Do You Need A Calligraphy Pen To Do Calligraphy
Such a simple question but not a lot of people don’t know the answer. Fortunately, I am here to help and about to answer it right now.
Of course, you are all won’t the answer so here you go.
You do not need a calligraphy pen to be able to do calligraphy, you could actually do calligraphy with a regular pen. When we are talking about traditional calligraphy technically it may not be considered calligraphy, but I will get into that later.
Now here is going to be a quick summary of what we are going to be learning about in this article.
- Definitions of Modern Calligraphy & Traditional Calligraphy
- Doing Faux Calligraphy
- Brush Lettering
- Pencil Calligraphy
- Crayola Marker Lettering
- Calligraphy With Highlighter/ Chisel Tip Calligraphy
Let us move one to the next section…
Definitions
I did say that I will be talking about how technically you could only do traditional calligraphy with a dip pen.
So let us first look at these two definitions of traditional and modern calligraphy.
TRADITIONAL CALLIGRAPHY
Traditional calligraphy is just the beautiful art of writing. Specifically writing with a dip pen, calligraphy pen.
MODERN CALLIGRAPHY
Modern calligraphy is the beautiful art of drawing/illustrating letters and can be done with almost any writing utensil. Modern calligraphy is also called lettering.
Lettering you could say is just a big umbrella of many other types of lettering like hand lettering, faux calligraphy, etc.
WHY
Why did we even have to look at these definitions in the first place?
Well, modern calligraphy is drawing while traditional calligraphy is writing. This comes into play also since you can technically only do traditional calligraphy with a dip pen for it to be considered traditional calligraphy.
Again you could do calligraphy with almost any writing utensil and use the utensil to make an illusion that it was done with a calligraphy pen.
You could just say this was a little disclaimer saying that if you are trying to do traditional calligraphy without a dip pen it might not be considered that.
We must now move on…
Faux Calligraphy
Right now I am just going to be going over how to do calligraphy with a regular pen. I also have a full in-depth tutorial all about it here if you are wanting to learn more.
Anyway, let us get started.
WHAT IS FAUX CALLIGRAPHY?
Faux calligraphy is also considered fake calligraphy, hence the name. Let me explain more.
Faux calligraphy is just the illusion of doing calligraphy (that you think would have been done with a brush pen or dip pen) and is actually done with a regular pen.
On to the tutorial.
TUTORIAL
So then how do you do this?
Well, it is very simple to just grab a regular ballpoint pen and let us get started.
The very first thing that we are going to be talking about is writing out the word.
Here we are just going to be writing out our word with a regular pen and keeping the basic strokes in mind.
If you have no idea what the basic strokes are I explain it in my faux calligraphy tutorial that I have linked above.
Once you have written out the word we are going to be adding another line to every downstroke.
let Me show you what I mean.
Now we can just fill in that space.
Now you get this awesome calligraphy look or you could say illusion.
Let us go onto the next tutorial…
Brush Lettering
What is brush lettering and how you could do it too?
DEFINITION
Brush lettering is just doing modern calligraphy with a flexible tool that is called a brush pen. A brush pen is a pen with a flexible felt tip that is shaped like a brush.
TUTORIAL
I have done a full complete tutorial on how to use brush pens for beginners when learning modern calligraphy, that you can check out here.
Let’s get started.
The very first thing that you are going to have to learn is…
HOW TO HOLD A BRUSH PEN
When learning modern calligraphy you are going to need to learn how to use the new writing utensils like a brush pen. Yes, you are going to have to learn how told it a different way.
When holding a brush pen the pen should always be 45 degrees to the paper.
Here is a picture to help you out.
Some things to consider are to not hold a brush pen upright like a regular pencil or too much at an angle and it would be hard to control.
PAPER
When doing brush pen lettering the brush pen is as important as the paper.
You should not be using any rough paper like card stock and even sometimes printer paper is not smooth enough for your brush pens.
Anyway if you are wanting to learn more about a paper check out my article giving you some ideas of different papers that you could use here.
BASIC STROKES
Again I will insert a picture of it here but what I am going to say is when learning modern calligraphy basic strokes are everything plus holding your utensil correctly.
The basic strokes are the very base of forming your letters and if you don’t know how to form your letters then you are not doing modern calligraphy.
Let me give you an example of a lower case H.
If you want to learn more about the basic strokes of course go check out my lettering tutorials and the links up above.
Pencil Calligraphy
Can you believe it you can do modern calligraphy with just a regular old pencil?
So any way you guessed it pencil calligraphy is just doing calligraphy with a regular pencil.
I have of course have two tutorials on this type of calligraphy one that talks about using a regular pencil witch you could check out here, and one with doing it with a mechanical pencil witch you can check it out here.
TUTORIAL
Right now I am just going to be going quickly over how to get the thin and thick strokes to form your calligraphy.
This is very similar to brush pen lettering since the more pressure the thicker the stroke, less pressure the thinner the stroke.
So all of your upstrokes you are going to put less pressure.
Then all of your downstrokes, you are going to put more pressure.
Then you can start learning how to transition between the two.
This leads me to the second part.
You should now be practicing the basic strokes. Again you could find it in the above tutorials.
Crayola Marker Lettering
Ok, I told you that you can do lettering with a pencil but now I am saying you could do it with regular Crayola markers.
Yes, I am.
This is great if you are wanting to get into brush lettering but it is a bit expensive when starting out.
Here is my full tutorial and do lettering with a Crayola marker witch you should check out.
TUTORIAL
Again this is very similar to brush pen lettering so you are going to have to hold the marker at a 45-degree angle.
Not upright or to at an angle.
Let me show you what I mean.
After learning how to do that let us learn how to get our upstrokes and down strokes.
Again very similar to what we have been talking about the more pressure on the pen the thicker the stroke.
With all your strokes you are going to put less pressure than with your downstrokes.
Now After learning all of that we are going to have to learn how to do the…
BASIC STROKES
Ok if you have noticed I have been repeating myself because the basic strokes are so important when wanting to learn modern calligraphy.
Again if you want to learn more about it check out the links to the tutorials.
Here is a little picture of some examples of using the basic strokes to format your lettering.
Calligraphy WIth Highligther or With A Chisel Tip Marker
This is leading to more of the traditional side of calligraphy because you usually use chisel tip markers for such things.
Again I have so many tutorials and articles on this topic to explain exactly how to do this.
Here are is all of the links.
TUTORIAL
Here it is quite different from how we are going to get our thin and thick strokes.
Instead of putting pressure on the pen, we are going to have to learn how to switch angles to get the different line variations.
So with our upstrokes, we are going to have to hold our pen so that only the very tip is touching the paper. This will then lead to a thin stroke.
Now let us move on to our thick strokes.
For our thick strokes, we are going to switch the angle of your hand to make sure that the whole bell of the chisel tip is touching the paper.
I of course recommend starting practicing switching between these two hand motions.
After getting the hang of it start switching between them both.
This will lead us to the next part which is the basic strokes.
Now after practicing hold your pens and the hand motions we are going to need to learn the basic strokes to form out letters.
Witch, again I explain all of the articles above.
Final Thoughts
You have just learned if you can do calligraphy without a calligraphy pen?
Some other things that may be interesting are learning how to get the illusion of calligraphy by just using a regular ballpoint pen,.
You have also learned the very basics of calligraphy like the basics strokes.
If you are struggling with these things feel free to check out my free guide and practice sheets.