How To Choose A Calligraphy Brush

How to choose a calligraphy brush? A little bit of an odd question because if you go into an art shop and you ask for a calligraphy brush, they will sell you nothing. So what you need to do is to figure out what you're actually planning to use this brush for. Just very quickly, there are two types of calligraphy.

There is square pen calligraphy which looks like this and you have pointed pen calligraphy which looks like this. So, one pen does one script and the other does another type of script so your brushes are going to be based around two shapes. They're going to either be a flat brush or they're going to be a pointed brush.

Now, this is called a rigger. It's used by sign writers to paint large blocks of text or large lettering. The other problem you're going to encounter is when you choose a pointed brush, if you want to use this for calligraphy, do not get a sable brush.

You need a brush with synthetic bristles so the bristles spring back together. Sable brushes don't spring back together. These are the Windsor Newton coatman brushes which are used for watercolor and they are exceptional for writing.

There are other types of brushes made by Windsor Newton and this is one of the coatman brushes as well and it is not as long as a rigger which means it is not as difficult to use. I'm going to use the square brush to write an S but I'm also going to use a pen tip brush which is a fine tip brush like the coatman brushes to write a C and you'll notice they are not as accurate as the pens are. But then, you're going to be using them for much bigger shapes.

So, you'll notice there are three categories of brushes to think about. There are lots of other brushes. These are copic brushes which come in these beautiful colours and unlike the pen tip brushes which are filaments, this is a solid bit of spongy material.

The nice thing about the copic brushes is they come in really fabulous colors. Yellow is vibrant. But you can also get brushes from Favo Cassele which has smaller tips.

They are very similar to the copic brushes. You can also get tumble brushes which are like those other brushes as well and they come in a wider range of color. The good thing about these tumble brushes is they have an additional bit in the back to do some extra writing.

Other brushes are the accrue brushes of which I have tons around. As usual I'm using the colorplan stock. Large amounts of liquid colorplan is good because it's such a stable paper.

These are also single filament brushes. They're much bigger than the pen tail brushes. They do come to a really nice point.

They come in a nice range of colours and of course, lastly, are these brushes, again made by pen tail. They're metallic brushes and you have to shake them in order to get that ink rolling around. And in order to get the ink flowing, just press on the back.

Don't press over your work. Apply pressure to get the ink flowing. So, play with them.

Play with your tools and brushes. They come in a wide range of colors. And essentially that is how you choose a brush for calligraphy. .