My Favorite Brush Pens for Lettering | Abbey Sy

hey guys it's abby and welcome back to my channel for today's video we're going to be talking about the brush pens that i highly recommend and i'm going to walk you through a quick demo on each brush pen and why i've been using them for the past few years make sure to keep watching to know more about it [Music] before we begin this video is sponsored by skillshare skillshare is an online learning community for creatives where millions come together to take the next step in their creative journey it's curated specifically for learning meaning there are no ads and they're always launching new premium classes so you can stay focused and follow wherever your creativity takes you and the best part is it's only less than ten dollars a month with an annual subscription i personally have been taking exclusive classes for the past year and for me it's such a great way to look for resources such as hand lettering graphic design business and more if you're looking to up your creative career or just invest more time and energy into your creativity i highly suggest checking out skillshare for more classes on that make sure to keep watching to know how you can get a free trial of the skillshare premium and let's get right into the video so a little backstory on brush lettering when i was starting out i actually didn't have any brush pens we at that time it was like 2013 i dove into lettering mostly using fine liner pens and when brush pens sort of came into the picture it was kind of hard for me to pick out which ones i liked mostly because i had a very specific type of lettering that required a certain kind of pen and luckily a few years after going to different countries and trying out different stationery different pen brands different tips of brush pens i was able to finally narrow it down to these brush pens and i would say like in general a lot of the brushes i will recommend are from japan you can also find them in several places around the world usually there are available also on shoppi and other websites so yeah i hope you guys learned a thing or two from my personal ratings of these pens please know that i am no expert in this but as someone who's been doing lettering full-time and it has been my job and i've authored many books about it i thought it was high time that i actually share with you my personal favorites on this subject so let's get right into it so let's start with my all-time favorite pen this is the pentel touch i personally love this pen because first of all it's not very expensive and it's very easy to use so what i like about this it's actually hard tip which means that you can easily control your strokes and that's something that's pretty much key if you want to be better at brush lettering like you have to make sure that your pen works with the style that you want i personally like this because it reminds me of when i used to do chinese calligraphy and i needed this pen to actually make my calligraphy look pretty decent we had to use tiny brushes at that time it was very complicated but anyway i personally like using this because it pretty much makes me more eager to write like i've had friends tell me that when they see this pen it feels like it makes their handwriting look better but personally i think it's also because of the tip it's a hard tip and it's easier to control compared to a softer tip ones which also show you later on and if you are the type to write in smaller sizes like me this is not usually the size that i write in this is going to be your best bet because you can start you know you can write really small and still get your curves together you can also experiment in different font styles and what i like about this is it has that sort of thick thin texture and stroke that you can easily see and i like it because it adds another level of dimension if you want to use a pen also for your line art i think this is a great way to add some sort of like characteristic you know if you want to draw buildings or something that has like a lot of edges and strokes you can definitely use this but nowadays it costs around two dollars ish here in the philippines which is not that bad and in terms of colors it also has a wide variety of colors if you're the type who wants to use or create archival work and use this as your line art i don't suggest it because it's not going to be um useful for you and it's just gonna smudge i've had so much experience before where i would draw something like this or you know create a skyline and stuff like that and then when i paint over it it just smudges so it's not really the best bet but if you want to use this for journaling or anything within that range that is more of just for creative expression generally i just like using this for lettering like this it's it's a great way to always just practice and this is one of my favorite favorite pens to do that next we have the tombow fudenosuke this is one of the similar types of brush pens with the pencil touch i like tombow as well this actually the direct dupe if i may say so myself we'll talk about this later on where this is actually a softer tip and this is a harder tip you easily see it with the color you have this navy blue and a black or light dark gray for the other one so this is more or less the same thing if i can find any difference it's just that when i use this on hobonichi paper which is the tomoe river paper it just dries faster and i personally like that aspect actually these pens if i remember correctly when i saw these in japan they were used to label letters or mostly like the hong pao or something like that basically a lot of like fancy envelopes and stuff and i think what's great about this is it's really made for i think chinese and japanese characters that's why you have these really nice thick and thin alternates that work really well i haven't really written chinese characters in a while but let's see what i can do here and with that it's just easier to sort of control the brushes not much difference with the pencil touch here now let's move on to the soft tip so the big difference with the soft tip it's it's just a bit softer and you will notice it immediately when i press it down and when i lift it up it has a thin thick alternate stroke that is much more evident compared to the hard tip so if you're the type who just wants to you know experiment more on the thick and thin strokes or that's part of your lettering style then i highly suggest getting this i personally got two of them because i felt like i needed to test run both of them and i use both of them alternately anyway but you'll notice that it's also more fun to do bounce lettering on this because the pen just you know follows along this obviously a very old um pen that i have because it's already fraying i had this like two three years ago when i went to the us and bought this in amazon so what i also like about this is if you want to make larger text you don't really need to put on a lot of effort it just does the job because of the very thick strokes you can easily extend it further and that way you can create a lot of volume with your work compared to the one with the hard tip on the top part of this paper the next two that we are gonna test run are both of my favorites actually but i wouldn't categorize them the same way as the pencil touch so the first one is the mildliner brush pen this is a recent release i remember getting this at boom joshi because i love mildliners but having them as a brush it's such a game changer so if you want to dabble into brush lettering and you're looking for also like a highlighter i highly suggest getting this because you can also just simply use this as your highlighter and this pen is personally one of my favorites because mildliner has a really nice selection of colors that you can use for your journals for your lettering work and it simply does the job but zebra is pretty great i love their line of pens as well i also like that this has an opposite side which is just a round tip or super fine tip if you want to create embellishments like these then this works perfectly fine you know just add some trails there and it instantly does the job now my second favorite is this one this is the sailor shikiri pen my only concern with this pen is i recently got this but it's not as sharp anymore unlike mild liner where you can see the thick thin alternates this one you can't really see it so when i write here it's not always easily attributed to brush lettering or i would say like the strokes are not easily identifiable but anyway what i like about this though is it comes in a wide variety of colors and this one is not that expensive it's 200 yen by the way my line is also not that expensive now that i realize not a lot of the pens that i mentioned here are pretty expensive the opposite side is also a fine tip but the tip here is actually finer than the one for the mildliner so it's really really thin my only concern is when i use the red of this i wrote a lot using the fine tip and it easily make the ink easily finished and that wasn't really cool but anyway i personally think this is a great one to use for happy mail or for writing packages and it's pretty easy and straightforward to use as well i feel like this deserves its own page so this is the holy grail of most lettering artists this is the tombow dual brush pen which fun fact i only discovered maybe two years ago because i have not really gotten into the brush lettering trends the biggest difference of this brush pen compared to all the other brush pens i've reviewed earlier is the body is longer which is deemed a bit more of a challenge to work with sometimes i like taking off the cap and just writing with this and you will see that the brush tip itself is very big so that way this i would say is more geared towards writing for bigger spaces or bigger canvases this actually an old one hence the thick and thin ones are not very obvious i personally like using this for brush lettering that requires big spaces because it enables me to write freely and more free-flowing i usually write like this but if you want to go freehand with it just go with it it's totally fine and what i like about this is it pretty much does the job and if you're looking for blendable brush pens this is your brush pen of choice tombow brush pens have a lot of different colors i have the pastel ones as well and i have earth colored ones and they're really really great and the opposite side for information is also a fine tip which is great for like adding some detail some shadows and overall this pen i would say is a learning curve to work with but if you really want to get down into the basics of lettering you can actually use this fine pen to create different font styles and i think that's great because it not only just limits you to brush lettering but also trying out different fonts and different ways for you to experiment with your hand lettering last but not the least we are going to take these two pens for a test run so these i would say fall on the category of markers and drawing markers coloring markers they're not primarily for writing but you can also use it that way so the first one is of course the very popular copic copic has been used by a lot of artists for line arts and their anime drawings graphic novels but one thing that i discovered about copic is they have the copic ciao which means that one side is a brush and the opposite side is a medium broad tip for coloring mostly for context this pen i would say or this marker i use this also for brush lettering like using it as a permanent marker because it just bleeds a lot like literally bleeds so this is a great option if you're looking to package labels and if you want to write something personal to your packages this is your best bet i personally use this not as a brush pen but mostly as a way to enhance my illustrations because it just works well with the thick and thin strokes and it really adds a lot of depth if you're working with archival stuff or if you want to keep your artworks forever i highly suggest using the copic ciao and just make sure your paper is pretty thick so that it can handle this type of bleeding basically so that is the copic ciao for you this one is a recent release by faber castell this is the albrecht duder watercolor marker this is actually water soluble for your information which is pretty cool but i generally like using it as a regular brush pen it's pretty much the same consistency with the tombow but if you notice a lot of the qualities of the ink are porous it's not something that's easily seen on camera but when i write on it it feels a bit watery which is really interesting because that kind of quality is what makes it water soluble so what usually is done with watercolor markers like these is for example if i draw like a solid shape there and let's just start coloring it i can wet this part with water it easily just blends well together so that's very cool but also if you want to add a bit more detail to your work and you want to smudge and like paint some of them this is a great way to add that kind of detail it's also very bulky these are more of on the expensive side mostly because they're artists grade markers and they're not just for hobbyists or for journaling in general and on the opposite side you also have a fine tip which is very common in a lot of brush pens that i've seen this is great for again details or if you want to practice lettering without trying to go with the brush pen root this is a great way to simply do that and that is it for this video i hope you learned something and also let me know which brush pen is your favorite down in the comments below as promised the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a free trial of premium membership from skillshare so you can explore your creativity and start the year right thank you again to skillshare for sponsoring this video also check my description for my personal recommended classes on skillshare last but not least hi to my patrons and thank you so much for helping me if you want to be part of my patreon community make sure to pledge today at patreon.combc i will link it down below as well thank you so much for watching and i hope to see you in future videos this has been abby always be creating and never stop learning bye [Music]

Channel: Abbey Sy

Views: 1,670

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: abbey sy, creative journaling, creative life, hand lettering, creative journey, lettering, brush lettering for beginners, brush lettering, brush lettering alphabet, pentel touch brush pen, mildliner brush pens, copic ciao markers, tombow fudenosuke brush pen, tombow fudenosuke brush pen hard vs soft, comparing brush pens, lettering brush pen comparison, fude touch brush pen, tombow dual brush pens, tombow dual brush pens review, sailor shikiori brush pen, review of brush pens

Id: OnqUenTpExE

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021