how to handletter

calligraphy for beginners

An In-Depth Introduction to Brush Lettering for Beginners

by Leave a Comment

Today I’m showing you all you need to know to learn brush lettering for beginners! I will go over basic drills, letter formation, how to connect those tricky letters and the tools I use to practice & create beautiful brush lettering!

Tools for Brush Lettering

There are two ways to learn brush lettering. You can learn using brush pens or you could simply use paintbrushes and watercolors. Both of these techniques are great but they produce very different results, so you should choose your tools according to which style of lettering you like best.

As far as brush pens, I love the Tombow Dual Brush Pens. They are good quality pens and give you thick and thin strokes that are key to brush lettering.

For watercolor lettering, I use a waterbrush instead of your usual paintbrush. I personally use the Pentel Aquash Waterbrush in Medium. If you go with the water brush there are many different options for watercolor paints that can be used with it for lettering. I’m just using a cheap tube of watercolor that I purchased at Walmart and it works just fine!

Techniques for Brush Lettering

I’m not going to give much information on how to hold your pen or brush, as this is different for each person. I believe you should hold it however is natural to you.

The main focus with technique is ensuring you have enough control over the pressure you’re applying, without the control you won’t be able to create those thick and thin strokes. When practicing we want to try and get our up-strokes thin and our down-strokes thick. The best way to get your practice in is through drills.

Brush Lettering Drills for Beginners

Once you’ve practiced your drills and are confident in your up and down strokes, you can move on to letter formations. Once you’ve master the usual letter formations (which are really just a series of shapes) your unique style will start to show.

Watch the video tutorial above to get a breakdown of each letter formation or practice with my printable lettering worksheets created for beginners learning to hand letter!

These worksheets have practice drills, letter formation drills for each letter and they even teach you to connect your letters – which is the next step to master!

Connecting your Letters

Connecting your letters is one of the most tricky steps to master for many people. The easiest way for me to connect is by lifting up my pen when I finish any letter within a word.

Often letters start in a way that makes it challenging to follow on from the previous one, so adding an extra “tail” to letters and lifting up before beginning the next letter makes it look more natural.

What it all comes down to is having an eye for what is going to look the most natural and balanced on the page and adjusting you’re lettering accordingly.

Disclaimer: How To Hand Letter is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. *Please note, when you purchase a product using my link, the cost is still the same to you. Thank you for supporting the companies that help keep How To Hand Letter going!

Zebra Funwari Brush Pen Review for Handlettering

by Leave a Comment

Hey friends!
Small Sized Brush Pen Review
Today I am going to be reviewing the Zebra Funwari Brush pen! This is another smaller sized brush pen and I have a few colors to show you as well! 

This is another pen that has a very tiny tip. I would say that it looks more similar to the Tombow Fude pen tip over the Pentel Touch tip, but I think that I’ll do an official comparison video between those 3 markers soon.

Watch the video review here:

I am going to be testing these pens out on this Canson Marker paper today. I originally purchased this pen a while ago, but only got it in gray. Since then, I realized that gray isn’t always the best to film because it tends to get washed out on camera, so when we decided to do the Penaday challenge I thought I’d grab a few colors to share with you!

So these are brand new pens and these particular ones hadn’t been used prior to this. As you can see through the lettering, they have a nice bold black color and because of the small size of the brush tip, you are able to get very thin upstrokes. 

In the video above I do share the color swatches of the brush pens that I own. I did buy these individually so I’m not sure if there are more than I don’t have. One thing that I wanted to say about these brush pens is that they do feel very similar to the Tombow Fude hard tipped brush pen. 

In my opinion they don’t feel as soft as the pentel touch, but they may get softer with time. I do think that if you’re trying to decide which of those 3 brush pens to purchase, part of your decision may come down to which colors you prefer so that’s why I think doing a side by side comparison will be a good idea.

In the video you will also find a blending test where I attempt to blend these brush pens using 2 different methods. I also did a water test using the red color, which definitely bled quite a lot. However, since filming that video I found out that the black pen and the colored pens are made with different types of ink (according to Jet Pens listing info), so the black pen is actually a bit more waterproof than the red one! Who knew?! I’ll be doing another water test in a future video and will post to my YouTube channel as well!

I hope this is helpful for you & let me know what you think about these brush pens! I will try to update this post with an update after I’ve used these for a bit longer, but make sure to follow me over on Instagram for real-time updates!

Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you in my next one! 

Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen Review

by Leave a Comment

Are you a hand lettering beginner? Or maybe you’re struggling with controlling the brush tip of a larger sized brush pen? Or do you just love trying new lettering supplies? Here I’m going to share with you some of my thoughts about handlettering and modern calligraphy using the Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen!

Handlettering with Tombow Fudenosuke Brush PensAs an Amazon Affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Hey Friends!

Today I’ll be reviewing the tombow fudenosuke brush pen for hand lettering! This brush pen comes as a 2 pack with both the hard and soft tip as well as a pack of colors in a hard tip style.

There doesn’t appear to be much of a difference in the body of the pen from one to the other. The body of the pens in my color pack is a shiny where the black ink ones that I have more of a matte. But otherwise I cannot tell much of a difference. 

As you can see, the tip of this pen is super tiny! This is great as a beginner because it can be easier to control than a giant brush tip that flops all over. So if you’re struggling just to get the feel of thick and thin strokes, a smaller sized pen can be a great option.

The Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen has a hard nib and a soft nib option, but the color pens only come in the hard tipped nib. Below you can see a sample of lettering using the soft tip (on top) and the hard tip (on the bottom).

Handlettering with Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens

I go back and forth between preferring the soft vs. hard tip. I think when I first began lettering I liked the soft because it felt easier to me. The hard tip can feel kind of scratchy and it also really shows any shaky lines, so I think that’s why I liked the soft tip.

But then I got the pack of color brush pens and practiced with them a bit more and I really liked them! So this is for sure a personal preference and if you’re not sure which you’d like, you can grab the 2 pack of black pens that includes a hard and a soft tip to test.

You can see at the beginning of the alphabet using the hard tip that it started out a bit dry. Once I got writing a bit more, it got a little stronger, but I wouldn’t call this a juicy brush pen at all. I do think that this is a stylistic thing at times. There are lots of people who letter with a more casual style and write much more quickly than I did and I think that streaky look can really match the style of certain lettering.

The thing about this firm tipped pen is that you can really get super thin upstrokes. It is super crisp and clean looking, especially with steady upstrokes.

Handlettering with Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens

And here’s a comparison of the hard vs. soft tip. It’s honestly super hard to tell much of a difference but if you look closely, you can see that there may be a bit of a size difference in length.

After swatching some of the colored pens, I wanted to go ahead and test this with water. I wrote out with the red onto the page and then took a pretty wet paintbrush and painted over it with water. I haven’t actually done this before so to be honest I was actually surprised to see this hold up with so much water added to it. I did use a marker paper with this, but still I really don’t see much bleeding at all, if any.

Handlettering with Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens

Because of the way that these pens do look a bit less juicy than other pens, I wanted to just test out a bunch of lettering using one pen and see how it holds up. With this blue pen, I wrote “hello” a bunch of times to see how it goes! While there was a bit of fading in some of them, it still wasn’t streaky or awful. In my opinion, it’s for sure expected for brush pens or markers to look a bit more dull after a ton of writing so I was pretty impressed with how well these still wrote by the end.

Handlettering with Tombow Fudenosuke Brush PensSo that is day 2 of the Pen A Day Challenge and I’ll be back tomorrow with a review of another small sized brush pen. If you missed my Pentel Touch review, make sure to check that one out here!

This page organizes all of my tombow lettering tutorials.

Love Tombow?! I have a resource page for you that is a quick spot to find my Tombow handlettering tutorials and videos organized all in one place! Click here to head to the Tombow Resource Page or go here to grab my 1000+ Words Worksheets for small sized brush pens (shown above).

May Handlettering Challenge – A Pen A Day

by Leave a Comment

Hey Friends!

I wanted to share the May Handlettering Challenge with you!

What Is The Challenge?

It’s a good one. 🙂

Several months ago I had a ridiculous idea to do a pen review every day of the month. I am constantly getting asked to do a full review of certain pens and I thought committing to one a day would give me just the head start that I needed (and maybe get through half of my pens in my pen collection?!).

I was talking to a lettering friend about this idea and we got to brainstorming…

What if we made it into a monthly challenge?!

That seemed like the perfect solution for you, my pen-loving friends! It wouldn’t just be ME creating a bazillion pen review videos. It would be ALL OF US sharing our crazy pen stash!

So fun, right?!

The idea is that every day we assign one brush pen/marker and share lettering using that pen each day!

On my part, you’re going to get a little mini-review of these pens. I have already posted the first one on my YouTube channel and you will see lots of lettering using these pens over on Instagram.

On your part, just share your lettering using any of the pens you want (or all of them!) on the assigned days. There will be a giveaway going on over on Instagram as well! Details will be coming shortly, but you can get a hint from the prompt photo below. 

How To Join?!

It’s simple!

First, screenshot or save the photo below!

Then, simply join in whenever you can! If you have every pen, create something every day using the pen prompt. If not, that’s ok! Share the ones that you already have. And if you only have a couple of favorite pens, that’s ok! Choose your favorite pen and share a bit of why you love it in your caption.

Share the photo to Instagram and use the hashtag #penadaychallenge. You can also tag Sarah & myself in your actual photo  If your account is private, we sadly won’t be able to see your work because of the Instagram restrictions so if you are wanting others to see your work, you may consider creating a second account for your hand lettering and artistic creations!

I am so excited to see what you come up with! Make sure to let us know what you love/don’t love about the products you use each day (or any opinions that you may want to share!). My hope is that by the end of the month, the hashtag #penadaychallenge will become an amazing resource for us to go to if we’re curious about a certain product or want to see it used in hand lettering!

Kind of like our own special brush lettering pens amazon-style review section, right?!

So fun! I hope you’ll join me and can’t wait to see your work!

If you’re wanting to see my reviews, then make sure to follow over on Instagram and subscribe on YouTube so that you don’t miss any!

Happy Lettering!

Pentel Touch Brush Pen Review

by Leave a Comment

The pentel touch brush pen is a great brush pen for beginner hand lettering and modern calligraphy! In fact, they are a favorite among many hand lettering artists, but beginner and more advanced. In this review I’m sharing a few thoughts about them including a video demonstration.

 

Hey Friends! Today I’m reviewing the first pen in our Pen A Day Challenge, the Pentel Touch. This pen is a smaller sized brush pen compared to many. You can see that the tip is very small and flexible. It comes in lots of bright colors as you can see in the swatch in the video!

Handlettering Reviews Pentel Touch brush Pen

I did quickly want to point out one thing about these pens. They look very similar to another pen with a very similar name and I know they can be easily confused. The one that I’m using to review in this video has a flexible tip to create thick and thin strokes and the other one is a firm tip that just creates one stroke thickness. You can see in the closeup that the brush tipped pen has a shimmery body, where the other one is just a solid color. So if you’re confused about which to buy, make sure you get the one that says something about having a “brush tip”.

Pentel Touch vs. Pentel Sign pen

If you want to know more about this, here is a video where I show you more about the differences between these two pens!

So now that we know which pen to buy, let’s get into the brush pen review. This is one of the first brush pens that I purchased when I first began brush lettering and I still think that it’s a great place to start for brush lettering! 

There are a few reasons why I love this pen. First of all, I think that the smaller tip can be a bit easier to control when you’re beginning hand lettering. It’s very flexible and it bounces right back into it’s regular shape, even for someone who likes to push hard on their pens like I do. 

Handlettering tips with pentel touch brush pens

The colors are really pretty and vibrant! But one of the things that I love the most about these brush pens is the fact that they have lasted me so long. I do typically try to use smooth paper with my pens, which is one way to help them hold up longer. But I don’t think I’ve ever had one of these brush pens fray! I actually have purchased 2 packs of these and one of them is around 2 years old if I remember correctly.

I wasn’t sure which pack was which so in the video I decided to just test them both against each other and honestly I had a hard time telling what was the new pen and what was the old. I’m not even sure if I was correct, but there were a few of them that just felt like they had a bit more crisp of an upstroke. But aside from that, I think they look great. 

You can see in the water test part of the videothat these are not waterproof and will smear if they get wet. I showed this by dragging a paintbrush with some water over the top and the red did transfer over quite strongly.

But the good thing is that they do blend! In the video, I demonstrate the brush lettering technique where you transfer the color straight from one pen tip to the other by touching them together. I like to put the darker color on top and transfer it to the lighter color. Another trick is to make sure that you are holding your pens upright so that gravity can help the ink to flow. You could also try the technique of coloring the darker color onto a ceramic dish or piece of plastic and then pick the color up with the other brush pen that you will then use to letter with.  Once you’re done, you can just write off the color as much as you can. 

Overall, I think these are a great brush pen for beginners and advanced letterers alike! I will link them below if you’d like to check them out and make sure to subscribe to my channel if you’re not already and want to see more hand lettering videos! I’ll see you again soon for my next pen review! 

3 Brush Pens You May Not Have Heard Of

by Leave a Comment

Today I’m sharing a few brush pens that aren’t as commonly used by lettering artists. I’ll be demonstrating some modern calligraphy (aka hand lettering) using each of these unique brush pens.

Click to watch the video tutorial or simply read below👇

Marvy Unchida Le Pen Flex

The Lepen Flex is a new brush pen product from this brand and is similar to the ColorIn markers you often see me using. They come in lovely colors and the brush tip is very small and soft. This pen is similar looking and named to another product that they have so make sure what you’re purchasing is the “Flex” if this is the one you want.

Sharpie Brush Pens

Sharpie has a few products that can be used for brush lettering but many of them aren’t designed for hand lettering. The Sharpie Brush Pens, however, come in a big pack of colors and the tip feels somewhat unique to me. It’s very thin and bouncy which I am a huge fan of!

Fibralo Brush Pens

I recently shared the Fibralo Brush Pens in a recent pen haul but I wanted to point it out here after I recently saw someone using it. This brush pen tip is really bouncy and great for creating that bouncy style of lettering. It feels like that really great in-between size brush pen tip – not too large or too small. This pen is good for writing small or doing large lettering as well.

If you’re interested in improving your hand lettering as a beginner, check out my FREE 7 day hand lettering mini course here: http://howtohandletter.com/minicourse

Hand Lettering Practice with Brush Pens for Beginners

by Leave a Comment

Today I’m sharing some ways you can practice hand lettering with brush pens, markers or even paint brushes. Remember that practice makes progress!

Often those who watch my video’s get frustrated as it looks too easy when sped up so today I’m sharing some real-time lettering so you can practice along with me.

Drills

Practice your up and down strokes with drill formations. One of the most important aspects to master as beginner hand letterer is thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes by applying the right amount of pressure. Watch the video to see my drills formations.

Lower Case ABC’s

I always recommend beginners start with the lower case letters of the alphabet before moving on. You can simply follow this video tutorial formations for each of the letters or use my lettering practice worksheets. They include all three practicing drills from this post.

Capital Letters ABC’s

Once you’ve mastered your up and down strokes and your lower case letters, you’ll move on to the capital letters and practice connecting

My favorite brush pens and markers used in this video include the Crayola Broad Tips, Crayola Supertips, Marvy Uchida ColorIn’s and the Tombow Dual Brush Pens. I’d highly recommend starting with the Crayola’s or a broader tipped marker if you’re just starting out as they are easier to work with as a beginner. You can read more about how to use them here.

Hand Lettering for Beginners with Crayola Supertips Markers

by Leave a Comment

Crayola Supertips Markers Hand Lettering Tutorial

Today I’m sharing some tips and examples of hand lettering using the Crayola Supertips Markers in this hand lettering tutorial.

I personally love using these markers and they are especially good for beginners. They have firmer and shorter tips and are easier to control than some of the brush pens when you’re first starting out.

These markers work really well with my Large Lettering Set Worksheets (seen in the video). These are the perfect practice printables for thicker markers and pens when learning how to hand letter.

I did want to mention that these markers are meant to be used as art markers rather than calligraphy so there is some differentiation in the different color pens – some seem to get thicker down strokes for some reason. But you’ll notice as you start to use them, they tend to get softer and you’ll get thicker down strokes.

Supertips versus Broadtips

I love using both of these Crayola markers. The Supertips are smaller and come in a large array of pretty colors. They are also great for highlighting and color coding things! I purchased the 100 pack and although some of the shades look pretty similar, they are still stunning and I love them. The one thing I do find is that the Supertips seem to have a harder time getting the thinner upstrokes.

The Crayola Broadtips Markers are thicker and produce larger hand lettering with think up strokes. The look isn’t totally different to the Supertips and with both markers you can get pretty thin up strokes.

With both of these markers it’s important to rotate your pen as you are lettering. You tend to get a better look this way as the tips aren’t very flexible and won’t bounce back if you’re applying pressure. This helps you get those think up strokes.

Supertips versus Tombow Brush Pens

I am by no means saying the Crayola’s are a better quality than the Tombow Brush Pens as these are entirely different pens completely. I just wanted to note that you can still get beautiful lettering using these inexpensive materials. The Supertips do have a wider variety of colors though.

Techniques

We won’t achieve thick and thin strokes by simply rotating the marker and the same brush lettering rules still apply. You’ll need to apply pressure when forming your letters for those thick down strokes.

Hand Lettering successfully is not at all about the markers or materials that you are using and practice is what will bring you progress. Nice pens are great but they definitely don’t make or break your lettering and you can definitely create some beautiful lettering with these Crayola Markers.

5 Quick Ways to Better Your Watercolor Lettering

by Leave a Comment

Lettering with Watercolors

Here are 5 of my best quick tips that can help you to better your watercolor lettering.

Does watercolor lettering feel difficult or advanced to you? It may seem that way, because the results of beautifully done watercolor lettering can look very professional! But the truth is, it doesn’t have to be an advanced technique. With these quick tips, you can learn how to use watercolors to create beautiful handlettering, even as a beginner.

 

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Watercolor Lettering Tip #1: Forget What You Learned About Letter Formation

I can’t even believe I’m typing this out, because I teach people how to handletter using proper letter formation. And I still do believe that is an important step to learn before getting to this point. There is a quote that says, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist” (Picasso) and I agree! BUT… now that you do know your letter formation, we’re going to just forget all of that for a minute.

Because here’s the thing, watercolor lettering is not the same as lettering with a brush pen. You are no longer just controlling a felt brush tip. You’re controlling the bristles of the brush and the water that you added to it and the consistency of the paint that you’re using. It’s a lot.

And this trick can make that so so so much easier.

I’m going to give you the example of an oval, because I think most of us can agree that ovals are tricky! When you write your oval from top to bottom and then back up again, it’s easy for your brush to flop over at some point. This gets even trickier when we’re creating those same movements like in the bottom of a lower case s.

But because of the way that the water connects to other places of water on your paper, you can use that to your advantage by drawing half of your stroke, going to where the letter might end and then drawing backwards to meet up with your first stroke.

And all of a sudden it’s incredibly clear to me why I chose youtube to host my hand lettering tutorials. 😉 If you’re not 100% sure what I mean, watch the video below (at the 17:23 mark!) for an example of this! But my main point is, don’t be afraid to break the “rules” to get your letters looking beautiful!

If you need to paint backwards? That’s ok! If you had to paint your thin “upstrokes” by actually painting a very thin line going downwards… that’s ok, too!

Watercolor Lettering Tip #2: You Can Fix Your Mistakes

This is another step where I want you to use the medium that you’re lettering with to your advantage. Watercolor is forgiving because you can fix your mistakes.

Now, I don’t mean that you can erase it or anything like that. But if your downstroke isn’t completely thickened, that’s ok! Just go back and thicken it. If you didn’t bring the end of your letter up far enough, just drag a bit of it on. Don’t be afraid to play around with what you’ve already laid down onto your watercolor paper until it looks a bit more polished.

As a disclaimer, for this step to work, you should really be using watercolor paper as it will allow the water to rest on the paper for a bit before soaking in. This allows a bit more manipulation of your watercolors. I personally use this watercolor paper. I like to buy the large size and cut it down for smaller pieces of watercolor art.

Watercolor Lettering Tip #3: Your Watercolors Don’t Matter

Ok, ok…

They do matter.

But my point is that you can still create beautiful watercolor lettering using very inexpensive watercolors. The trick is that you have to get to know your watercolors. It’s ok to test out new products and splurge on professional grade art supplies. But I don’t want you to assume that a struggle with watercolor is due to whatever product you might be using.

Buying more supplies is super fun. But it will not correct a lack of technique, practice and persistence!

These are some of my favorite watercolor supplies that I use for hand lettering.

I have seen many watercolor letterers create beautiful pieces (and even sell products that have been digitized) using this very inexpensive watercolor set. A few of my personal favorites are: these, these & these.

Watercolor Lettering Tip #4: Learn To Control Your Water

Controlling your water is one of the trickier parts of watercolor lettering for me. I love to use a water brush and I wanted to share a few of the tricks that I’ve learned when it comes to watercolor lettering with a water brush:

  1. Waterbrushes require a very gentle squeeze, very often. If you are impatient (hand raised!), you may try to do this too firmly and end up with a big drop on top of your watercolor lettering piece. That can most definitely ruin what you’re trying to do, so quick gentle squeeze very often are key.
  2. Don’t mix your paint with your water brush. I have made the mistake before of grabbing a few colors and mixing them into a beautiful new tint for my lettering. By the time I was done, the brush tip was completely saturated with watercolor. This made it very difficult to get the water to flow from my brush. I now use a much larger paintbrush to wet my palette or mix colors.
  3. Use two cups of water. This tip isn’t as much about water control as it is to control the colors that bleed in your watercolor lettering. I recommend using 1 cup of water to clean the paint off of your water brush and then the other cup to rinse it afterwards. If you simply use 1 cup of water to clean your brushes, you will turn that water dark as soon as you rinse off a dark color. Then if you go to use a lighter color, you will likely tint your lighter colors an undesirable color. You can also use a paper towel to pat your brush a bit after rinsing.

Watercolor Lettering Tip #5: Think About Your Paper

I have said before that you don’t need to use watercolor paper when practicing watercolor lettering. I say this not because I don’t see the value in watercolor paper, but because I don’t want to waste expensive watercolor paper when just practicing basic drills and alphabets.

A large portion of watercolor lettering is the technique of actually writing with a brush. This requires lots of practice, which in my opinion doesn’t necessarily need to be done on watercolor paper. I do recommend a thicker piece of paper like this one so that your paper doesn’t get too wet and tear. But actual watercolor paper can be very expensive when you’re running through pages a day of practice.

But… when you’re passed the stage of just practicing letters, watercolor paper is a huge game changer.

The way that the watercolor soaks into the paper and dries with beautifully darkened edges is something so pretty that I can’t help but love it.

In this photo I'm showing a closeup of paint on watercolor paper and how it has dried with beautiful edges.

And to be honest, if you’ve been practicing with regular paper, you will probably find this to be an even bigger improvement in your lettering. You may notice a bit more time to correct those mistakes and add to your watercolor that’s already on the paper. It should be an immediate confidence boost for you!

I hope that this was helpful for you and has inspired you to consider creating handlettering through watercolors. Have you ever tried watercolor lettering? I’d love to hear below! If you’re looking for advice on what to purchase, be sure to check out my list of favorite watercolor supplies here.

How to Get Thin Upstrokes in Hand Lettering

by Leave a Comment

How To Get Thin Up Strokes in Lettering

Today I’m sharing a modern calligraphy tutorial with you to achieve those thin upstrokes in your lettering. t can be difficult to achieve thin upstrokes when you’re first learning modern calligraphy so today I’m breaking it down into a few quick tips and tricks.

Watch the video or get my top tips below↓

When you begin hand lettering it’s important to understand that it’s just like another muscle that you are trying to develop. Most of the time it’s not that your upstrokes are too thick, but rather that they get too shaky.

This is totally normal! As you practice and build up your hand muscles, you’ll naturally get better and develop more control.

Make Sure To Hold Your Pen At An Angle

We’re not going to be pushing straight down when lettering and I don’t even hold my pen or marker normally – it’s always at an angle. This helps you achieve the thick and think strokes by working with the sides of your brush.

Choose a Medium Or Small Size Pen

This refers to the length of your pen or marker rather than the width. The Zig Brushables pen is a great beginner pen. I’ve also really enjoyed the Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen which has a shorter tip for more control while you’re still learning.

The Pentel Touch pen is another great option and is the smallest option of the three.

Use a Quality Paper

I mention this a lot in my videos and blog posts, but if you’re just going to be using a regular copy paper you’re bound to get some fraying on your brushes. I like to use the Canson Marker Paper or the HP Premium Choice Laserjet Paper which is an inexpensive option.

Thick to Thin Strokes

Let’s talk about the process for transitioning from your thick to thin strokes. We do apply more pressure for a downstroke and less for an upstroke, but it’s more about letting your hand glide while slightly lifting your pen when coming up.

Drill practice is a great way to get this perfected. My lettering practice worksheets have lots of fun drills for practicing!

A great tip for getting your practice in without having such shaky looking upstrokes is to use watercolors. I personally find watercolors to be very forgiving when it comes to your upstrokes.

I hope you found these tips helpful. For more lettering resources to help you learn and improve your hand lettering as a beginner, check out my FREE mini-course to get you started.