How To Do Calligraphy With Colored Pencils
You have no calligraphy pens, not the correct paper, so what are you going to do.
Guess what?
You can do calligraphy with regular pencils and even colored pencils.
In this tutorial, I am going to be talking about how you can do calligraphy with regular colored pencils that you probably have at home.
So here is just a short answer and explanation of what we are going to be learning.
You can easily do calligraphy with colored pencils by doing faux calligraphy. If that is not an option you can actually get line variation depending on the amount of pressure that you are putting onto your pencil.
Now let me give you a summary of what we are going to be learning about today:
- Materials
- How To Hold your Pencil
- Faux Calligraphy WIth Color Pencils
- Calligraphy With Colored Pencils
- Another Cool IDea
- Final Thoughts
Materials For Today’s Tutorial
The very first thing that we are going to need to be talking about is what colored pencils are you going to need for today?
Well of course there is a lot of different kinds but let us talk about a few.
So if you are on a very tight and low budget regular Crayola colored pencils. I find that the cheapest you could go is with crayolas and no other off brands.
Crayolas all in all are not the best but are good for what you are going to be needing them for today.
But the pencils that I am going to be using today are the Prisma color pencils witch is a little bit more expensive than your regular colored pencils.
Of course, if you can afford these I recommend it because you can get cool blends into your lettering, which is something I am going to be showing you in this tutorial.
Here is the link to these awesome Prisma colored pencils that I am using in this tutorial.
Next, I would look into the Faber Castel colored pencils. I haven’t exactly tried them out myself but I feel that they can get the job done like the Prisma colored pencils.
Again go ahead and try them out here and if they are affordable.
Now we move on to…
PAPER
Since these aren’t exactly calligraphy pens or brush pens you won’t need smooth paper for this tutorial.
If you can you could use bristol board witch is awesome for colored pencils.
But then again not a lot of people can afford or have access to it, regular printer paper or mixed media paper would be great for this tutorial.
How To Hold It
Yes, you are going to need to learn how to hold your pencil.
You should not be holding your pencil as you would do regularly.
I recommend holding it at a 45-degree angle.
This is going to make it easier to write out your letters faster and smoothly.
Not like you would hold a regular pencil at a complete 90-degree angle.
Neither should you be holding it to much at an angle, which can make it harder to control your pencil.
Faux Calligraphy With Colored Pencils
I have done a full tutorial on exactly how to do faux calligraphy witch you can check out here.
This section you could say is going to be shorter, straight to the point, tutorial on how to do faux calligraphy withy your colored pencils.
So this is all going to be divided into three steps for doing faux calligraphy.
STEP 1
We are simply going to write out our word as we do with regular calligraphy (of course without the line variation).
Specifically, you should be using the basic strokes to guide you when forming /writing your letters.
If for some reason you have no idea what the basic strokes are I am going to explain them in the next section or you could check out my full faux calligraphy tutorial (linked above).
STEP 2
Now we are just going to be identifying all of the downstrokes.
So whenever there is a downstroke you are going to be adding a second line and then connecting it to the letter.
This may sound confusing so here is a quick picture.
Again you only have to add this second line to only the downstrokes, no the upstrokes.
This will then lead to blocky letters, you could say.
STEP 3
Now the last part is just filling in the area where the downstroke is.
You can also do some doodles or designs inside that space. I have also noticed that some people leave the space like it is, which is also fine too.
Let us move onto the next section of today’s tutorial…
Calligraphy With Colored Pencils
So right now I am going to be showing you how to do lettering with colored pencils without having to do faux calligraphy, which is hard for beginners who don’t know how to form the up and down strokes.
So I have actually done two tutorials on this technique so here are the links to these two awesome tutorials that I worked so hard on.
Let us get started…
Basically this technique is sort of like what you would do with a brush pen or even a calligraphy dip pen.
The more pressure you put on the pencil the thicker stroke, less pressure the thinner the stroke, this is how you can get line variation.
Well with your thin strokes you will notice that they come out lighter than your thick strokes, this happens since it is a pencil.
I also want to point out that you won’t get the same thick strokes or line variation as you would with faux calligraphy.
Depending on what calligraphy style you are going for you may either use this technique or not.
So whenever you are going up you are are going to apply less pressure than when you are going down.
Practice your upstrokes and downstrokes for a while until you get it right.
Then learn how to transition, it may be easier to learn how to do if this if you have already learned brush lettering.
So when forming your letters there is something very important.
THE BASIC CALLIGRAPHY STROKES
This is one of the most important things in lettering since this is how you are going to form your letters, which not a lot of beginners know correctly how to do.
There are 8 basic strokes:
- Upstrokes
- Downstrokes
- Under turn
- Overturn
- CompoudnCurve
- Oval
- Ascending Loop
- Descending Loop
Here is a picture showing all of the different strokes.
So how is this going to help you with your calligraphy?
Well, it is going to teach you exactly how to form your letters since you can form/write almost any lowercase letter with just using these strokes.
For example, the lowercase H you can do an ascending loop plus a compound curve.
Let me show you a quick picture.
So you can see that by using these different strokes you can form a letter.
Let me give you a few more examples.
As a beginner, you should first be practicing the basic strokes before doing anything else.
Blending
Something quite cool that you can do with your color pencils is blending.
Anyway, I am going to be showing you a cool technique to get blends in your lettering.
So the very first thing that you are going to do for this tutorial is faux calligraphy, without filling in the blank space.
Now the second thing you are going to do is very lightly put down the base colors that you are going to be blending.
But so lightly and almost no pressure onto your pencil.
NOw we are going to go over it again a little bit more pressure and start blending the two colors.
Continue doing this process over and over again, each time putting more and more pressure on the pencil.
This then leads to a cool blending effect.
Also, don’t go too hard into your pencil because you won’t be able to get your smooth blends, or do you need to go too fast.
Final Thoughts
You have all have now learned exactly how to do lettering with your regular colored pencils.
I hope that this was all helpful since I know as a beginner in lettering you might not have the tools to get a calligraphy pen.
Now realizing that you could do it with a regular pencil is an awesome cool way to practice.
IF you are having trouble learning the basic strokes I recommend going check out my free guide and practice sheets here.
If you have any more questions feel free to comment.