Helpful Guide: To Using Tombow Fudenosuke Hard Tip

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You got these awesome new fudenosuke pens, but you have no idea of how to use them.

Then you notice even further that there is a hard tip and a soft tip.

You have no idea what that is and still are in confusion.

Well as a young beginner into brush pens or brush lettering this might be very confusing and even overwhelming.

Well, I am here to give you this helpful guide to using your Tombow Fudenosuke brush pens.

Anyway by the title you can see that I specifically said hard tip witch is something that I am going to be talking about today. So let me answer the question very briefly.

How To Use Tombow Fudenosuke Hard Tip:

Essentially the hard tip brush pen and the soft tip are the same. The way you would use these brush pens is by holding it at a 45-degree angle. Less pressure the thinner the stroke, more pressure the thicker the stroke.

You can say that is the very base to learning how to use these brush pens but here is a quick summary of what we are going to be talking about today are:

• Differences Between Hard Tip and Soft Tip
• Paper, You Should Use For This Brush Pen 
• How Long You Should Expect It To Last
• How To Hold THe BRsuh Pen
• Getting Differences In line Variation
• How To Practice With The Brush Pen

Difference Between Hard Tip And Soft Tip

A lot of people would tell you that it may be easier to use the hard tip than using the soft tip.

But is that true?

Well, in my opinion, you can barely feel the difference, unless you are using the brush pens back to back then you can tell just a bit.

In other words, it is just your preference. 

Now let us go into some differences…

DIFFERENCES

First of all one of them will say a hard tip and the other soft tip. 

Also a difference in the cap color, not the ink color.

But let us move onto why someone would say that it is easier to use a hard tip, also why they might be true.

The hard tip, you could say, is less flimsy than the soft tip. To say it differently, the hard tip you have to put more pressure on the pen to get a thicker stroke.

The reason why the hard tip could be easier to use since the soft tip may be too soft to control.

Witch is very similar to why a person would say that it is easier to use a small tipped brush pen than a large tipped brush pen.

For a beginner, I recommend getting both of these different types of brush pens and trying them out for yourself. 

But if you can only afford one at the moment the hard tip would do you just fine. 

For some reason, you have not been able to find these awesome pens I was able to find these on block art materials, go check them out here.

Paper, You Should Use For Your Brush Pens 

When you buy brush pens, especially this Tombow fudenosuke, paper is everything.

I have noticed especially with the fudenosuke that it easily frays leading for your brush pen to not last as long.

If you have no idea what this is check out my whole entire article about it here. 

Fraying is when clumps of felt come off of the tip of the brush pen. 

This usually happens because of the type of paper that you are using with your brush pen.

For doing brush lettering paper is as important as the actual brush pen. 

Also if your brush pen is just drying out that doesn’t exactly mean it’s frayed. 

A lot of times I have noticed that these brush pens dry out quickly, you could say it is just how these pens were made to be. 

Fraying is quite different.

WHAT YOU SHOULD LOOK FOR

When looking for paper for your brush pens there are a lot of things that you should take into consideration.

One, is that it is bleed proof.

Believe it or not a lot of brush pens are water-based leading it to bleed through your paper. Witch is something that you do not want.

Second, it should be somewhat thick paper.

Why you should get thick paper because a lot of brush pens can easily tear it up.

So if you had really thin paper you can easily with a brush pen tear a hole in it.

Third, it needs to be SMOOTH.

If you can’t get anything that is thick and bleed proof then at least make sure it is smooth paper.

A lot of times not even regular printer paper is smooth enough for these brush pens. 

PAPER

Before moving on quite just yet I have actually written two articles about the different papers that you should and should not use.

Here are some links to those blog posts if you are wanting some more information:

• Is Watercolor Paper Good For Brush Pens? 
• Is Cardstock Paper Good For Brush Pens?

All of these include some different examples.

So let us move on…

My first recommendation for paper would be some Rhodia paper.

Let us go through the pros and cons of this type of paper.

PROS

• High-quality smooth paper
• Thick and Bleed Proof
• Comes in different styles of marker pads, and sizes
• Comes in A Graph Paper Pad (Great For Practicing)

CONS

• Might be expensive if you are on a low budget.

Now let me move onto my second recommendation for paper.

I recommend HP Premium 32lb paper.

Now let us talk about it a little bit.

PROS

• High-quality small smooth paper
• Bleed Proof
• Has a nice price
• You Can Print out Practice Sheets With It

CONS

• Not that Thick But Thick enough.

Again you should check out the links above where I give some extra tips on paper.

Now let us move on to…

How long You Should Expect The Pen To Last

So how long should you expect your Tombow fudenosuke to last?

With my experiences and many other hand lettering artists, we have noticed that these brush pens weren’t meant to last long. 

Plus if you are not using the correct paper it might be hard to make them last a full month. 

A lot of times people say that it is just the style of the pen, and that is how it is supposed to be.

But if you are looking for a small tipped brush pen that is going to last you a long time check out the pentel sign brush pen.

There is a lot of experiences that after a week these pens start drying.

So if you are using it really heavily, probably less than a month.

Again it all depends on what you are using the pen for and how you are using it.

How To hold The Brush Pen

Holding the brush pen can vary depending on what you are going to be using the brush pen for.

In this case, I am talking about brush lettering, so that is what I am going to be going over today.

When holding your Tombow fudenosuke the number one rule is that it must always be at a 45-degree angle.

This applies to almost any brush lettering tool.

When holding your brush pen you should never be holding it upright like a regular pencil. This will make it harder to get thin and thick lines and could lead to your brush pen to fray faster.

You should also never hold your brush pen less than 45 degrees.

This will lead for your hand to get closer to the paper. When it is like this it may be harder to control. Witch is something we want to stay away from.

The way you grip your brush pen totally depends on you.

Also, the hand that you write with you should take into consideration.

If you are a leftie you might be smearing the ink, so watch out for that. 

But honestly, if you keep your hand at approximately 45-degree angle, no matter if you are a righty or lefty, you can do brush lettering.

Just want to point this out again this is how you would hold it for brush lettering, and you may hold the pen differently for what you need it for.

Line Variation

So now that we went through all of that information above how are we going to get our thin and thick strokes?

I am going to show you how to do that right now.

Of course, we are going to start by getting our smooth paper and holding our brush pen at approximately a 45-degree angle.

I am just going to point out this is who we use the brush pen for brush lettering, and you could do it a different way depending on what you using it for.

Let us start out with our upstrokes.

We are going to be applying very little pressure to the tip of the pen, leading to a thin line. 

Do not worry if you’re strokes are coming out shaky, it is just going to take time to perfect your strokes. 

Now let us move onto our downstrokes.

With our downstrokes, we are instead going to be applying some more pressure to our brush pen, moving down of course.

If you are using the hard tipped brush pen you might find it easier to create not so shaky upstrokes, while using a soft tip might be harder.

While a hard tip you are going to have to apply more pressure to get a thick downstroke, than if you were to have a soft tip brush pen.

But a lot of times it is not even noticeable of what is the difference, so don’t worry about it.

Again it is all personal preference, so you should try out these two different tips for yourself.

After practicing these basic strokes we are going to be moving onto transitioning between the two.

This may be difficult for a beginner so let me explain how.

So we are going to start off with a little bit of pressure going upwards. Slowly going to go downwards with a lot of pressure.

The key here is to go slowly.

If you don’t go slowly it might lead to a lot of problems.

One could be that there is a big ridge or not a smooth transition between these two strokes. Witch is something that we don’t want.

For some reason, you are not getting a smooth transition, check if you are not going slow enough. 

I recommend when starting out to go extremely slow at first so that you can get the hang of it. 

Now all of this moves me onto our next section…

How To Practice

Perfect practice makes perfect.

So how are you going to practice?

The very first thing that you want to practice with your brush pens is the basic calligraphy strokes.

Honestly, even if you are not using the pen for calligraphy this can be helpful if you are just wanting how to use/control it.

The basic strokes of calligraphy are something that you are going to have to practice.

Before even learning or trying to draw letters you are going to have to learn the basic strokes.

WHAT ARE THE BASIC STROKES

There are 8 strokes.

• Upstroke
• Downstroke
• Overturn
• Under turn
• CompoundCurve
• Ascending Loop
• Descending Loop
• Oval

As you can tell we have gone into it a little bit in the above section.

WHY

Why in the world do we need to know these?

Well, this is going to help you construct your letters.

In calligraphy one of the most important things is formating your letters correctly, and the basic strokes are going to help you with that.

So with the basic strokes, you can connect them to almost form any lower case letter in the alphabet, which is quite cool.

HOW

Now let me show you how you are going to be able to do this.

So first you should have learned how to correctly hold your pen and how to transition between the upstrokes and downstrokes (this was talked about in the above sections).

Above I have pictures of the different strokes. Use those to guide you.

When learning (I have stated this before) go very slowly. Don’t just rush into it. 

If you are having a hard time understanding how to do a stroke check out my free brush lettering practice sheets ( that comes with a basic strokes guide).

These are meant for bigger brush pens but can still help you get started.

Over time you will start to get less shaky lines and smoother transitions.

Onto the next part…

CONNECTING EVERYTHING

Now I am going to show you how to connect the basic strokes so that you can get your different letters.

Over time you will be able to memorize these different strokes. 

Don’t worry if you are just getting started.

So an example of this is with a lowercase H.

With the H we can do an ascending loop plus compound curve, which will get us our lowercase H.

Again don’t worry if you are confused.

Here’s a picture showing you what I mean. 

Also, remember that this is only for the lowercase letters.

It is so important that you learn how to connect the basic strokes to form your letters because if you don’t yo are not doing calligraphy correctly.

It is not the same as just writing it in cursive with line variation. There is an actual form to it. 

If you want to learn more about this topic check out my article all about it here. 

These are just a few more examples.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, you have bared with me and now know exactly know how to use your fudenosuke brush pen, hard tip or soft tip.

As a beginner, I know this may all be overwhelming but don’t worry. If you practicing correctly and consistently you will become a pro at all of this. 

If you are having trouble with your bigger tipped brush pens check out my full tutorial about it here.