If you are having trouble mastering modern calligraphy with a brush pen, but are eager to start creating beautiful modern calligraphy pieces that you love, then faux calligraphy is for you! Not only is faux calligraphy a great way to dip your toe in the waters of modern calligraphy and understand the basic letter forms, it is also necessary for creating most hand painted signs and chalkboards, such as signs for weddings, businesses and home decor. Even if you are an experienced calligrapher, faux calligraphy is a useful skill.
Step 1: Write Out Your Entire Word or Phrase
Using any ball point pen you have, write out the word or phrase you intend to use for this practice. If you already know how to form a modern calligraphy alphabet then write your word or phrase in that style but if not you can simply use cursive or even print.
Step 2: Identify Your Downstrokes
Take a look at each letter and determine in which parts of the letter your pen was moving down towards the bottom of the page as you wrote that letter. This is your downstroke. Go through each letter and add a closed line to either side of the downstroke to show where the downstrokes are.
When deciding which side of the downstroke to add to, keep in mind that you want to have consistent size of letters and space between them. Also, the distance between the downstroke from the original letter and the line you are adding should be the same in each letter. In other words, you want your downstrokes to have the same thickness when we color them in in the next step.
Step 3: Fill In Downstrokes
Go back through each letter and fill in the downstrokes by coloring between the original downstroke line and the added one.
Keep Practicing!
There are endless ways to use faux calligraphy. Try it on paper, chalkboards, mirrors, windows, wood signs! It’s a great way to get into calligraphy without getting stuck on how to manage a brush pen (and honestly, it might be a little more useful for all the projects you’ll get into as a modern calligrapher). Grab a free printable download of my faux calligraphy cheatsheet below!