How To Create Watercolor Calligraphy Blended With Ink
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There are lots of happy accidents when it comes to creative work.
In this post, I’ll show you how to create a unique, moody watercolor calligraphy look that’s blended with liquid link.
I’m not sure how I originally came across this idea, but one day I had my inking set of Pentel Aquash water brushes out along with a watercolor palette, and I decided to dip the tip of my ink brush into the watercolor and try doing brush lettering that way.
I loved the results and wanted to share with you how I achieve this effect!
I truly love how it looks. The blending in the calligraphy occurs naturally between the ink and the watercolor because of the water brush filled with ink.
Materials Needed for a Watercolor Calligraphy + Ink Effect
To achieve this calligraphy effect, you need a water brush pen filled with semi-transparent black ink.
This is one time where you don’t want a really saturated, dark black ink; you want the watercolor pigment to be able to shine through!
Here are the materials I use. You can certainly try this with different supplies.
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Pentel Aquash Water Brush filled with Higgins Eternal Black Ink
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Regular round watercolor paint brush or Aquash filled with water
It’s important to pull your watercolor into a mixing palette for this effect because you don’t want to dip your ink brush pen directly into your watercolor pans.
Mixing and Blending Watercolor with Ink for Modern Calligraphy
It’s simple from here!
You’ll want to use a clean watercolor brush or water brush to pull watercolor pigment into a mixing palette, that way you won’t get your palette filled with black ink.
Next, take your water brush filled with ink and use it to pick up the watercolor from your mixing palette. Then, go ahead and do your watercolor calligraphy or brush lettering as normal.
The color will automatically blend from watercolor to ink. The more you dip your calligraphy brush back into the watercolor, the more colorful your lettering will be.
Here’s the video tutorial:
Click to Read Video Transcript
- In this tutorial, I’m going to be showing you how to mix ink with watercolor. I’m going to be using the Pentel Aquash water brushes. These are both filled with ink and I’m going to be using just a plain one, filled with water to pull some color from my watercolor palette, into my mixing palette. You want to make sure to use a separate mixing palette for this tutorial or when you’re trying to achieve this look simply because you don’t want to get your watercolor palette filled with ink.
- The ink that I’m using for this tutorial is the Higgins Eternal Black Ink. This isn’t the most saturated black ink in the world. And I think that actually helps when looking to achieve this effect simply because it helps the watercolor shine through.
- So I just have them filled with these that this is the medium tip, and this is the broad tip. So let’s go ahead and choose some colors here from our watercolor palette.
- I’m just going to take my plain watercolor brush here and choose a color. I guess I’ll go with pink. I know that tends to work really well.
- So I’m just going to drop a few drops of water in here to pick up some of the color and bring it over into my palette and then just push it over here. I want it to be really nice and saturated, and then also pull up some of this purple.
- Okay. So I can put my watercolor palette aside, and now I just have this palette that I’m working with here. So let’s see, I guess I’ll use my medium water brush.
- So let me show you what the ink looks like without watercolors. See, it’s not super saturated. It has a nice kind of transparent look. So when we go to mix it with watercolor, some of that watercolor pigment will shine through.
- So all you have to do is take your brush and just kind of dip it in the watercolor so you see how you have it on the tip, and then go ahead and start writing.
- The first couple strokes will be really saturated with watercolor. And then it’ll slowly fade back into ink. The more you dip it into the watercolor, the more of the watercolor will shine through.
Go ahead and try this watercolor calligraphy effect. If you post a photo on Instagram, use #LetteringLeague so we can see your work!
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