Wondering how to blend with brush pens? Blending with brush pens is fun and easy! It adds a level of complexity to your work, whether you’re just practicing for fun or you’re making final compositions.
In this post, we’ll teach you two ways to blend using basic supplies. You can follow along with our youtube video (plus watch to the end for a bonus tip!).
Brush pen blending is the ombre effect that’s created when you blend colors from two different pens into one composition.
Many people are drawn to modern calligraphy because of the wide selection of brush pens and colors that are available. You can write words in any color! But why limit yourself to just one?
When you use the blending effect with brush pens, you’re seamlessly moving from one color to the next. In this post, we’ll show you two ways to blend:
See both types of blending here:
Both of these techniques are a little time-sensitive as it works as long as the ink is wet. This is why we recommend working in small sections of two or three letters instead of writing the whole word at a time.
In our examples, we used these blending techniques to blend two colors but you can add more colors if you want. Once you have the techniques down, why not go for a full rainbow blend?!
Which colors work well together largely depends on the blending method you plan on using. Normally you choose two colors, one lighter color and one darker color work well.
For vertical blending, you get the best results by choosing two shades of the same color. Since this way of blending relies on physically drawing the darker ink into the lighter one, choosing related colors makes it easier to get smooth blend.
You don’t have to worry about colors as much if you’re going for a horizontal blend as this blending technique relies on the darker color to slowly fade. While you have more color options here, we recommend you stay away from any colors that become brown when mixed such as orange and blue.
You don’t need much to get started with brush pen lettering, and blending is the same. Let’s quickly go over the essentials!
In our examples, we used one of Tombow Dual Brush Pens and most brush pens will do as long as their ink is water-based.
Blending only works with water-based brush pens and doesn’t work at all with pigment based pens since the ink just sits on the paper. We love Tombow brush pens but this is just the tip of the iceberg — see all of our favorite lettering supplies here.
As always, make sure to use smooth paper for your modern calligraphy in order to avoid damaging your pens! We recommend Canson Marker Paper. Learn more in our paper guide.
Other blending techniques can use watercolor paper, but marker paper works best for brush pens.
If you want to do horizontal blending, you will need some sort of plastic palette to use as a blending palette. This sounds like a fancy calligraphy tool but it’s really just a non-porous plastic surface. You can use a plastic bag, plate or (our favorite) a piece of tape! Watch this video for a tutorial:
We’ve gotten hundreds of comments on our YouTube videos where people chime in about whether they love or hate the sound of the pen on plastic tape.
It helps to have some paper towels on hand in case you smear the ink off your palette onto your hand.
To create an even smoother blend, you can use a colorless blending pen to smoothen the edges where the different colors meet. Some people choose to use a water brush for this but a blender pen works better in combination with smaller brush pens.
While you don’t need this a blender pen or paintbrush, it does give you a smooth end result.
You May Also Like: How to Blend in Procreate for iPad Lettering
Blending is a great way to add some pizzazz to your lettering! But why stop there? In our Intro to Brush Lettering Book, we show you how to get perfect brush letters as well as more creative ways to take your modern calligraphy to the next level.
Fun fact: Our video on is our most viral piece of content ever. More than 10 million people watched our tutorial on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
We hope you found this tutorial helpful. We’d love to hear from you in the comments: have you tried these blending techniques? What did you create?
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