate a reading society. People who read become people who lead,” she concluded. ENDs