Brush Lettering - How to Do Brush Calligraphy from Scratch

I started doing brush lettering last year and I fell in love with both the cathartic nature of this hobby, as well as the usefulness of it. Because of that, I spent the past few months teaching how to do brush calligraphy here on Moms & Crafters (check out the how to watercolor series too!). Today, I decided to sum up the series in this post and give you what you can use as a “self-teaching” course outline. Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links.

Modern brush calligraphy has so many uses.

Pretty your planners – I use it for this on a daily basis
Pretty your parties – I’ve made signs to label foods in an instant at family parties
Cards and addresses – You can make almost instant gorgeous cards with brush lettering
Art therapy release – I use it for this on an almost daily basis (learn more about my lettering journal here).
Customize gifts – grab a dollar store mug, letter a sassy saying, and you’ve got the perfect girlfriend gift!
Menus and more – Yep, when it comes time to menu-making, my menus tend to look like this:

To help you out, I put together this series on how to get started with brush lettering. To be honest, I do have more to share on the topic, and while I hope to still, I need to move on and can’t commit to it monthly anymore. So I’m taking this opportunity to “round up” the series, and if I add anything else, I’ll pop it into this page.

You already have plenty to get started with, so I wish you the best of luck! Come join us in the Sisterhood of Crazy Crafters and share anything you letter along the way!

How to Do Brush Lettering for Beginners: Gear up:

First, check out my list of the best brush pens for lettering. I go through and review different options. You can also test it out for yourself with a beginner brush lettering pen pack.

Next, if you want to really master it 100%, including correct positioning and understanding of letter forms, you may want to grab one or two brush lettering books for beginners.

In this brush calligraphy series I do teach you about the basic strokes and how to make nice lettering, however the series does not teach things like positioning and typography – simply because I’d need to write a whole book to do that! If you want to learn it just enough to do it, the series will be enough. If not, I cannot recommend enough that you get a good brush lettering book to support your learning.

How to nail brush lettering for beginners by learning the techniques and practicing!

Want a solid brush lettering tutorial? In this post, I teach you all the basic movements and tips for making your lettering beautiful.

It includes short videos so you can see the strokes in action too. If you read one post this is the one you should go through in depth!

Practice brush calligraphy to really nail it:

Getting the flow and really nailing brush lettering relies a lot on muscle memory – training your muscles in the right movements. For that reason, I created brush lettering practice sheets with the basic strokes. You can download those for free.

I do hope to eventually follow up with an alphabet version, and then specific words, but for now that’s what I have already done.

I also truly believe that the best way to master a skill and make it your own is to do it regularly in free-form. What I mean is, it’s nice to trace and build muscle memory, but you’ll only really master your own style of brush lettering if you test your wings and fly out on your own.

For that reason, from the start, I kept an Almost Daily Lettering Journal. This word art diary is both a way to express myself, a release, as well as a way to experiment sans pressure. You can check out the journal I designed for this here.

I hope this series on brush lettering for beginner has given you love for a new hobby!

If any new posts are added to the series, I will make sure to add them here. I also send these out to my newsletter. If you downloaded my free brush lettering practice pages you’ll automatically get those updates.