Japanese Calligraphy Brush Photoshop Free
Idara Viengxay
Showashotai is a brand of high-quality brush-script typefaces designed to meet many needs. Each letter form is carefully designed by a skilled master of calligraphy.
Originally an advertising production company in the 1950s, Kouei Sign Works transformed into a font manufacturing company specializing in brush-script typefaces in 2006.
In 2013, it was officially renamed to Showashotai Co., Ltd. Showashotai creates digital brush-script typefaces that look like real handwritten calligraphic letters. With all production work done in-house, Showashotai aims to preserve the culture of Japanese calligraphy for the future.
Creating a completely custom font from scratch may sound like a daunting task, but it's not as complicated as it seems. In this quick tip, we will be taking a look at how to create a Japanese brush font text effect in Adobe Photoshop.
You will want to make as many Japanese brush strokes as possible, but alternatively, you can also download a set of premade brush strokes that come on a transparent background or a premade brush pack that is all ready to go.
You can also go ahead and fill in any sparse spots quickly by creating a New Layer below all of your text layers and painting using a hard white brush. This will help your paint look fuller, if that's the look you are going for.
And there you have it! You can whip up these painted letters in a matter of minutes, and if you find yourself reaching for this kind of text effect fairly often, go ahead and create the whole alphabet, save it in a PSD file, and you've officially created your own Japanese brush calligraphy font template.
This font face is ideal as a Japanese brush font download with a more rustic and unrefined look. It's very versatile and works for many purposes and design styles, but it definitely makes the cut as a Japanese brush stroke font.
Maybe you still want to design your own Japanese brush fonts, but skip the stroke-creation bit. In that case, try this collection. It contains 30 isolated high-resolution brush texture strokes made using yellow acrylic paint and many different paintbrushes that are perfect for creating a Japanese brush font.
Download 66 hand-painted ink Photoshop brushes that work with any Photoshop version. This ink brush Photoshop pack is high resolution and would be a great addition for designing your Japanese brush fonts.
There you go! You've mastered the steps to design Japanese brush strokes and create your very own Japanese brush calligraphy font. And if you want to leave it to the professional designers, you can always find Japanese brush fonts on Envato Elements.
J. Herbin has gotten into the refillable brush pen arena with the CreaPen Pinceau Refillable Brush Pen ($20). It features a long narrow barrel design like traditional Japanese calligraphy brushes. The entire barrel is plastic and has minimal branding printed in gold. The cap is a simple faceted shape with no clip.The overall design of the pen is plain and simple. It does not offend visually but its pretty average looking overall.
What was intriguing to me was the synthetic bristle brush. The Akashiya Sai watercolor brushes are one of my favorite brush pens and they also use the synthetic bristles so I was hoping the CreaPen bristles would be similar.
The tip holds a nice crisp point and is very springy making it fun for brush lettering and drawing. The ink flow is dark and black and dries pretty quickly. There were no smudges on my writing sample which is pretty impressive considering how much ink I laid down on a hot, humid day on a large Rhodia Uni-Blank #18 pad.
Kuretake, Pentel, Shin Han, Akashiya, Sakura and Tombow are all well known Eastern brush pen manufacturers, while Winsor and Newton and Faber Castell are examples of Western brush manufacturers. All Western pens tend to have a felt nib, while a portion of Eastern pens have a nib made of fine synthetic hairs. Such brush pens therefore perform more like a brush than a conventional pen. This means that when applying very quick vigorous strokes, you can see the individual hairs in the marks as you lift the pen. Additionally, when these pens are used on cold pressed or rough watercolour paper, the strokes tend to break up and show the dimples of the paper, whereas felt pens tend to offer a much more even coverage.
Within the two varieties of felt nib and synthetic hair nibs, you will also come across nibs of varying lengths and widths. In the table we list the dimensions of each nib. The length of a nib and its flexibility will influence the range of width achievable with a pen (i.e. a very flexible long nib will be capable of a wide variety of different width lines, a short rigid nib will only have a narrow range of line widths), while the width at the base of the nib will go some way to indicate ink flow. This is of particular interest if the ink in the pen is translucent. If it is and the width of the nib is wide, it suggests that if you apply greater pressure, the mark you make will appear more saturated with ink, as more ink can flow from the pen.
The vast majority of brush pens have a plastic barrel. A standard 10mm wide barrel will feel comfortable to hold in the normal, letter writing position. A regular pen is usually around 13-14cm long. Some of the eastern pens are narrower in the barrel, and longer. These replicate the proportions of a traditional Japanese calligraphy brush and are comfortable to hold as you would a letter-writing pen, but also ideal for holding like a paintbrush, with your hand further towards the end of the pen, which is also as a traditional Japanese calligraphy brush would be held. Wider marker pen style barrels of around 15mm might become more uncomfortable in the hand if being used over a long period of time, and especially so if you are making controlled marks. They are designed for bold mark marking, and less so for precision.
If you wish for your watersoluble ink mark to disappear completely, it will do if you saturate it with water and blot it gently with a clean sponge. As can be seen in the images below, diluting a pen mark with water can really show some wildly differing results, all dependent on the pigments or dyes used to make the paint. Dye based inks may dilute out into a variety of different shades (for example the Molotow Aqua Color pen has shades of violet, blue and grey), while pigments tend to dilute into even shades of colour. Waterproof pen marks need to be completely dry to be waterproof. If they are applied to damp paper they will dissolve and bleed on the page.
Dyes are water soluble whereas pigments are not. Pigment particles suspend within the binder of the ink, such as gum arabic, while dyes are dissolved in a binder; you could liken pigments as being like sand in water, while dyes are more like sugar in water. Unless a pigment in a pen is regarded as being particularly fugitive, it will usually have a much better lightfastness rating than a dye based pen. For this reason we advise that dye based pens are only used for sketchbook work or work that is intended for reproduction, and to only use pigment pens for works that are likely to be exposed to light for prolonged periods of time (such as artwork that will hang on a wall).
Alcohol based pens tend to carry an odour with them, which can become heady if working over a long time. They also tend to bleed through paper. They dilute in alcohol but are waterproof and are ideal for bold marks.
Pentel, Copic, Kuretake, Molotow and ShinHan all offer refillable pens, some of which also have replaceable nibs. However it is possible to refill some disposable pens with ink. It is worth checking the pen, and whether it has a removable end or nib. If you see that the plastic is not seamlessly joined throughout the pen, then it can be worth attempting to prize the pen open with pliers once it is out of ink and seeing if you can pipette some more ink into it! If you do this we strongly recommend you use the same kind of ink to refill (i.e. pigment ink for pigment pens, dye ink for dye pens) as a different kind of ink may impair the flow of the pen. Refilling disposable pens can be fiddly and messy, but will reduce plastic waste!
Many of the disposable pens available are unfortunately hard to recycle. Luckily in 21 countries around the world, Terracycle have collaborated with BIC pens to offer a pen recycling service. Visit the Terracycle site (this link is for the UK site, other Terracycle websites are online for other countries) and watch the video which explains how pens are broken down and used to make new products, including garden furniture and flooring tiles.
Below is a list of brush pens in alphabetical order, accompanied with images of the marks they make on Bristol board paper, and how the watersoluble pen marks appear on cold pressed watercolour paper, after a wet watercolour brush has diluted the colour. Waterproof pens on cold pressed paper are shown if a particularly interesting texture is found in the marks. Please note drawn marks are not to scale (an indication of line widths is in the table above).
Lisa Takahashi has been a contributor to the blog since 2013 and a Jackson's team member since 2006. Her love of art materials spans oils, watercolours, acrylics and relief print techniques. Alongside her writing she regularly exhibits her artwork, and teaches linocut and painting in Bristol and Somerset.
Hello Lisa, a very useful article, however,
do you have any advice for a waterproof
pen with good adhesion to a surface such
as glass?
It does not have to be artistic in its
application just permanent when dry in the
presence of water.
Probably a tricky question!
Ella Huelskamp: I wanted my alphabet to be different kinds of foods formed into the letter. I first sketched out the letter with pencil, and then painted over it with watercolor. I then outlined most letters with black pen, and scanned them individually.Lastly, I cut out each letter in photoshop. This process took some imagination, but overall left me with a fun, playful, colorful, and somewhat child-like alphabet!
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