Brush Lettering Paper Suggestions

Choosing the right paper for your brush lettering and calligraphy can mean the difference between disaster and success. Each paper has different qualities and unique specification which will affect your lettering. There is no paper that works for everything, but here are my recommendations.

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HP Premium Choice Laserjet is a high quality printing paper. You can use it to print out practice sheets or guide sheets, paint or letter right on it. It is a little heavier/thicker than most copy-papers, so it can handle a little more ink as well. It’s very smooth compared to other printing papers, which means it works well with most brush pens.

Good for: Printing practice/guide sheets, pencil lettering, sketching, lettering with brush pens, monoline pens and dip pens.

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Rhodia Dot Paper Pad is a great paper pad for lettering. My favourite is with the dot grid, but there are more to choose from. The paper is silky smooth, perfect for your dear and fragile brush pens. The grid is very useful to help you align your letters right, and the thin paper makes it very good for tracing.

Best for: Brush lettering, practice, sketches and pencils.

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Hammermill Color Gloss is a good paper if you are looking for some extra shiny and glossy surface for your lettering. I like using this paper for my brush pens or  metallic markers for smooth buttery feel and gloss.

Best for: Brush lettering, metallic markers.

Canson Watercolor Paper is a heavy/thick, high quality watercolor paper. I use this paper when I work with more than just letters, or if I want to use extra water or watercolors. The paper is not as smooth as many other types of paper.

Best for: Watercolor backgrounds, galaxy backgrounds or lettering and many-colored blends.

Canson Marker is a thin paper pad with smooth paper. This makes the Canson Marker paper great for brush lettering, similar to the Rhodia Dot pad. The thin paper is good for tracing your work over and over again. Because its quite thin, I would not recommend using too much concentration of ink/colors on this paper.

Good for: Brush pens, sketching, pencil and monoline.

Canson Bristol is a heavy/thick paper pad, with smooth paper. Because of its thickness you can use a lot of water/watercolor/ink without bleeding through the paper, and the smoothness is great for brush pens. This makes the Canson Bristol paper ideal for blending your brush pens and other watercolors/inks. This paper is too thick to do tracing, 

Good for: Brush pens and blending, sketching, pencil, flat pen, dip pen and monoline.

Astrobrights Eclipse has become my go to black paper so far. It is not as smooth as I would prefer, but from having used it a good while my metallic pens seem to be doing alright and not fray too badly. This paper is also working great with white ink and dip pens

Good for: Metallic or white colored markers and pens

4 thoughts on “Brush Lettering Paper Suggestions

  1. Cori258 says:

    Thank you so much! I truly needed some good info about paper to practice on without destroying my beautiful brush pens! I have both Tombows and the Cedar Markers and I truly love the way they work.
    In fact, the Cedar Markers are just a bit more user friendly and I couldn’t be happier to have found them and your book which was included!
    Thank You again!

    • Winterbird says:

      Hi Cori! I am thrilled to hear that you are enjoying both the book and the pens! The Tombow and Cedar Brush Pens are very similar but so far my Cedar Brush Pens seem to last a little better. You are most welcome, I am so glad, thank you for sharing and I hope you have a wonderful time practicing your brush lettering! <3

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