Can You Do Calligraphy With A Fountain Pen

So you have seen those amazing dip pens that you can use for calligraphy.

But what about calligraphy with a fountain pen? 

They look quite similar, don’t they?

They both have that same looking nib, except one is filled with two parts.

Anyway if you are in a hurry here is the answer to your question.

Can you do calligraphy with a fountain pen?

You can totally do calligraphy with a fountain pen. It isn’t the most ideal for traditional calligraphy but is great for faux calligraphy. A lot of calligraphers would use the soft or flex nibs to get line variation. If you don’t have those types of pens you can just do faux calligraphy.

Through some research, I was able to give you that answer.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to try these things out for myself but I have been doing a lot of research to help you guys out how to do calligraphy with a fountain pen.

I would also be including a few resources throughout the post of other articles where you can get some more information.

Here is a quick summary of what we are going to be learning about today:

• Differences Between Calligraphy Pens and Fountain Pen
• Fountain Pens You Could Use For Calligraphy
• Paper For Your Fountain Pens
• Doing Calligraphy WIth Fountain Pens
• Doing Faux Calligraphy With Fountain Pens

Let’s get started…

Differences Between Calligraphy Pens and Fountain Pens

I am just going to be going over the few key differences between calligraphy pens and fountain pens.

ONE NEEDS INK

So an obvious difference is that the dip pen you need ink to dip it into.

While a fountain pen already comes with a cartridge filled with ink, like a regular ballpoint pen.

IF you are using a brush pen for calligraphy it is a felt tip not like the nib of a fountain pen.

ONE CAN’T GET LINE VARIATION

In my opinion, you can still do calligraphy if you don’t have a flexible writing utensil like a dip pen or brush pen.

The same thing with a fountain pen.

 A lot of fountain pens, depending on the type of pen, you can not get different line variation.

With a brush pen or dip pen you would get line variation by putting more pressure leading for a thicker stroke, less pressure thinner the stroke.

But there are actual fountain pens that have a flex nib or also known as a soft nib.

These you can get line variation with the more pressure you put on the pen, which is very similar to a dip pen.

Later on, I will talk about how you can do calligraphy without these soft or flex nibs.

If you want to learn more about these flex nib pens you can learn more about it in this article I found here.

COST

I was actually able to find a flex fountain pen that was only $20.00

The thing with this is that when buying a beginner calligraphy set it actually may be more expensive than just using your fountain pen.

It all depends on the cost of the fountain pen and on your own research on what you think is the best pen for you.

Also if you want a cheaper alternative to learning calligraphy here are a few options that have made full articles about.

• Calligraphy With Regular Pencil
• Chisel Tip Calligraphy
• Highlighter Calligraphy
• Lettering With Brush Pen
• Calligraphy WIth Regular Crayola Marker

As you can tell you don’t have to learn calligraphy a dip pen or fountain pen. There is a lot of other cheaper alternatives.

Paper You Should Use For Your Fountain Pens

The rules for paper are very similar to the rules of paper that we would use for your brush lettering.

I recommend that you should get bleed proof/thick paper that since many fountains pens may bleed through thin paper.

Another thing you want to keep in mind is making sure your paper is smooth enough.

I recommend grabbing a marker pad since that type of paper I have noticed is one of the smoothest papers that you can find.

The reason for this is you just want to make sure itis just easy for your pen to be able to glide through your paper.

It may be harder to draw with it if you are using watercolor paper.

So let us talk about some options.

I would first recommend a Rhodia marker pad.

This is very common in the brush lettering world but the reason I am recommending it for your fountain pens because it is bleed proof and is smooth.

It also comes in graphed or dotted paper witch would help you out with your guidelines when every starting out doing calligraphy.

A cheaper alternative could be the Canson Marker Pad.

This is a little bit more popular in craft/art stores and is not as expensive as the Rhodia pad.

Here again, it is a marker pad which means very smooth and bleed proof paper witch is perfect for your fountain pens.

The downside is they don’t come in graph paper.

I don’t find it problem since you could just draw out your guidelines very lightly with a pencil.

Doing calligraphy With Fountain Pens 

I just want to point out that I myself don’t have much experience so I did my research and I am just going to be giving an overview.

At the end, I will be giving yous some more detailed articles and resources to help you out.

So first things you should find out what fountain pen to get.

While researching I actually found it quite hard to find a inexpensive fountain pen that could flex.

The very first one I was able to find was the NOODLERS FLEX NIB FOUNTAIN PEN.

Through looking at the reviews and some pictures I find that this would be an awesome inexpensive pen that will get you that line variation, that you need for calligraphy.

But with this pen, I would recommend looking out for ink splatters, but is still a good cheap alternative.

Now let us move onto how you can use this pen.

First things first…

Upstrokes are thin, down strokes are thick.

This means whenever you go up you put light pressure onto your pen.

Whenever you are going down the more pressure you put on the pen.

I just recommend just doing these exercises over and over again until you feel very comfortable doing this.

Afterward, I would move onto switching between the two.

So learning how to transition between an upstroke and then a downstroke.

After getting that down start moving onto learning the basic calligraphy strokes, that you would later on use to form your letters.

The 8 basic calligraphy strokes are:

• Upstroke
• Downstroke
• Overturn
• Under turn
• Ascending Loop 
• Descending Loop
• Compound Curve
•  Oval

Then you are able to combine these different strokes to form your letters.

 Let me show you a quick example.

If you ware wanting the more specifics of how to hold your fountain pen and etc here is a wonderful article that I was able to find.

Faux Calligraphy WIth A Fountain Pen

I feel that the best way to do calligraphy with a fountain pen is just doing faux calligraphy (also known as fake calligraphy).

I have done a whole entire other article on this topic, so if you are wanting a more in-depth tutorial you could check it out here.

So anyway faux calligraphy is just essentially calligraphy that you can do with a regular ballpoint pen but can also be used for a fountain pen (without flex).

So this would be great if you already have a fountain pen that is not a flex nib and wondering how you can do calligraphy with it.

First things first you are going to want to practice the basic strokes that showed you guys above, except without the line variation at first.

After practice that I am going to ask you to add a second line to all the places where you down strokes are.

Let me show you.

Once you do that you can just fill in the space.

Then you can start learning how to write the whole entire letter or word then start adding you downstrokes.

This isn’t a type calligraphy this is just a technique that you can use if you don’t have a calligraphy pen.

Final Thoughts

You have just learned if you can do calligraphy with a fountain pen.

I really hope that this article was helpful and if you have any more additional questions feel free to leave a comment.