For the love of Pens
I am a firm believer that drawing in straight pen is one of the best things you can do as an artist. You don’t learn as much if you spend a lot of time erasing versus doing a bunch of different drawing and just accepting that mistakes will happen. It’s practice after all. Another love of mine is journaling and I have a fondness for people who do beautiful annotations in books. (I’m against using pencils in books too as pencil is just so messy.) This has lead me to have piles of pens and even more piles of opinions about pen types.
My favorite drawing pens are Zig brand. The color is dark, the tips last forever and not split like micron, and the ink lasts a decent length of time. Skipping also isn’t a problem with these. The memory system millennium is by far my most used for inking over pencil drawings.
If I’m just drawing in pen to draw in pen I’m going to choose a Papermate Inkjoy. These are just great for everything as the ink is smooth and they are nice to write with. If I had to pick an every day pen this would be it.
My favorite pen in general has to be the Pilot G2, specifically that it comes in a .32 size. Man this is a pretty pen. The ink is lovely and it writes so nicely. I like a pen you can write tiny with. The only down side of this is sometimes the metal ball doesn’t sit nice and the metal bits get sharp, it can cut paper. I’ve only ran into this malfunction once or twice.
How often do you finish a pen? I don’t do it often but Pilot Hi-Tec-C pens are on the list. The only thing keeping me from putting this as my bestest forever pen is the lack of click top. Yet this pen is perfect to me. It writes tiny. Tiny enough that this is my go to for annotating books to make the most use of the small space some book formats offer.
I’m going to seque a bit to talk about BIC Intensity permanent markers. I love the concept of transparent sticky notes. Not just so I can draw a dick on a guy I don’t like in a book without actually doing so. Most pens and water based tools won’t actually work on these things though. But permanent markers work. You would think I would talk about sharpie in this moment but sharpie pen doesn’t work on this thing. These BIC markers are small enough tipped to make decent use of a sticky notes small space. I’m still on the look out for something smaller.
RIANCY rollerball pens are a decent little pen from Japan. This is the most cost effective pen on my list and they are a .35 mm tip. They don’t feel the best but they write really well. If you are looking for a good note taking pen this is it. That being said I probably won’t buy these again.
I’ve mostly talked about plane jane pens that are fairly utilitarian in use. I want to throw in a really fun pen that is still super quality. I love Sugar Rush so much!!! The color is so pretty. It writes so smooth. The scents are hit or miss.
I have some honorable mentions for pens. These are Frixion which has an erasable pen. I like these well enough, they are kinda skippy and don’t have the pretest ink. But the color selection is nice and I love an erasable pen for writing in books. I mostly use them for planning out art projects. My planning pages get shuffled a lot, I don’t want pencil smudges everywhere. These are the perfect solution to keeping my papers clean while still being changeable.
This shouldn’t be an honorable mention, it’s so good but alas I haven’t used it enough to make it my number one even if it should be. Precise V5 RT Pilot is a fantastic pen. I was given one by a coworker as a gift and I keep forgetting about it because I just have the one. This is the cleanest writing of the lot with a rich black. It helps that the tip is probably the biggest besides sugar rush so there is more ink flow. The only reason, other than loosing track of it, that I don’t use it more is that the ink is very wet so it can spread a bit. Not my favorite feature for writing in books or more absorbent drawing paper that is found in many sketchbooks.
