September 14, 2018

Watercolor Lettering with Tombow Dual Brush Pens

Hey y’all!!! Many of you know that Tombow Dual Brush Pens are waterbased right?!?! Well, I although I’ve known that the past two years or so that I’ve owned the 96-count set of Tombow Dual Brush Pens, I didn’t truly know what that meant. Well, I knew what it meant, but I didn’t know how I could use that important and cool feature in my projects.

When I realized that there were so many different styles of lettering, watercolor lettering was one of those styles I wanted to learn. Earlier this year I purchased a set of 6 Ecoline Liquid Watercolor for this specific purpose. Now I must admit that I don’t letter with water color often; but one thing that I want to get better at is creating watercolor wreaths, florals, leaves, etc.

I haven’t practiced my watercolor lettering or the wreaths, florals, leaves, etc. lately, but this week I thought that it would be cool to use my Tombow Dual Brush Pens to practice watercolor lettering. One reason that I wanted to try this method instead of traditional water coloring is because it’s compact. I can take the supplies with me and practice no matter where I am. If you don’t own a watercolor brush pen you can definitely use a regular ole paintbrush, but because I wanted to take my practice with me, I went with a watercolor pen.

In today’s post, I am going to show you how you can use your Tombow Dual Brush Pens to do watercolor lettering! It’s super easy!

Step 1: Gather your supplies. Like I stated above you will either need a watercolor brush pen or a paintbrush, a cup of water, a paper towel, and watercolor paper (or some good quality paper. I’m using Bristol Smooth, because that’s what I have in my stash).

Step 2: Decide what you’re gonna letter of course!

Step 3: Letter away! To add a little more fun to my lettering, I used two colors for the lettering – blue and green. I lettered the word “bloom” in blue first and then I used a green color to color in the bottom of each letter.

Step 4: The fun part. While lettering is typically the funnest (that’s not a word is it?!?!) part for me; with watercolor lettering using the watercolor brush takes your lettering to another level! It is so cool to watch your “typical” lettering transform when you mix it with water. It gives your lettering a new look! Take your watercolor pen (or paintbrush – if you’re using a paintbrush you must dip it in water before placing it on the paper) squeeze it a little bit to release some water (the more water you use, the lighter the color of your lettering will be) and push the ink in upward strokes. Because your lettering is watercolor based, you can always go back and move the paint around to fill in spaces that you want to be a little more opaque.

This is the finished look!

Here’s an extra fun step!

If you’re going to try the next few steps, your list of supplies is going to change a little bit. You will need a Tombow Blending Palette or some piece of plastic.

Step 5: So, today I was little adventurous and I wanted to try some leaves. Take your Tombow Dual Brush Pens and get some of the color on the Tombow Blending Palette (or piece of plastic). The best way to do this is to lightly color dragging your Dual Brush Pen back in forth on the palette.

Step 6: Take your watercolor pen and pick up some of the paint (if you are using a paintbrush you will dip the brush into your cup of water – remember that the more water you have on your paintbrush tip, the lighter the color). I like to start from the bottom to the top when painting leaves. Start by drawing a light line upward – this will be your stem.