Welcome back to another post! Today is all about faux calligraphy, so let’s start by explaining what that even is.
Faux calligraphy got its name by, as you might have guessed, being a sort of “fake” form of calligraphy. Where traditional calligraphy uses a brush pen to get those thin upstrokes and thin downstrokes, faux calligraphy allows you to get the same technique with a regular old pen (or, really, any sort of pencil, marker, etc that creates a standard line).
So how does this work? It’s actually pretty simple, which is why a lot of people, especially beginners, prefer it over traditional calligraphy. A lot of beginners also use it as a gateway into traditional calligraphy, because it uses the same principles without requiring the technique involved in using a brush pen.
To start, you can just write whatever word/letter/phrase you have in mind. This can be in cursive, or in print, whatever you prefer! The next step is the key: you need to identify all the downstrokes. In the example below, I showed where the downstrokes are on the cursive letter “a”, but if you want a more comprehensive guide, I have a few other blog posts about handlettering basics that should help you out! Once you identify where all the downstrokes are, you simply make those lines thicker, whether by drawing an outline and filling it in like I did, or by just adding a few extra lines around it.
Once you’ve got the basics down, this another style where there are a lot of fun variations to play around with. I included some of my favorites below, to show that you can do this with cursive or print, vary the thickness of the downstrokes, bring in color, etc. With the “lazy” and “hard” styles, the lazy one is just what you’ve been doing already (it isn’t lazy, it’s just easier than the hard version). The “hard” version is where you kind of map the downstrokes out in your mind ahead of time so that the lines don’t intersect and downstrokes remain solid white. This takes some practice to get the spacing right, which is why I called it the hard version, but it’s definitely not impossible and can be really fun to practice!
I hope you enjoy trying out a new style, or at least learning about it, and for all the umich students out there, have a great spring break!
As I’m sure you’ve all realized by now, the size of my pen collection is a bit absurd, and definitely not the most conducive to college housing. I had to leave a lot behind when I came to school, so whenever I go home, I get really excited to use them all again. I have a lot at home right now, and a little more room than I thought I would for pens, so I thought it would be fun to show you guys how I went through them all and picked what to bring back to Ann Arbor. For the major pen sets, I included their swatches and my opinions on them below. I know the swatches for some of the smaller pens are really tough to see, but I hope you can at least kind of see the colors and the size of the nib. I did also bring home the posca set you can see in the box picture, but I forgot to take pictures of those swatches.
After that came all the random, individual pens. I tested a ton, but here are the ones I brought back. From left to right:
Before we get into my opinions, let’s introduce these guys. The Monami Plus Pen 3000 (I know, a bit of a ridiculous name) is a fine tip pen. It’s also a felt tip, although I would argue it’s closer to a plastic nib (for felt tips, think Papermate flairs–these are a lot sturdier and skinnier). Even though they have a fine tip, they have enough give to them to act as a pseudo-brushpen if you want them to. I use these more often to color in small things or write, though. You can see some different ways to use these in the picture I included. One thing to note about the ink, though, is that it can be a bit splattery. It’s not juicy enough where it will leak or splatter enough to stain things, though, it’s just worth noting because sometimes it can be hard to get clean lines.
The pen body isn’t my favorite–these guys are really tall and thin, and feel kind of cheaply made, which makes sense because they’re known for being super affordable. They’re also known for coming in a huge color selection, including a lot of pastels, fluorescents, and muted colors. The set of twelve I have is mainly just classic bright colors, but I’m obsessed with the case it comes in–it’s super satisfying to unclasp it for some reason, and it’s super convenient to keep in my bag.
The basics all come down to upstrokes and downstrokes. Upstrokes are thin lines that use just the very tip of the brush pen, and they start from the bottom and go in an upwards direction (as the name implies). Downstrokes, again, what a shocker, start at the top and go in a downward motion. These are thicker lines because they involve using more pressure on the pen. I demonstrated this with the pictures below, using my favorite brush pens, Karin brushmarker pros.
Once you get these basic strokes down, you can start experimenting with more complicated strokes. I’m not sure who originally came up with this set of strokes to practice, but I know I’ve seen @thehappyevercrafter and @ensigninsights use these on Instagram (highly recommend their accounts, especially for beginners!). In any case, these are essentially the core kinds of strokes or lines you’ll need to be comfortable making, because they appear in a lot of letters.
Here’s your basic lower-case, cursive “a”. To make this, you actually have to use two strokes (shown in the picture), meaning you pick up your pen once in between. For the first stroke, the oval-ish shape, you start where I put the little 1 in a circle. From there, you start with an upstroke, then transition into a downstroke, and finish off with another upstroke that connects to the first. Then, you pick up your pen, and begin stroke two! This one is a lot easier–start at the same height as the top of your oval, and just go straight down, then kind of flick your pen back up for that final upstroke. I’m not going to guide you through every letter because we’d be here forever, but I did include a little sheet I drew of all the letters and some guiding arrows for each of the strokes involved. I also color-coded them, so the stroke you start with is in red, followed by a yellow stroke, and on a few letters there’s a third stroke which is in blue. Of course, there are tons of styles for writing the alphabet, and every lettering artist does it a bit different, but this is how I tend to do it!
First, I drew in the letters with pencil. Because this is just for fun and all freehand, it took me a few tries to get the spacing right. After that, I drew in outlines of a bunch of different types of leaves. Using references was really helpful here! As you can see, adding in the leaves kind of created a jumbled mess, but I was able to fix that a little bit through erasing. 
This way, you can lighten the graphite without getting those streaks or worrying about erasing too much.
