How to Make a Calligraphy Brush in Procreate (3 Brushes: Modern, Blackletter & Copperplate)

Creating your own brushes in Procreate might seem intimidating at first, but once you understand the fundamentals, it becomes one of the most powerful skills you can learn as a lettering artist.

Instead of relying on pre-made brushes, you can design tools that match your exact style, pressure, and flow. In this guide, you’ll learn how to create three essential Procreate calligraphy brushes:

• Modern brush lettering (brush pen style)
• Blackletter broad edge brush
• Copperplate script brush

By the end, you’ll understand how to make a Procreate brush from scratch and how to tweak the settings to get the exact look you want.

In case you prefer to watch, I also made a YouTube tutorial to guide you through the process –

Why Create Your Own Procreate Brushes?

Procreate already comes with a huge library of brushes, but creating your own gives you full control.

Every brush in Procreate is built on two core elements:

• Shape source (the stamp of the brush)
• Grain source (the texture inside the stroke)

These two elements form the foundation of every brush, and together with the settings, they determine how your strokes behave.

There are A TON of different settings for you to tweak inside the brush studio – and all of them will create a different effect for your brush.

However, when creating a calligraphy brush, you only need to tweak a few settings.

The best part?

I’ll show you exactly what settings you need to change for your brush – step by step.

Once you understand this, you’re no longer just using brushes… you’re engineering them.

Brush 1: Modern Brush Calligraphy

This brush mimics a brush pen and is perfect for smooth, flowing lettering.

Step 1 – To make this brush, open up a square canvas inside of Procrate.

Turn the background in black.

Step 2 – Using a solid brush (use the technical pen brush from the stock library) create a tear drop shape like this –

Step 3 – Select it, and swipe 3 fingers down the screen and hit the copy option.

Step 4 – Head over to the brush library, select the + icon on the top right to create a new brush.

Step 5 – Go to the shape option from the left menu and paste the new shape you just made.

Step 6 – Perfect, all there’s left to do is to tweak the specific settings. Follow the list of settings underneath.

Key Settings:

• Stroke path – reduce everything to 0%
• Stabilisation – Streamline amount – 65% Pressure – 10% Stabilisation ammount – 8%
• Apple pencil – Pressure size – 100% (max) Opacity 0%
• Propreties – Maximum size 85% Minimum size 9%

Feel free to try out and tweak these settings to find the ones that suits you best. Some people enjoy more while others less stabilization for example.

This is your go-to brush for:

• Quotes
• Social media lettering
• Everyday calligraphy practice

The goal here is control + smoothness.

Brush 2: Gothic Calligraphy Broad Edge Brush

Gothic calligraphy brushes behave completely differently.

For this brush we will make an imitation of a real flat brush (the one with hairs).

Step 1 – Open up a square canvas with a black background and create a white colored shape that looks like this –

Step 2 – Using an eraser delete randomly bits and pieces of the shape. This will create our dry brush texture later on.

Step 3 – Hit the selection tool, swipe 3 fingers down and copy the shape. Then head over to the brush studio, open a new brush and paste this shape.

Step 4 – Follow the settings underneath to create your gothic calligraphy brush.

Key Settings:

• Stroke path – reduce everything to 0%
• Stabilisation – Streamline amount – 64% Pressure – 15% Stabilisation ammount – 9%
• Shape – Turn on the Azimuth option – very important!
• Apple pencil – Pressure size – 0% (keep in it in the middle) Opacity 100%

The magic comes from:
👉 stroke direction, not pressure

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Brush 3: Copperplate Calligraphy Brush

Copperplate calligraphy relies heavily on pressure variation and fine control.

Step 1 – Like we previously did, create a square canvas and a black background. Then create a shape that looks like this –

Step 2 – Create a new brush and paste this bad boy as your new shape.

Key Settings:

• Stroke path – reduce everything to 0%
• Stabilisation – Streamline amount – 90% Pressure – 15% Stabilisation ammount – 15%
• Apple pencil – Pressure size – 100% (max) Opacity 0%
• Propreties – Maximum size 25% Minimum size 0% (none)

This brush is ideal for:

• Elegant scripts
• Wedding calligraphy
• Flourishing

Here, the brush should feel almost alive under your hand.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to make brushes in Procreate unlocks a completely new level of control over your lettering.

Instead of adapting to someone else’s tools, you create tools that adapt to you.

And once you understand the system:

• You can build any brush
• You can replicate real tools
• You can develop your own signature style

The real secret?

Experiment.

Tweak settings. Break things. Adjust again.

That’s where the good stuff happens.

Until the next one!

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