You have probably heard of calligraphy or lettering before because you are here. Well, I am here to tell you that you don’t always have to use a calligraphy pen for calligraphy.

Today I am going to be showing you exactly how you can do calligraphy with acrylic craft paint.

Here is the very base to how you can do lettering with acrylic paint.

When doing Calligraphy with Acrylic Paint you are going to want to make sure your able to do the basic fundamental strokes of lettering. You are also going to want to have the correct materials and know how to hold the brush.

Right now I am just going to be giving a brief summary of what you are going to be learning today:

• Materials For Lettering With Acrylic Paint
• How to Hold the Brush
• The Basic Strokes of Lettering with Paint

Materials For Lettering With Acrylic Paint

So there are going to be some links to all of the materials that I am going to be talking about today so that you are able to quickly get into the hobby of this type of art. 

Of course, we are going to start off with…

ACRYLIC PAINT

Personally, right now I am enjoying the Arteza Premium Acrylic Colors (which I have been using for all of my acrylic paintings so far).

I have noticed that it is important to make sure that your paint is neither to thin or too thick. If you paint is too thick you won’t get even strokes.

If you find that the paint is too thick start thinning it out with some water. You will find that it will start to be less thick. You should stop adding water when the paint is a perfect consistency.

You should not have to feel that you need expensive paint. Any type of acrylic paint, even some from the dollar store, is great for this tutorial.

BRUSHES

Brushes you are just going to want to make sure that there are round pointed brushes. I have also noticed that you can do it with a flat brush if you are more used to using a chisel chipped marker. Today I am going to be using a round pointed brush.

Here are just a picture of the type of brushes that I use.

Another thing you should consider if they are high quality brushes, meaning that the bristles shouldn’t be falling off. If this is true for your brushes I recommend buying high quality brushes.

High quality also doesn’t mean that it is expensive. There are plenty of cheap brushes that are high quality.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO PAINT ON

There are a few options when it comes to canvases and paper. When you are looking into the canvas I recommend as a beginner to not get the bouncy ones but to get the perfectly flat ones. 

If you don’t get what I mean here is a pic:

It is going to be harder to letter with something that is not as stable and flat.

With paper, I recommend getting thick somewhat smooth paper. I honestly use my XL Mix Media pad for everything. Brush lettering, watercolor, acrylic painting, you name it. 

Of course, you can choose to get a thicker paper which is a nice idea. Another thing you can look into is a thick Bristol board or any type of thick textured paper.

If you are wondering how exactly to do lettering (without paint) onto a canvas you can check out my tutorial here.

How to Hold a Brush

I have already talked about this topic in my latest blog post on about how to do watercolor calligraphy which is quite similar except it is a totally different medium.

Anyway since this is different than holding a regular pencil or even a brush pen here is how to hold the brush for Calligraphy.

First things first this is quite different than holding a regular felt tip brush pen so instead of holding it at a 45-degree angle you are instead going to hold it at 65-degrees to gain more control of the brush.

At the same time make sure you are never holding it upright like you would be holding a pencil. That is just going to probably ruin your brush and it will be harder to be able to get the basic calligraphy Strokes. 

WHAT ARE THE BASIC STROKES

The 8 basic calligraphy strokes are:

• Upstrokes
• Downstrokes
• Compound Curve
• Oval
• Underturn
• Overturn
• Ascending Loop
• Descending Loop

When starting out lettering this is the very first thing that you are going to want to learn. You should not be starting out with drawing out letters you should be starting out with the basic strokes.

Even if you already been practicing lettering with a different medium I still recommend practicing the basic strokes with this new medium. 

This is important because all of the basic strokes can be used to form almost any lowercase letter in calligraphy.

You will notice that it is very different than with using a regular brush pen or calligraphy pen. 

Something else that is important is that all of your upstrokes are thin and your downstrokes are thick, this is also something that I explain in almost every tutorial.

This also means that whenever you go down you apply lots of pressure, whenever you go up you apply less pressure. This then leads to line variation. Then to form the basic strokes you are going to try to switch between them in one stroke.

Conclusion

You have just learned all about how to start doing Calligraphy with acrylic paint. You have also learned that you are going to need to learn the basic lettering strokes when starting with any other type of lettering hobby.

Here I am just going to leave a few links to some awesome resources.

• https://www.raleighcalligraphy.com/blog/2019/8/15/how-to-write-and-paint-on-acrylic-signs
• https://steemit.com/art/@ozarkglade/tips-for-lettering-with-acrylic-paint

If you have any more questions feel free to comment.