the five best lettering pens for beginners
Do you want to learn lettering? Maybe you like watching all those enchanting videos on social media and would like to start yourself but don’t know how, and above all with WHAT, there are so many different pens? Don’t worry, I’ll help you find your way through the pen jungle.
As free and wonderful as lettering can be, it can be tricky to know where to start. When it comes to learning the basics and techniques, few things beat a workshop, but if you can’t attend one, practice sheets are a great way to learn new hand movements.
But what about pencils? There are a whole host of them! No one ever said that lettering can’t be a material sport, right? So, which ones are best to start with?
There are LOTS of nice, fun and absolutely lovely pens to draw or write letters with, but if you want a really good starter kit, it’s not really very expensive or complicated. Here are my suggestions:
1st Pentel Brush Sign Pen
This is probably the pen that I have used the most of all the pens I have. The brush tip of the Pentel Brush Sign Pen is relatively small and therefore quite easy to handle for a beginner and many of my practice sheets are adapted to it. This small, maneuverable and incredibly useful brush pen comes in a whopping 36 different colors so you can assemble your own goodie bag of pencil caramels that make practicing both easier and more fun.
Like most brush pens, the paint is water-soluble, so you can mix the colors with each other, or dilute them with water if you want. And you: Because the tip is so nice to use, so save the pen even after you have written out the color in it (which will take a while, but still), you can use it as a small hard brush for, for example, watercolors.
2. uni Pin Fine Line brush
Uni Pin has also made a small, easy-to-use brush pen, the Uni Pin Fine Line Brush. It’s similar to the Pentel Brush Sign but is waterproof when dry and comes in four neutral colors. It is affordable and definitely a bargain! Because it is waterproof, it will not mix with other colors when it dries, for example if you put shadows on your letters, which is a huge plus for us who tried …
3. bic intensity dual tip
Okay, so now we know that small nibs are easier to control and thus make good beginner pens. But what if you’re making a card with just a single word on the front? Like “Congratulations”. Then letters with narrow lines look pretty thin or skinny, and then you need a little bigger arsenal to take out. Enter: BIC Intensity Dual Tip! Here you have some sets of larger brush tips that fill out an A6 card.
They are therefore a little trickier to handle at first, but once you learn the technique with Pentel or Uni Pin, it is great fun to work with a larger size. The reason why they qualify here is above all the price. They are cheap! And that’s a very good thing in the beginning, because you will inevitably wear out some pens, especially in the beginning, and if they are expensive, it will slow you down and make it harder to practice. But you can afford these! They come in sets of 4, 6 or 12 colors. And: the small hard tip at the other end makes the pens perfect for Bullet Journals too!
4. uni pin fine line
Brush pens are great, but you don’t need to learn a special technique or use pens with flexible tips to draw amazing letters. In fact, most lettering is likely to be done with hard tips – pencils and narrow markers, known as fineliners. Uni Pin has made a line of insanely good fineliners in 13 sizes called, unsurprisingly, Uni Pin Fine Line. The ink is as black as my heart and also waterproof when dry, making them perfect for illustrations too – they don’t smudge if you color, you can paint with watercolor on them when they’re dry without them releasing an ounce of pigment. Awesome!
Fine liners are manufactured by different companies, and the difference between them is not always so great, it’s mostly about whether they are waterproof or not, and what kind of tip and black they have. Uni Pin Fine Line qualifies on all points, and is also among the cheapest, so there is not much to doubt here.
5. all the lettering tools none of the talent
Yes, this is not a single pen but a kit that I carefully put together with different variants of both brush pens and fineliners to kickstart your lettering journey in the best way. They also come with a pad of the best lettering paper to keep the brush pens in a good mood, blank cards and a 20-page exercise booklet. My absolute best kit for beginners, a better start to the lettering journey is hard to get if you ask me.
The pens in All the Lettering Tools None of the Talent are as follows:
2 Staedtler Pigment Brush Pen
2 Uni Pin Fine Line
1 Faber-Castell Goldfaber Aqua
1 Edding 1340 Brush Pen
1 Uni Ball Signo Broad
2 Pentel Brush Sign Pen
To sum up
Lettering can be done with any pen, but here in this list we have selected the two most common types: Brush pens and Fineliners. Brush pens have a flexible tip which allows you to vary the line width of your letters.
When starting with brush pens, it’s better to choose smaller tips, as they are easier to control.
You will need some pens when you learn the noble art of lettering, so go for cheaper and more affordable pens, the opposite is just inhibiting.
Both pen types are available in different thicknesses. Feel free to buy both thin and thick ones so you are equipped for different tasks!
