How Can You Learn Calligraphy For Free

You have seen people do this awesome art of modern calligraphy and hand lettering, and you want to do it too.

But you don’t have the money or budget to be able to learn it.

You looked at all the price ranges of dip pens, paper, brush pens, ink, and etc.

So now you wonder how can I learn calligraphy for free. Well, I am going to be talking about how to find free resources and getting supplies on a budget.

I am just going to be giving the short answer if you’re in a hurry:

You can totally learn calligraphy for free. Some things to consider is trying to do calligraphy with a regular pencil at home and research online resources.

That is just something that I am going to be talking about today, and I will be going deeper into these topics.

Now here is a summary of what we are going to be learning in this article:

• Doing Lettering With A Regular Pencil
• Learning Calligraphy For Free Online
• Making your own guidelines/practice sheets
• Paper options
• Other writing utensil options you can do calligraphy with

Doing Lettering With A Regular Pencil

Can you believe it you can do calligraphy by just using a regular pencil?

Before we move on I have actually created a whole entire tutorial on this subject which you can check out here.

So doing lettering with a pencil is actually quite similar to dip pen or brush lettering.

Every time you do an upstroke the less pressure you are going to put on the pencil.

The more pressure the thicker the stroke.

Leading then for line variation, which is a big part of calligraphy.

Learning Calligraphy For Free Online

A lot of people don’t think about it but you can learn calligraphy online, it is totally possible, plus it may be free.

Well, think about it.

What you are reading right now is a free calligraphy resource, that you found online.

So it is very possible to be able to learn any type of lettering through some sort of online platform, for free.

I myself was able to learn calligraphy through online youtube tutorials, articles, and etc.

I did an article giving you some more tips and what you should expect when wanting to learn calligraphy online. 

There will give you a more step by step process of learning calligraphy and finding the resources to do so.

But anyway some of my favorite resources for beginners are:

• Lettering Daily
• Postman’s Knock
• How To Hand Letter

Those I have found have been the most helpful for beginner lettering artists.

So go check them out.

Making Your Own Guidelines/Practice Sheets

A good tip when wanting to learn calligraphy is creating your own guidelines or practice sheets instead of buying some who already have some.

First off when learning calligraphy I really recommend finding and researching for free practice sheets.

I know for a fact there are dozens of free practice sheets out there for free on the internet.

For example, I actually have some for myself that shows you exactly how to do the basic strokes for calligraphy.

Now let us first talk about…

GUIDELINES

Guidelines are really important for all lettering artists. It helps us all make sure our letters and words are consistent and that our layout is the best that it can be.

A lot of times we like to buy a paper that already comes with guidelines or also known as graph paper.

Sometimes this graph paper might be a little bit more expensive.

So a great way to avoid this is by creating your own guidelines.

It is actually very easy.

You just need to know the basics of calligraphy or know how to format your lessons.

First things first you are going to want to create three lines on your paper.

I recommend experimenting with how spaced they are at since a lot of lettering artists have there own styles they also usually prefer their own guidelines.

I like for the upper space (also known as ascending space) to be a bit bigger than the lower space (also known as the descending space). For my guidelines I also like creating the X hieght bigger than all of the other spaces.

This is just a personal preference.

Here I just labeled all the different lines and spaces so that you can get what the guidelines are.

A lot of times people like to create slant lines so that they can get an angle in there lettering.

But you don need these (depending on the type or style of your lettering).

For me, I have noticed that my style of lettering is very upright and I rarely draw my letters slanted.  Then again some other personś lettering style might include slanted letters, so that is when you would include your slanted lines.

Paper Options

Another big expense when learning calligraphy or lettering is paper. There is a lot of paper that is found on the market but might be too expensive for beginners who are on a budget.

I have also done another tutorial going more in-depth in what you want to look for in paper, or that will give you some more paper options for your specific type of calligraphy.

But anyway when looking for paper you may think that we need the best paper on this earth for doing lettering but that is totally not true.

You don’t need a really expensive paper for doing calligraphy.

If you are going to be regularly doing calligraphy with a pencil, Crayola marker (something that I will get into in a little bit), or any other utensil that is not a dip pen/brush pen, you can use regular printer paper.

You just want to make sure that the printer paper is not bleed proof (if you are using some sort of marker).

But if you are using brush pens…

You for sure need to make sure that the paper is smooth and bleed proof (which I talked a little bit more in the article linked above).

With a dip pen, I also recommend just getting a little bit of a thicker paper than regular printer paper, since you are using ink.

But some of my favorite paper options for lettering on a budget are:

• Tracing Paper
• Marker Pad
• HP Premium 32 lb Printer Paper

(Again I talk a little bit more about all of these things in the article above).

Other Writing Utensil Options (That Are Affordable)

A big thing for learning calligraphy is the type of utensil you use to do it and a lot of times it might not fit your budget.

As a beginner, I myself couldn’t afford brush pens so I understand how it feels.

So here are all links to articles showing you how to do calligraphy without using a dip pen or even a brush pen.

Some of these writing utensils you might have lying around at home somewhere.

• Lettering on A Whiteboard
• Doing Calligraphy WIth Chisel Tip Marker
• How To Do Calligraphy With Highlighter
• Faux Calligraphy Tutorial (Lettering With Regular Pen)
• Calligraphy With Pencil
• Calligraphy With Mechanical Pencil
• Gel Pen Lettering
• Doing Calligraphy With Sharpie
• Calligraphy With Colored Pencils

Final Thoughts

So you have all just learned how to start doing calligraphy on a budget and how you can learn calligraphy for free.

As a self-taught calligrapher, I have been able to learn that there is actually a lot of free resources online. The internet is filled with different articles and videos on how to learn so many different things.

You just have to take time to research and learn from those resources.

If you have any questions for anything that I have shared above, totally feel free to comment.