Calligraphy Tutorial: How to Care for Your Tools

Learn the techniques to clean, dry, and keep your calligraphy tools in great condition with Bego Viñuela

When we finish our work, the last thing we might want to do is clean our tools. However, while our work dries, we have to clean and take care of our them.

Calligrapher Bego Viñuela shares how to maintain our brushes, brush pens and watercolor palettes so they last longer.

How to clean brushes

A brush can last a long time, but only if we look after it.

We need a neutral bar of soap, water, and a cloth to dry it with. Wet the soap and rub the brush or brush pen on it until it bubbles to remove the ink that has concentrated in the lower part where the bristles can often stick together.

Then, squeeze the brush to take off any excess soap and rinse it with clean water before drying it. We may need to refill the water a number of times to remove any drier paint.

Remember to leave a small layer of soap on the tip of the brush and let it dry without rinsing that part. This way, our brush won't lose its shape when drying.

How to care for our color palette

If using the metal covers of our watercolor palettes to mix colors, it's important to dry them before closing the box. If not, drops of color will dirty our paints.

We should also clean the individual paints if we've been mixing on them. That way we will maintain the original colors and won't have to work with the mixes we made the last time we used them.

Now you've learned these little tricks to clean your tools, it's time to get them dirty and paint!

If you liked this tutorial, you can learn more from Bego Viñuela about using brushes to make letters filled with style and emotion on her online course: Italic Script with a Brush Pen.

You may be interested in:

- Introduction to Script Lettering, a course by Ximena Jiménez
- English Calligraphy from A to Z, a course by Bego Viñuela Galarraga
- Introduction to Italic Calligraphy, a course by Belén La Rivera
- Principles of Brush Pen Calligraphy, a course by Ana Hernández