Is there a way to make text appear as if it were written with soft lead or perhaps charcoal? I've tried transparancy, blurring, fills, and the plug-ins to no avail. I also have spent hours searching this site but as yet have not located such a topic. I've found plastic text, gel text, gold and silver text but not what I seek.

I have several "hand" type fonts that look good when used but they are all uniformly black. Their use as a hand lettered font would be more convincing if they had the texture of lead on linen (slightly blurred edges and tiny specks missing).

[There is irony here: using a computer to produce a hand-written look. Go figure.]

Is this possible?

many thanks,
mg