Brush lettering and brush calligraphy is all the rage these days. Whether you’re a beginner or just looking to improve your craft, here are 9 ways to improve your brush calligraphy.

Sometimes even more seasoned brush lettering artists need to go back to basics in order to check in with themselves and hone in their craft!

The 9 methods for improving brush calligraphy that I’ll cover in this post are:

• Teach yourself traditional calligraphy
• Start with markers (instead of a paint brush or a calligraphy nib)
• Practice—and master—basic strokes
• Focus on consistent heights
• Focus on consistent angles
• Connect letters when you’re ready—and not sooner than that!
• Go slow 🐢
• Copy letterers you admire (but don’t publish this work)
• Share your original work to get feedback from the lettering community

Ready to improve your brush calligraphy? Read on for details on these 9 tips to master your brush lettering skills.

1. Learn Traditional Calligraphy

Learning traditional calligraphy for improving your brush lettering is like learning history to improve your modern day politics. Understanding the past will help you improve your current practices.

I promise this isn’t as boring as it sounds.

When I was starting out with brush calligraphy and hand lettering in general, several hand lettering artists recommended I pick up a copy of Calligraphy for Dummies. It seemed a little counter-intuitive, because I didn’t even want to do traditional calligraphy.

But in studying the traditional letterforms and diligently practicing the variety of historical shapes, I was able to better understand why letters are formed the way they are.

2. Start with Markers and Brush Pens

As I mention in my e-book Getting Started with Brush Lettering, it’s important to start with the right brush marker for you. Brush markers are great for beginners because:

• You don’t have to get used to pointed pen calligraphy, which can be frustrating and difficult
• You don’t have to refill your writing implement, whether it’s a nib or a watercolor brush
• You can find the right brush pen for you, depending on your desired thickness, nib elasticity, colors, and budget

I always recommend these pens for beginners because they’re affordable, high quality, and relatively easy to find online:

• Tombow Fudenosuke soft tip pen (black only)
• Pentel Fude Touch sign pens
• Tombow Dual Brush markers

3. Learn and Practice Basic Strokes

It’s easy to get carried away and try to dive right in to writing full words when you begin brush lettering. In fact, I distinctly remember doing just that… go ahead and get it out of your system.

But also, don’t throw away these practice sheets. You’re going to want to see how much you progress (and how quickly)!

Confession time: I struggled with brush lettering for a very long time. I wanted to be instantly good at it, and found my wobbly letters incredibly frustrating. The seasoned artists always recommended: “Do your drills!” and “Learn the basics first!” but I wanted to be better than that.

Well, don’t do what I did. Learn the rules. Practice the basic strokes. Then learn to draw the individual letters properly.

Here’s a video showing you the 8 basic strokes to learn, and here is a full playlist to help you learn all the basic letterforms!

4. Focus on Consistency in Heights

When you’re starting out, aim to make your letter heights and practice strokes consistent. Practice on lined paper for a while. I recommend getting an inexpensive grid composition notebook. When you’re starting out with brush lettering, it’s best to work on consistency first before trying to draw more fun lettering styles like bounce lettering or flourishes.

While these drills may seem boring, they are helping you develop muscle memory so when you do go to experiment with more modern calligraphy styles, you will be able to execute them more beautifully and legibly.

5. Focus on a Consistent Angle

More practice in consistency! The best way to learn to draw calligraphic letters on an angle is to use a calligraphy guide. It’s super easy to make your own calligraphy guide.

Again, practicing diligently on a regular angle will help you develop your muscle memory faster. Soon you’ll see you won’t need to use the calligraphy guide anymore; your letters will be perfectly angled because of all the drills you did with your guide!

When you’re working with angles, make sure to put the heavier downstroke along the angles of your guide.

6. Connect Letters When You’re Ready (And Not Sooner)

Once you’re ready, choose a word you want to letter. First, try lettering each of the letters separately, focusing on complete letters, consistent thicks and thins, consistent heights, and consistent angles. Then, begin to join the letters together by overlapping the downstroke of the next letter over the tail of the previous letter. (I talk a lot about joins in my e-book, Getting Started with Brush Lettering, and in our course, Brush Lettering Basics.

It’s just like learning to write when you’re in preschool—learn individual letters first, and then once you’ve mastered those, you can move onto putting full words together.

7. Go Slow. No. Slower.

If you’re having trouble with a certain stroke, letter, or a gradual thick-to-thin line (or visa versa), slow down.

Just like anything you’re practicing, it will feel a little clunky at first but will get faster with time and improved muscle memory.

It can be intimidating to watch professional letterers in videos, but know that they got to where they are because of the slow, deliberate practice they did when they were beginners.

8. Be a Copycat

If you’re into brush lettering and brush calligraphy, I can only assume you’re into it because of the inspirational art and lettering pieces you see online. Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media sites are an excellent source of inspiration.

After you’ve significantly improved on the basics, try copying the styles of brush lettering artists you admire.

Important caveat: do not post your work where you’re blatantly copying off of someone else’s style! When you’re working to push yourself out of your own comfort zone and try on different lettering styles, looking for inspiration and trying to replicate their work is a great idea. But posting your copy on social media is a bad, bad idea. Any copycat work you do needs to remain private.

So why copy at all? Copying is a great way to expand your style repertoire and help you figure out how someone gets something to happen, stylistically. But then, when you want to move forward and start implementing some tips from lettering artist A and some tips from lettering artist B, and also mix in artist C and D’s styles, put your copycat work away and practice your lettering without references. This is how you’ll develop your own signature style quicker and more honestly.

Want to discover your own hand lettering style without truly copying? Learn different cursive styles, then apply brush lettering strokes to the different cursive styles.

9. Share Your Lettering Work and Get Feedback

Share your journey with your brush lettering! It’s fun to see how quickly you can improve.

Post your brush calligraphy work on Instagram or somewhere else to get involved in the growing lettering community.

At the very least, date your work in your sketchbook so you can leaf back and view your progress.

There are also tons of growing lettering communities! Come join the Lettering League on Facebook. Ask for help, get feedback, participate in lettering challenges, and interact with others who are just as enthusiastic about lettering and brush calligraphy as you are!

Brush Calligraphy Resources Mentioned

If you want to jump right into the guides I mentioned above, here’s a quick-access list.

• Calligraphy for Dummies book
• Getting Started with Brush Lettering e-book
• Learn Basic Strokes of Brush Calligraphy
• Learn to Draw Individual Letters in Brush Calligraphy
• Learn Brush Lettering video playlist
• How to make your own calligraphy guide
• Lettering League group on Facebook
• Discover your hand lettering style with cursive
• Practice brush lettering with cursive handwriting worksheets

Recommended Supplies

These brush tip markers are the ones I use and the ones I always recommend to beginner brush letterers. Enjoy!

• Tombow Fudenosuke soft tip pen (black only)
• Pentel Fude Touch sign pens
• Tombow Dual Brush markers
• Grid composition notebook