What Is A Lettering Pen Used For
So you want to know what exactly is a lettering pen and what is used for.
Anyway, this is just going to be an article about different lettering pens and how they are used for doing hand lettering, brush lettering, and modern calligraphy.
If you don’t know what all of this is don’t worry this is why I am here.
Let us start by just giving you your simplest answer to what is a lettering pen used for.
A lettering pen can be almost any writing utensil like a brush pen, pencil, ballpoint pen, etc. But they have to be used for hand lettering or you could say modern calligraphy. So a lettering pen is used for drawing the beautiful art of calligraphy.
Her is a quick summary of what you are going to be learning about today:
- What Exactly is A Lettering Pen
- Ways A Lettering Pen Can Be Used For
What Exactly Is A Lettering Pen
Basically in this section, I am going to be talking about what is considered a lettering pen and the different types of lettering pens out there.
So what exactly is it?
Just want to point out before we get started that a lot of these things are my personal opinions on what “lettering” is.
So a lettering pen for traditional calligraphy is different than modern calligraphy.
In this article, I am talking about modern calligraphy.
Ok, now we can get started.
A lettering pen can be almost any writing utensil that can be used for modern calligraphy.
If you don’t know what modern calligraphy is…
Modern Calligraphy (also known as lettering) is the art of drawing letters. It is different from traditional calligraphy, which is the art of writing letters.
If you want to learn more about the differences between these two artforms check out my article about it here.
Also, modern calligraphy can include its own different types of lettering.
Like hand lettering, chisel tip calligraphy, brush lettering, dip pen calligraphy, etc.
Modern calligraphy just gives you some more freedom of how you want to draw your own letters.
Now let us dive more into the lettering pen part.
So a lettering pen can be a regular pencil, any type of pen, a chisel tipped marker, brush pen, dip pen, brush, and paint, etc.
To be honest almost a writing utensil can be used for doing lettering.
Now if we are talking about traditional calligraphy a lettering pen is specifically considered a dip pen.
Since the only way you can consider it “traditional” if it follows all of the rules which includes using a dip pen.
A dip pen consists of a nib and a holder. A nib is just a flexible tool that can be used to make thin and thick lines. TO be able to do calligraphy you would also need some ink.
If you were looking for more of an explanation of a calligraphy pen (sort of the same as a lettering pen) or dip pen you can check out my tutorial here.
Ways To Use lettering Pen
So what is a lettering pen used for?
Well, I have talked about it before it is used for doing modern calligraphy.
So what types of modern calligraphy are there?
Answering this question is going to help us understand what a lettering pen can be used for.
SO a lettering pen can be used in many different ways depending on what type of writing utensils there is.
Let us just go over a few.
There is:
- Brush Lettering
- Pencil Calligraphy
- Chisel Tip Calligraphy
- Whiteboard Lettering
- Faux Calligraphy
- Dip Pen Calligraphy
- So much more
These are all different categories/forms of hand lettering (modern calligraphy).
So let us go through what a lettering pen is used for in some of these categories/forms.
BRUSH LETTERING
Brush lettering is just hand lettering but specifically lettering with a brush pen.
A Brush pen is a flexible felt-tipped pen shaped like a brush. Since it is flexible you are able to get different strokes and line variation.
Brush lettering I have noticed is one of the most common ways of doing hand-lettering since it is quite popular.
Then again might be expensive to buy brush pens especially if you are not taking care of them correctly.
PENCIL CALLIGRAPHY
Pencil calligraphy is just a form of doing calligraphy with your regular pencil.
Sadly this isn’t as common, with what I have noticed in the lettering world.
Not a lot of people know that you don’t need expensive tools like dip pens or brush pens to do calligraphy.
You can just do lettering with a regular pencil.
If you’re interested in learning this beautiful art form check out my in-depth article about it here.
CHISEL TIP CALLIGRAPHY
A lettering pen can also be a chisel tipped marker.
I have noticed that a lto of traditional people also use a chisel tipped marker for doing their traditional calligraphy.
So you could say it is quite common.
This is also quite inexpensive because you can do calligraphy with a whiteboard marker or even a regular highlighter.
I have done a tutorial on how to exactly do this.
Witch is linked here.
FAUX CALLIGRAPHY
Faux calligraphy is also known as fake calligraphy.
I have also noticed that some people also call it cheating calligraphy.
Well, you are just doing calligraphy with a regular pen or almost any other utensil, but in an easy way.
It isn’t exactly its own form but it is its own technique or way of doing calligraphy.
If you are getting interested and want to learn lettering easily I have a great tutorial for you here.
DIP PEN CALLIGRAPHY
You could say that dip pen calligraphy is one of the most traditional ways of doing modern calligraphy since you are using a traditional tool (the dip pen).
Just wanted to let you know that dip pen calligraphy is also known as pointed pen calligraphy.
I explained above that a dip pen is simple a pen with two parts. A nib and a holder.
So you dip the pen into the ink.
I have also noticed since you need specific paper different tools, inks, to be able to do it (which may be expensive).
But still, this is what a lettering pen can be used for.
These all were just different ways a lettering pen can be used for and how it can be done.
Final Thoughts
This was just a simple article explaining what exactly a lettering pen is and what it is used for.
If this article has interested you in entering the lettering community check out my article on how exactly to use a brush pen for hand lettering here.
That just goes through almost everything that a beginner should know.
Feel free to comment with your questions.