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When I started practicing brush lettering, I had no idea that you need the right brush pens and that there was such a thing as brush pens for beginners. I thought I could buy any brush pen I wanted and just start practicing with it. I didn’t know that even the right papers can make such a big difference.
It turns out that not having the right brush pens lead me to so much frustration, to the point where I wanted to give up. The first brush pen that I picked up was the Tombow Dual Brush Pen, and let me tell you, they’re not a beginner-friendly brush pen. This was the pen that I saw everyone using and recommending. I still don’t understand why someone would recommend it to anyone starting out.
Don’t get me wrong – I think the Tombow Dual Brush Pens are great, but they require a little more practice – something a beginner doesn’t have yet. In this post, I’ve gathered a list of brush pens that, in my opinion, are the best options for anyone just starting out with brush lettering.
Pro Tip: the best brush pens for beginners are usually the ones with a small tip. The fine tip of these small pens is firmer and so much easier to control. If the pen has a bigger tip, it’s usually a more intermediate or advanced brush pen and it’s more difficult to control because the tips are super flexible.
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The best brush pens for beginners
he Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen comes in a 2-pack with a soft and hard tip. Tombow only produced these pens in black for years but now they have a set with 10 different colors (including the original black pen). The 10-pack brush pens comes with the hard tip.
The Tombow Fude Twin Tip is a dual brush pen perfect for beginners. There’s one black side (with a hard tip) and the other side is gray (with a soft tip). It’s very similar to the Tombow Fudenosuke mentioned above.
The Pentel Fude Touch brush pens are water-based and it’s great for blending! They come in a pack with 12 colors. Make sure you get the ones that have “touch” written on the body, plus they also have a glittery body! Do NOT confuse them with the “original” sign pens – they don’t have a flexible tip and the body doesn’t have glitter on them.
The Zebra Fude Sign brush pens also comes with a hard and a soft tip. The one with the black body is the hard tip and the grey body is the soft tip one.
The Pilot Pocket Brush Pen is a black brush pen with a hard (blue body) or soft (black body) tip. The ink flow is amazing and the black color is really rich.
The Kuretake Fude Brush Pen is great for beginners as it also has two different tips: hard and soft.
Kelly Creates Multicolor Small Brush Pens
Created by Kelly Klapstein, a calligrapher and brush letterer herself. Her handle on Instagram is @kellyreates, hence the name of the pens! The Kelly Creates Multicolor Small Brush Pens are really similar to the Tombow Fudenosuke, the only difference is that there’s only a hard tip. It comes in a set of 10 beautiful colors!
Bonus: Crayolas & Faber-Castell
The Crayola & Faber-Castell markers aren’t actually brush pens, but they’re surprisingly good for calligraphy and brush lettering! I had seen a lot of people using Crayolas for calligraphy on Instagram and I decided to try them myself. I wasn’t disappointed at all. In fact, this is the pen that I began to practice the most when I was just starting out. I would 100% recommend it to anyone and you can see a more in-depth post on how to use them for calligraphy.
The Crayola Broad Tip Marker isn’t technically a brush pen, so the tip is really firm and not flexible. I swear to you, I mastered this pen and then after a few months of practicing with it, I was grabbing any brush pen and using them with ease. They are larger pens so it’s great if you want to write larger letters. Crayola also has an amazing pack with 40 different colors.
Another bonus is the Crayola Super Tips. They are so similar to the broad tip ones, but with a smaller tip. It works the same way, but you can write small letters with this one. Crayola has different packs available: a 20-pack, a 50-pack, and an 80-pack.
Faber-Castell DuoTip Washable Markers
I have yet another bonus for you! Faber-Castell also has a very similar marker. It’s closer to the Crayola Super Tips since their tip is smaller. The difference here is that the Faber-Castel DuoTip Washable Markers is a dual-tip marker, meaning it has two different colors in each pen! They have an incredible 24-pack.
5 Comments
What pens do you recommend for someone who is just starting?
Hi, Deborah!
You can choose any of the pens that I listed on this post. They’re all suited for beginners! Also, you can always choose the hard tip pens because they’re less flexible, so it’s great for someone who is just starting.
Hope that helps!
Hi! I am new to your site, What a wonderful resource for budding hand letterers! I wanted to ask, are there specific practice sheets that would suit smaller pens like the Tombow Fude and also the Pentel Sign Touch Fude (which I have)? As opposed to sheets which are more geared toward larger brush tipped pens like the Dual Brush?
Hello again, Noah!
Thank you so much for your kind words about the site! As for a practice sheet for smaller pens, I currently don’t have any practice sheet for them. But I would recommend that you check Sharisse’s website (aka piecescalligraphy on Instagram). She has this free practice sheet that caters to both smaller and larger pens. It has really helped me for when I was just a beginner, so I hope it does the same for you!
thank you RAYANE ALVIM