To make your own calligraphy brush in Procreate, open the Brush Studio with the plus icon in the brush panel, choose a shape source (an oval for a brush pen, or a custom white-on-black PNG for a flat nib), set the grain to a blank texture, and then tune Stroke Path, Taper, and Apple Pencil pressure until strokes swell on the downstroke and thin on the upstroke. Make a separate brush for each style: a pointed, pressure-sensitive brush for brush-pen and copperplate scripts, and a flat, angled shape for blackletter and other broad-edge hands. Build once, test with a few strokes, and save variants rather than overwriting a brush that already works.

How Procreate brushes actually work

Every Procreate brush combines two ingredients: a shape and a grain. The shape is the stamp that Procreate repeats along your stroke, and the grain is the texture seen inside that stamp. For clean calligraphy you almost never need texture, so the grain stays blank and nearly all your work happens in the shape and in the behavior settings beside it.

Two details save a lot of frustration:

• Shape sources are read as grayscale. White paints fully opaque, black is fully transparent, and gray values are semi-transparent. If your custom stamp looks inverted, use the Invert Shape button or tap the shape slot with two fingers.
• Brushes are built on a square. Stamps are square images, so when you design a custom shape, work on a square canvas (1024 × 1024 is a common choice) with a black background and a white shape.

The rest of the behavior comes from a handful of panels: Stroke Path (spacing and streamlining), Taper, Apple Pencil (pressure and tilt response), and Properties (minimum and maximum size). You don't need to understand every slider. Five or six settings do most of the work.

Build a modern brush-pen brush

This is the fastest route to a usable brush, and it needs no custom artwork.

1. Open the brush panel and tap + to open the Brush Studio. The new brush lands in whichever set you had open, so pick the right set first.
2. Rename it right away ("Brush Pen – Soft" beats "Untitled Brush" three weeks from now).
3. Under Shape, choose a source from the built-in library. An oval gives you a pen-like footprint. A teardrop-like stamp, drawn yourself, mimics how a real brush pen leaves a pointed mark when pressed to paper.
4. Under Grain, choose the blank source so strokes are solid with no texture.
5. In Stroke Path, reduce spacing so the stamps overlap into a continuous line, and raise streamline until your wobbly hand-drawn curves smooth out.
6. In Apple Pencil, make size respond to pressure. This is what produces the thick-thin contrast that defines the style. Then adjust the pressure curve so a light touch gives a hairline and a firm press gives a full stroke without needing extreme force.
7. In Properties, set a minimum size well below the maximum, so a feather-light stroke still reads as a hairline instead of vanishing or staying chunky.
8. Add a little Taper so entrances and exits finish to a point rather than a blunt stamp edge.

Test with a row of overlapping ovals, a few downstrokes and upstrokes, and a loop. If upstrokes don't get thin enough, adjust the pressure curve and minimum size before touching anything else.

Build a flat-edge nib for blackletter and broad-edge scripts

Flat-nib lettering behaves differently. The stroke width depends on the direction you move relative to a fixed nib angle, not on how hard you press. Procreate doesn't make a flat nib easy to find, so you draw one.

1. In a vector or raster app, create a 1024 × 1024 square with a black background.
2. Draw a thick white line through the center at the nib angle you want. Around 30 to 40 degrees is a common starting range for Fraktur-style and italic hands.
3. Export it as a PNG.
4. In Brush Studio, import it as the Shape source and keep the grain blank.
5. In Stroke Path, push spacing to its minimum so the angled stamp forms a continuous ribbon rather than a string of beads.
6. Reduce or remove pressure-based size response. A real broad-edge nib doesn't swell with pressure, and leaving size pressure on makes the edge look fake.
7. Keep opacity at full so the ink looks solid black.

Make two or three versions at different angles rather than rotating a single brush. A set at 30°, 35°, and 40° lets you match the hand you're imitating without reconfiguring anything mid-project.

Build a high-contrast copperplate brush

Copperplate and other pointed-pen scripts need a more dramatic response than a brush pen: hairline upstrokes and very bold shades on downstrokes.

• Start from your brush-pen build and duplicate it.
• Narrow the shape so the stamp is thinner at rest.
• Steepen the pressure curve so size changes more dramatically across the pressure range.
• Raise streamline so the long, sweeping oval forms of the script come out smoothly.
• Consider enabling tilt response if you want shading to vary with pencil angle, but test it first. Tilt can introduce inconsistency if you hold the pencil at varying angles.

Keep this as a separate brush. Mixing "soft brush pen" and "sharp copperplate" behavior in one preset usually produces a brush that does neither well.

Fixing common problems

Dotted or beaded strokes. Spacing is too high. Lower it until the stamps merge.

Wobbly lines. Increase streamline and lower stroke speed, or work at a larger canvas scale and shrink the lettering later.

Strokes never get thin. The minimum size is too high, or the pressure curve is too flat. Adjust both.

Strokes are too pressure-sensitive. Flatten the pressure curve. A brush that demands extreme pressure becomes tiring and inconsistent over a full line of lettering.

Flat nib looks gray or uneven. Check that your shape file is pure white on pure black, the grain is blank, and spacing is minimal.

Blurry results. Work at a high canvas resolution. If the lettering is destined for video, draw it larger than your final frame so you can scale down rather than up.

Test every brush with the same sample string, such as a row of loops, an "n" and "u" pair, and a word with ascenders. Reusing the same test makes differences between presets obvious.

Getting calligraphy from Procreate into a motion pipeline

If you're a motion designer, the lettering usually needs to end up in a timeline, not on a poster. A few practical points:

• Export on transparent backgrounds. Hide the background layer and export a PNG so you can separate words and flourishes inside After Effects or Photoshop.
• Draw each element on its own layer if you plan to animate words or flourishes independently.
• Reveal effects in After Effects. For a stroke-by-stroke write-on, many artists trace or mask lettering and animate a reveal in AE. A raster export won't have vector paths, so plan to trace the shapes or draw a mask path by hand.
• Keep an oversized source. Exporting at a resolution well above your delivery size gives you room for camera moves and scale animation without softness.

A short checklist before you finalize a brush

• Is the shape white on black, on a square canvas?
• Is the grain blank unless you deliberately want texture?
• Is spacing low enough to avoid beading?
• Does pressure produce a clear thick-thin range (for pointed styles) or no size change (for flat nibs)?
• Did you save the brush under a clear name and duplicate it before experimenting?
• Have you tested it with the same sample string you use for every brush?

Build a small set instead of one do-everything brush: a soft brush pen, a crisp copperplate pen, and a couple of flat-nib angles. With those in your library, you can letter quickly, export clean assets, and get them into your timeline without fighting the tool.

To make your own calligraphy brush in Procreate, open the Brush Studio with the plus icon in the brush panel, choose a shape source (an oval for a brush pen, or a custom white-on-black PNG for a flat nib), set the grain to a blank texture, and then tune Stroke Path, Taper, and Apple Pencil pressure until strokes swell on the downstroke and thin on the upstroke. Make a separate brush for each style: a pointed, pressure-sensitive brush for brush-pen and copperplate scripts, and a flat, angled shape for blackletter and other broad-edge hands. Build once, test with a few strokes, and save variants rather than overwriting a brush that already works.

How Procreate brushes actually work

Every Procreate brush combines two ingredients: a shape and a grain. The shape is the stamp that Procreate repeats along your stroke, and the grain is the texture seen inside that stamp. For clean calligraphy you almost never need texture, so the grain stays blank and nearly all your work happens in the shape and in the behavior settings beside it.

Two details save a lot of frustration:

• Shape sources are read as grayscale. White paints fully opaque, black is fully transparent, and gray values are semi-transparent. If your custom stamp looks inverted, use the Invert Shape button or tap the shape slot with two fingers.
• Brushes are built on a square. Stamps are square images, so when you design a custom shape, work on a square canvas (1024 × 1024 is a common choice) with a black background and a white shape.

The rest of the behavior comes from a handful of panels: Stroke Path (spacing and streamlining), Taper, Apple Pencil (pressure and tilt response), and Properties (minimum and maximum size). You don't need to understand every slider. Five or six settings do most of the work.

Build a modern brush-pen brush

This is the fastest route to a usable brush, and it needs no custom artwork.

1. Open the brush panel and tap + to open the Brush Studio. The new brush lands in whichever set you had open, so pick the right set first.
2. Rename it right away ("Brush Pen – Soft" beats "Untitled Brush" three weeks from now).
3. Under Shape, choose a source from the built-in library. An oval gives you a pen-like footprint. A teardrop-like stamp, drawn yourself, mimics how a real brush pen leaves a pointed mark when pressed to paper.
4. Under Grain, choose the blank source so strokes are solid with no texture.
5. In Stroke Path, reduce spacing so the stamps overlap into a continuous line, and raise streamline until your wobbly hand-drawn curves smooth out.
6. In Apple Pencil, make size respond to pressure. This is what produces the thick-thin contrast that defines the style. Then adjust the pressure curve so a light touch gives a hairline and a firm press gives a full stroke without needing extreme force.
7. In Properties, set a minimum size well below the maximum, so a feather-light stroke still reads as a hairline instead of vanishing or staying chunky.
8. Add a little Taper so entrances and exits finish to a point rather than a blunt stamp edge.

Test with a row of overlapping ovals, a few downstrokes and upstrokes, and a loop. If upstrokes don't get thin enough, adjust the pressure curve and minimum size before touching anything else.

Build a flat-edge nib for blackletter and broad-edge scripts

Flat-nib lettering behaves differently. The stroke width depends on the direction you move relative to a fixed nib angle, not on how hard you press. Procreate doesn't make a flat nib easy to find, so you draw one.

1. In a vector or raster app, create a 1024 × 1024 square with a black background.
2. Draw a thick white line through the center at the nib angle you want. Around 30 to 40 degrees is a common starting range for Fraktur-style and italic hands.
3. Export it as a PNG.
4. In Brush Studio, import it as the Shape source and keep the grain blank.
5. In Stroke Path, push spacing to its minimum so the angled stamp forms a continuous ribbon rather than a string of beads.
6. Reduce or remove pressure-based size response. A real broad-edge nib doesn't swell with pressure, and leaving size pressure on makes the edge look fake.
7. Keep opacity at full so the ink looks solid black.

Make two or three versions at different angles rather than rotating a single brush. A set at 30°, 35°, and 40° lets you match the hand you're imitating without reconfiguring anything mid-project.

Build a high-contrast copperplate brush

Copperplate and other pointed-pen scripts need a more dramatic response than a brush pen: hairline upstrokes and very bold shades on downstrokes.

• Start from your brush-pen build and duplicate it.
• Narrow the shape so the stamp is thinner at rest.
• Steepen the pressure curve so size changes more dramatically across the pressure range.
• Raise streamline so the long, sweeping oval forms of the script come out smoothly.
• Consider enabling tilt response if you want shading to vary with pencil angle, but test it first. Tilt can introduce inconsistency if you hold the pencil at varying angles.

Keep this as a separate brush. Mixing "soft brush pen" and "sharp copperplate" behavior in one preset usually produces a brush that does neither well.

Fixing common problems

Dotted or beaded strokes. Spacing is too high. Lower it until the stamps merge.

Wobbly lines. Increase streamline and lower stroke speed, or work at a larger canvas scale and shrink the lettering later.

Strokes never get thin. The minimum size is too high, or the pressure curve is too flat. Adjust both.

Strokes are too pressure-sensitive. Flatten the pressure curve. A brush that demands extreme pressure becomes tiring and inconsistent over a full line of lettering.

Flat nib looks gray or uneven. Check that your shape file is pure white on pure black, the grain is blank, and spacing is minimal.

Blurry results. Work at a high canvas resolution. If the lettering is destined for video, draw it larger than your final frame so you can scale down rather than up.

Test every brush with the same sample string, such as a row of loops, an "n" and "u" pair, and a word with ascenders. Reusing the same test makes differences between presets obvious.

Getting calligraphy from Procreate into a motion pipeline

If you're a motion designer, the lettering usually needs to end up in a timeline, not on a poster. A few practical points:

• Export on transparent backgrounds. Hide the background layer and export a PNG so you can separate words and flourishes inside After Effects or Photoshop.
• Draw each element on its own layer if you plan to animate words or flourishes independently.
• Reveal effects in After Effects. For a stroke-by-stroke write-on, many artists trace or mask lettering and animate a reveal in AE. A raster export won't have vector paths, so plan to trace the shapes or draw a mask path by hand.
• Keep an oversized source. Exporting at a resolution well above your delivery size gives you room for camera moves and scale animation without softness.

A short checklist before you finalize a brush

• Is the shape white on black, on a square canvas?
• Is the grain blank unless you deliberately want texture?
• Is spacing low enough to avoid beading?
• Does pressure produce a clear thick-thin range (for pointed styles) or no size change (for flat nibs)?
• Did you save the brush under a clear name and duplicate it before experimenting?
• Have you tested it with the same sample string you use for every brush?

Build a small set instead of one do-everything brush: a soft brush pen, a crisp copperplate pen, and a couple of flat-nib angles. With those in your library, you can letter quickly, export clean assets, and get them into your timeline without fighting the tool.