Brush Pen Comparison Guide

Go to any hobby or craft store and the options for brush pens can be overwhelming. When you’re just getting started, using different types and styles of brush markers and pens is a fun way to test out your lettering style. But eventually, you’ll settle on a few favorites.

Most calligraphy beginners enjoy trying out many types of brush pens; we hope that you'll have fun with this step, too! While it's easy to get caught up in the search for the "best" brush pens for calligraphy, finding brush pens that you enjoy using is all that matters.

That being said, who doesn't love a little showdown?!

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Personally, we feel like we’ve used them all over the years, making us uniquely qualified to pit them against one another to bring you our favorite picks. Sometimes, our favorite depends on the brush lettering project we’re working on. Other times, it’s brush pen characteristics the color options, the way it feels in our hands or the flexibility of the brush tips.

Table of Contents

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What Makes Brush Pen Calligraphy So Much Fun?

Brush pen lettering is becoming more and more popular, and for good reason! It lets you learn traditional calligraphy skills with the ease of modern calligraphy pens.

Brush pens combine the best of both worlds: they allow you to do brush calligraphy and achieve paint-like effects without the nuisance of an actual brush, and the flexible tip lets you create bold lines as well as thin strokes without the hassle of nibs and ink.

How a brush pen works — *Learn more in our tutorial:* ***How To Use Brush Pens***

We especially love the huge variety of colors and sizes that brush pens come in. With big as well as small brush pens that come in all the colors of the rainbow, you're only limited by your own creativity.

The cherry on top, brush pens let you do some really cool things such as blending and creating beautiful watercolor backgrounds!

Good Brush Pens For Beginners

Our brush pen face-off features many of the brush pens we have used over the year.

It includes some of our personal favorites, but not all of the pens featured here are well-suited for hand lettering beginners.

We'll quickly cover the basic characteristics of a good brush pen before moving into the tournament.

Brush Pen Characteristics

Brush pens come in many different forms, and figuring out your personal preferences is an important part of the learning curve.

Before you run to the store and buy yourself a pack of Tombow dual brush pens, take a moment to consider what characteristics to look for so you get the brush lettering pens that are right for you!

Brush tip: Tips come in two basic variations, felt tips and bristle tips. Felt tips tend to be on the firmer side. While a bristle brush gives you a nice effect, the softer tip makes it harder to control. Choose a firm tip such as a felt tip for an easier experience when you’re learning.
Tip sizes: Bigger brush pens tend to be easier to learn with than small brush pens. Although bigger tips are more flexible than small ones, a bigger pen forces you to make bigger motions which makes it better suited for learning.
Dual brush: Some brush pens come with two tips: the usual brush tip on one side and an ordinary marker tip on the other. This combination lets you combine the thin lines from ordinary marker-like tips with the thicker strokes from brush tips!

For beginners, as long as you keep these basic brush pen characteristics in mind, you can't really go wrong when choosing your first brush pen.

Do you feel ready to give it a try?! Visit our resources page to download our free guide sheet and start practicing!

Jillian writing with a brush pen — *Brush pens are one of our favorite calligraphy tools*

A Quick Word On Ink

Most brush pens have either water-based ink or pigment-based ink, and both are fine options for brush pen calligraphy. This doesn't mean that they're equally easy to work with, though.

The various inks behave in their own specific ways. For example, water-based ink flows differently from pigment-based ink and each ink dries differently.

For quick reference:

Water-based ink will eventually fade and is better for practicing
Pigment-based ink will keep its color and is better for final compositions

Likewise, the ink flow also varies from brush pen to brush pen. All the pens come with good ink flow but the amount of ink that comes out varies. While some people prefer a wet ink flow, others prefer a medium ink flow.

Finding the right calligraphy tools is mainly a matter of discovering your personal preference and what works best for you. For any hand lettering beginners, we highly recommend that you try a variety of pens to explore these different characteristics!

How We Found The Best Brush Pens For Calligraphy

The Loveleigh Loops Brush Pen Bracket took place during March. Each day, there was a face-off between two brush pens in a single-elimination tournament to find the best brush pen. Whichever pen got more votes moved onto the next round.

This article summarizes the tournament and includes embedded videos demonstrating characteristics of each pen, as well as the tournament winner.

You may also like: 20+ Free Calligraphy Worksheets

Match-Up 1: Tombow Fudenosuke vs. Pentel Sign Touch

Tombow Fudenosuke brush pens come in a 2-pack of black (one hard tip, one soft tip) as well as a 10-pack of colored hard tips. For this bracket, we'll be focusing on the black hard tip pen.

Pentel Sign Touch pens come in 12 colors. There's another set that looks a lot like these brush pens that are actually fine-liners, so make sure you get the right ones here!

Winner: Pentel Sign Touch!

We love the color options in both the Tombow dual brush pen and the Pentel, and with the softer tipped Tombow, you’re forced to slow down a bit which is actually a good thing for quality hand lettering pieces. But users found the Pentel to be easier to use and control and the color choices are much more vibrant and saturated.

Ultimately it was a tough choice, but Pentel won with 54% of the votes.

Match-Up 2: Zebra Fude Sign vs. Kelly Creates Fine Black

Both of these pens were new to us at the beginning of the bracket, but we are loving them as a small-tip alternative to the pens from Match-up #1.

The Zebra Fude sign brush pens come in a 4-pack on Amazon with extra fine, fine, and medium sizes, plus one gray pen.

Kelly Creates has a 3-pack of black brush pens, which is how we came across the fine tip one.

Winner: Zebra Fude!

These two pens both come in variations of black colors with small nibs of medium flexibility. The Kelly Creates pens have really nice contrast in strokes and are a little less opaque than the Zebra Fude. Ultimately, the Zebra Fude was more popular with our users, with 64% preferring it. Some of the favorite features of the Zebra Fude was the smooth, bold strokes and the variety of sizes in the pack. These pens are a really good way to try out different nib sizes so you can find your favorite for your next project.

You may also like: How To Use Brush Pens

Match-Up 3: Kelly Creates Medium vs. Faber-Castell Pitt

Now we're getting into the first medium-tip brush pens of the bracket.

The Kelly Creates medium tip came in the 3-pack of black brush pens, and the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist brush pen is available in a set of colors.

Winner: Faber-Castell Pitt!

Medium-tip pens can offer a lot of variety in stroke sizes, and we definitely saw this in the Faber-Castell PITT pen. It’s nice and flexible but it stays firm enough so there’s a good contrast between stroke sizes. The Faber-Castell comes in 60 different colors and is pigment-based, so it won’t fade over time. We love that! The Kelly Creates Medium is also a nice pen that’s smooth to write with and had a nice contrast between line thickness. However, it doesn’t write very dark which can be a downfall for many artists.

Among our testers, Faber-Castell PITT took the lead by far with 71% of the votes!

Match-Up 4: Sakura Koi Coloring Brush vs. Marvy ColorIn Brush

The Sakura Koi Coloring Brush comes in 48 beautiful colors, but you can get started with the 24-pk here.

The Marvy ColorIn Brush pens come in several different color sets, including pastel and bright.

Winner: Sakura Koi Coloring Brush!

Both pens here have a great selection in color options and allow for a lot of contrast between stroke lines. We love the interesting variety of colors that Sakura Koi offers, especially since you don’t see a lot of its unusual colors in other pens. The Marvy Color In pens are very smooth to write with and we love that the colors can build on one another, with a built-in ombre look depending on the pressure you use. In the end, the color selection, nib flexibility and effortless ink flow of the Sakura Koi won over users--but with a small margin of 54%.

Match-Up 5: Kuretake Zig Brushables vs. Fudebiyori

It's a Kuretake Zig showdown! The Brushables are dual-tip brush pens (both ends are brushes!) and they have a beautiful selection of pigmented ink.

The Fudebiyori comes in tons of colors, has an awesome nib, and is small enough to stick in your purse.

Winner: Brushables!

This was a close match-up between these two versatile pens. The Fudebiyori has a nice, short barrel, making it more portable for those on the go. And we love the metallic colors available. The Brushables has a large, very flexible nib and it’s two-sided for even more rich color options. Both pens were very popular with our users and there was nearly a tie, but Brushables pulled out with 50.7% of the vote because of its durability, fade-resistant ink and great range of colors.

Match-Up 6: Tombow Dual Brush vs. Artist's Loft Dual Brush

Tombow and Artist's Loft manufacture dual-sided water-based brush pens with a brush on one side and a bullet tip on the other, making them flexible options for a variety of projects.

Winner: Tombow Dual Brush!

Both the Tombow Dual Brush and Artist’s Loft Dual Brush include large nibs and a bullet tip on the other side, which is perfect if you’re looking to create a variety in your lettering styles. The Artist’s Loft offers a nice contrast between line sizes and the colors are fairly buildable, allowing you to make your lines darker the more you go back over them. We also like that Artist’s Loft comes in different set options. What our users loved about the Tombow, however, was the large number of colors to choose from (more than 100!) and the colorless blender that allows you to create so many beautiful options, making them the winner by far with 84% of the votes.

Match-Up 7: Artline Stix vs. Crayola Signature Brush Pen

Learn more about the Artline Stix and the Crayola Signature Brush in the videos below! These are interesting pens that were new to us, and only the videos do them justice.

Winner: Artline Stix!

Both of these pens were newer to us, though the Artline Stix are pretty popular among hand letterers. We happened to find the Crayola Signature at Target one day and since we always have our eye out for new pens we knew we had to give it a try. They have a good contrast between lines and the case is really nice for keeping them organized, but we found them hard to write with because the nib is so firm. The Artline Stix have very interesting casings (think Legos!) and we love that the triangular shape keeps them from rolling off your work space. These casings, which are triangular and have bumps on them, also make them hard to hold onto. But the nice gradient effect and durable nib helped them come out on top with 82% of the votes.

Match-Up 8: Karin Brushmarker Pro vs. Ecoline Brush Pen

If you're looking for a beautiful, juicy watercolor brush pen... you definitely need to get your hands on either the Karin or Ecoline watercolor brush pens.

Winner: Ecoline!

Both the Karin Brushmaker Pro and Ecoline Brush Pen can give you the juicy, almost paint-like effects in your lettering projects which is great for blending. They both come in 60 colors, though the Karin also has 10 metallics available. We love the great contrast that the Ecoline has between the thin and thick lines and the reversible nibs, making it a longer-lasting option. We found the Karin to be a little expensive, though we like the rounded look the nib gives projects. Ultimately, our users selected Ecoline for its smooth lines, beautiful hairlines and the natural gradient effects.

What Makes Brush Pen Calligraphy So Much Fun?