Dawegama Brush Pen

A couple years ago for Xmas I bought myself a bunch of brush pens to try out. I have been using a few of them consistently, but there were a couple I hadn't yet cracked open.

Recently I inked up this Dawegama fountain brush pen, a Chinese pen from what I can tell. Very cheap at less than $10.

It has a metal body and a snap on cap that, honestly, snaps very nicely. Cheaply made, the pocket clip is janky and wiggly. Which is fine for a cheapo.

It has a built in plunger feed. You dip the tip into your ink, then slide the plunger up to suck the ink into the chamber. The body screws off in a less than satisfying scratchy way. Not very precise tooling, doesn't feel like it'll ever seal quite as tightly as you'd want.

The tip is very soft and flexible with real brush fibers. But it isn't precise either. It doesn't come to a consistent point. You cannot get a consistent line. But you can get a huge range of thick to relatively thin, making it a useful wash or fill tool where precision isn't your primary concern.

One drawback is the body is thin so the ink chamber doesn't hold a lot. It holds slightly less than a more typical pen, from what I can tell. I say this because I burned through the chamber very quickly the first time I used it. Or it felt that way, anyway.

Like the Yongsheng 3009 (another cheap brush pen), this one gets a 2 star rating. Not the worst, but not great. I might go 2.5 out of 5... it does feel slightly better than the Yongsheng to me. For price, it's well worth having one just as an ink fill tool to play around with. But I don't see myself using this for any kind of profession or precise work. This is a sketching tool.

Here's my guide to brush pens, if you're interested. 

My Guide to Brush Pens

I've been using brush pens of one sort or another since the early 2000s, which is when I discovered they existed. I found them at an art store in Savannah, Georgia. It was the Faber Castell PITT, and I was in love.

I've spoken and posted about brush pens many times over the years. They are by far my favorite type of art tool. I love how they flow, how the lines can drift from thick to thin, how you don't have to stop and reink them.

In this post, I want to offer my thoughts about specific pens, how I use them, and which I prefer. If you like art tool talk, this might be interesting to you. If you are interested in brush pens but haven't dived into them or you are concerned about wasting time and money, maybe you'll find some use herein.

The thoughts expressed here are what I know from experience. I didn't do any research for this post other than looking up the names of my tools for clarity in case you want to go and get them yourself.

I apologize for the poor photos. My phone has a pretty terrible camera because I didn't want to pay hundreds more for a better one.

DEFINITIONS AND BRANDS

A brush pen is exactly what you think it is. It's a pen that has a brush tip instead of a nib, ball point, or some other traditional pen tip. Instead of dipping the brush into an ink bottle, the ink flows down by gravity from inside the pen body.

There are two main categories of brush pens. One is a "true" brush with fibers or hairs like any other brush. The other is a flexible felt tip shaped like a brush.

Brush pens have various pros and cons.

Pros:

• No dipping
• No clean up
• Tip is always ready to go
• Consistent
• Portable

Cons:

• Less flow
• Smaller tips

The flow issue might annoy you if you're used to using traditional dip brushes. The trad brush holds a lot of ink at once and that ink flows out quickly. But you have to dip it frequently, right? The brush pen holds more ink, but it's mostly all in the barrel and has to flow down by gravity. This means you'll run into dry brush if you ink very quickly. Some brushes have a more wet flow than others. None of this has been a problem for me, personally.

Here's a list of the felt tip brush pens I've used enough to be able to speak about them.

Faber Castell PITT Artist Brush Pen (felt tip)
Sakura Pigma Micron Brush Pen (felt tip)
Copic Multiliner SP Brush Pen (felt tip)
Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen (felt tip)
Tombow ABT Dual Tip Brush Pen (felt tip)
Kuretake Bimoji Fude (felt tip)

Here are the traditional brush tip pens I'm familiar with.

Yongsheng 3009 Brush Pen
Kuretake No. 50 Fountain Brush Pen
Pentel Fine Tip Fude Brush Pen
Sailor Profit Brush Pen
Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

FELT TIPS

Felt tips are cheaper and are usually intended to be disposable. The Copic Multiliner uses cartridges and has replacement tips you can buy, so you're reusing the body potentially forever.

But the secret is all of these cheap brush pens can be refilled. You can find YouTube tutorials on how to do it with any given brand. Generally you'll need to find an ink you like (I love Sailor Kiwaguro Ultra Black Pigmented Ink 13-2002-220) and get yourself a blunt syringe. Typically you'll just pry off the back end of the pen and squirt a little ink down into the body. But each is a bit different.

Secret of the PITT: Pull out the worn tip, flip it over... NEW TIP.

Worst problem with the felt tips is they wear out very quickly. PITTs are really great but the tips wear down fast. I don't like Micron brushes. They always seem to be wispy and weak. But the undisputed ruler of the felt tips is the Tombow Fudenosuke! These are fantastic. Very cheap. And they come in two tips: hard and soft. Ultimate control, great durability. And very easy to squirt ink into the sponge inside the barrel to refill.

I inked Hellion Cross issue one using Fudenosukes as my main tool.

In my opinion, the Microns and Tombow ABTs are best avoided. They just aren't very good. You can use the ABT to do big area fills, though. They are cheap.

Copic tip does not hold up, in my experience.

Copic is a well known brand and their Multiliner brush is fine. But I don't love it. It's not as good as the PITT, but close. I think Copic is more expensive to use but honestly the tips just wear out so fast.

Kuretake Bimoji pens are cool. They come in a variety of tips so you just have to try them all. I am not in love with them. I haven't tried refilling any so I don't know how easy it is.

► Try the Tombow Fudenosuke. It's damn good. I'll rate it 4.5 stars while the PITT gets 4 stars. The only thing holding it back from 5 stars is that you can't really do large black areas with it very easily. And honestly there are other pens for that, so it's not much of a flaw. The thing is just damn near perfect if you like tight control. Although, honestly, it's not really a "brush" tip. This is just a firm felt tip that comes to a sharp point and is resilient. I will also say that the Fudenosuke is fairly cheap. Cheaper than PITTs and Microns, I believe.

King of the felt tip brush pens, in my humble opinion.

Inside the Fudenosuke is a felt tube. Squirt ink into it carefully to refill. It gets messy.

BRUSH TIPS

The pens with real hairs or fibers are more expensive and are usually intended to be refilled. These are more permanent tools. Many of them can either use a disposable ink cartridge or an ink converter (like a fountain pen uses). You want to avoid using india ink because it gums up the works. Pigmented inks are better. Anything that is designed for a fountain pen is generally ok. Or just stick with the disposable cartridges made for the pen.

These pens are wonderful. A pleasure to use.

Yongsheng 3009. Long tip, not a very fine point. Fairly cheap.

The piston filling mechanism.

Yongsheng 3009 Brush Pen is a Chinese pen, I believe. I got this cheap in a set of 3 for something like $17. It's a built in piston feed system. You stick the brush tip into a bottle of ink and twist the other end to suck the ink up into the body.

The tip is longer than in other pens, so it flexes very easily. It feels nice. But it is hard to get a very fine line out of it. And I found that the tip loses that precision over time. I mainly use these now as sketching pens or to do black fills. I have one of them filled with gray ink. They are useful, but not fantastic. So far no leaking, which was surprising to me since they are so cheap.

► This is a 2 star tool. If not for the tip problem, it would be a 3.

Kuretake No. 50 has a metal body, which I like.

The disposable cartridge can be refilled. Or use a converter.

Kuretake No. 50 is the most expensive one I own. But you don't have to buy that one. If you want to try this brand, go for the cheaper ones like a No. 8. The No. 50 has a sable tip while No. 8 has a synthetic tip. I can't tell much difference.

Kuretake has a very wet tip and will give you big, thick lines. But it's a brush, so you can get thin lines out of it too. It'll take a lot of control. I don't use this pen very much to be honest. But it is good. Just now I opened mine to test the tip because I haven't used it in a few months. Tip is wet, soft, and ready. That means these pens are well-designed so they don't dry out easily.

► This is a 3 star tool that should be a 5.

Pop that black cap off the body and squirt ink into it to refill.

Pentel Fine Tip Fude Brush Pen (aka Pentel Color Brush Pen) is a long plastic pen with a thick body you can squeeze. That's how you get ink to flow... you squeeze it. It has a long, flexible tip that comes to a very fine point. This one is actually really damn good for fine point drawing. I think out of all of them, this one gives you the finest possible tip.

One drawback to these is the flow. The flow is not great. You gotta squeeze it to get the ink going again. But if you like dry brush effects, these are kinda awesome. Just has an inconsistent flow.

These are not meant to be refilled. But just pop off the end of the body (where it connects to the tip, not the butt end) and you can squirt ink into it. I've done it many times.

► This is a 3.5 star tool. It would easily be 4 if not for the flow.

I am in love with Sailor Profit brush pens. But they break my heart.

A worn tip vs. a new one.

Again, the plastic cartridges can be refilled.

Sailor Profit Brush Pen is a real heartbreaker for me. I got one of these way back in the early 2000s but really did not use it much. I broke it out again in 2022 and started to wear it out. I actually bought a replacement tip and a whole other pen because I really love how these feel. The body style, which is like a classic cigar shaped pen, is fantastic. They are well-designed. They take a disposable cartridge or a special ink convert. But I just keep adding ink back to the used cartridge shells over and over and over.

Why is it a heartbreaker? Because of the tips. They are fat, which I like. But in my experience they do not hold a fine line. They fray over time. But they are really fantastic for doing black fills or if you want to draw with a thicker line. I use one for almost all the black fills I do.

► This is a 3.5 star tool. If you just use it for fills, I'd give it 4.5.

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen is irritatingly perfect.

Plastic cartridge is easy to refill.

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen is probably the king of them all. It's a slim plastic body with a snap on cap. I tend to think if it feels light then it's cheap. But don't let it fool you. This pen is fabulous. It has a durable tip that holds its shape over time. It comes to a fine point. It's flexible enough to give you fat lines.

It uses its own proprietary disposable cartridges. Of course, I constantly refill mine. A drawback is that this pen doesn't take an ink converter. But never fear... there are tutorials showing you how to hack it. You have to modify the converter so it will fit into the barrel. I haven't done this because refilling the empty cartridge is just a whole lot easier.

► This one... this is a 5 star tool. It is the best I've seen so far.

Pentel Pocket Brush on top, Sailor Profit on bottom. You can see the different bodies.

OTHERS

I do have a couple of other brush pens I picked up to try out and I just haven't tried them yet. You don't want to ink up a pen until you're ready to use it and frankly I have so many lying around I am hesitant to ink up any more. But I'll try them out soon and report on them. They are mostly random weird cheap brush pens.

Cheap water brushes are worth playing around with.

I picked up some very cheap water brushes at a dollar store. I can't tell you the brand because it was a few years back. These are super cheap little tools. You unscrew the ends and you can fill them with water. Then you dip into your watercolor and you have an auto-feed system for watercoloring.

I believe you could use these with thin ink like any other brush pen. But they are not high quality... I figure they will not last much use. So far, I've only used them here and there to do some watercolor work for fun. Not my usual thing.

Sailor Kiwaguro is my ink of choice. I love this stuff.

Noodlers Black is quite good. Very different from the Sailor, though.

Rohrer & Klingner sketch ink Thea (gray).

Blunt syringe for squirting ink into things. Be careful. Very messy if you go hard.

Platinum Gold ink converter, which is mostly used in fountain pens but works in many brush pens too.

Ink Talk

I have been on a brush pen kick for months. My first experience with brush pens was back in 2000 or 2001 with the Pitt brush pen, which is not a "real" brush pen but a felt pen with a brush-shaped tip. The Pit is great, and you should try it out, but that tip wears out REAL quick*.

Sometime in the late 2000s I picked up two excellent brush pens and didn't fully appreciate them at the time because I was on the cusp of switching almost entirely to drawing digitally. I got a Sailor Profit and a Pentel Pocket.

Zip ahead to recent times and I have re-connected with traditional art in a big, big way. I've dusted off these old tools, picked up new ones, and have been experimenting and learning and growing as much as I can.

So anyway, this post is about ink. Because these types of tools are really, really picky and will gum up if you use the wrong stuff in them.

Sailor Kiwaguro ink bottle is sexy.

YouTube has been a great resource for learning and from various videos I picked up the suggestion that the ink you get with the Sailor (my personal favorite brush pen) is perhaps not the ideal ink. One I kept hearing about was Sailor Kiwaguro. So I picked up a pack of Kiwaguro disposable cartridges to try out and fell in love instantly. Now I got myself a bottle of the stuff and I plan to switch to an ink converter as soon as I burn through the rest of these dozen cartridges.

Of course there's a trick if you don't want to use a converter. You can use a blunt syringe to just squirt more ink into an empty disposable cartridge and reuse those bastards over and over and over again. But beware! Make sure you stick that syringe tip all the way past the opening and just give it a gentle, tiny push or else you'll have an ink explosion. Yeah, it happened to me.

Kiwaguro is a pigmented black ink that is pretty waterproof and dries fast. I like it.

Black as night, black as pitch...

Then there's this Noodler's black water-based ink I got thanks to many recommendations. This shit is VERY black. Whereas Kiwaguro (and most inks) have a bit of a dull finish, Noodler's finish is kind of dense and matte... almost velvety. It has a texture. You can feel the ink on the paper. But there's a problem: erasing.

If you're like me, you sketch in pencil, ink right on the pencils, then erase. When you erase over most ink, it might lift some of the pigment and dull the black just a little. Mostly not noticeable. But Noodler's loses quite a bit of opacity to the eraser (see pic). So while I do love the thick, black feel, I am not happy about the eraser situation. I will probably not use Noodler's on important drawings, though it is great for doodling.

Before erasing and after erasing, Noodler's black ink takes a beating.

*There's a super secret though. If you pull the tip out of the Pit brush pen you will discover that it can be flipped around and you've got a BRAND NEW TIP. Very cool. I had no idea back when I was burning through these things in the 2000s. 

Brush Pens Part Two

See here for Part One.

I started talking about brush pens without clarifying a basic point. I use them because they are very, very convenient. You can, of course, just use a traditional round brush and dip it in your ink of choice. Nothing stopping you at all. Hell, I might get back into fully traditional brushes before all is said and done. I certainly cut my teeth on sable rounds back in the day. I remember dropping a whopping $5 on a Kolinsky #5 round when I was 20 and I thought it was super expensive. For 1991... it was.

But back to brush pens...

I wanna talk about a Chinese pen. I picked up a 3-pack of Yongsheng 3009 brush pens recently. My understanding is that there are several versions of this tool produced by various Chinese companies. I don't know. I just know I got a set labelled Yongsheng in a 3-pack for like $15 and holy shit they are worth every penny.

So far I have only used 1 of the 3. This is not a set of various tips, mind you. It's a pack of 3 identical pens. The body is clear and very nicely designed with a built-in piston refill mechanism. You don't use a cartridge or ink converter with this thing. You just stick the tip into your jar of ink and twist the piston to fill it up.

The tip is good. Synthetic fiber, decent tip coming to a fairly fine point. Not as delicate as a Kuretake or Pentel, but pretty good. Nice feel. The grip has a triangular shape, so it feels pretty good.

The flow is very different from other brush pens. At first, it will flow heavily. Almost too heavily. Then it will start to give you a lot of dry brush lines. Here's the key. Twist that piston one time. It has a tactile feedback that lets you know when it has been twisted once (great feature). That will force some ink down into the feed. Because it is clear, you can see the ink hit the feed. It will immediately flow out the tip. Do not twist more than once! It will flow too heavily and drip on your paper! One twist is all you need.

I have been doodling with this thing quite a bit and so far I gotta say it is quite good. I've refilled it only once so far (it holds a fair amount of ink). I will report back later to let you know how the tip holds up. So far, so good. Very nice, responsive, good-feeling tool that is frankly quite cheap. At $15 a set, these are basically $5-$7 each depending on shipping and all that. Very, very cheap for a reusable tool like this. 

Brush Pens Part One

Sometime in late 2022 or so I started to get back into drawing on paper more than drawing on my digital tablet. I can't remember what caused me to switch over but it stuck and I've been drawing almost exclusively traditionally for over a year. I started drawing on a tablet maybe around 2009 and was almost exclusively digital for a decade, sans some trad work I did for Goodman Games here and there. It's very nice to get back to the ink stains and feel of paper.

This has lead me to explore traditional tools again. When I left off in 2009, my jam was mostly Pitt brush pens with Paris paper for pens (a magical combo, try it out!). These days I'm leaning much harder into "real" brushes via natural hair or synthetic fiber brush pens. So I wanted to do this post or series of posts about brush pens.

First, if you don't know what a brush pen is, allow me to elaborate.

A brush pen is a pen that has a natural hair or synthetic fiber tip. It is a brush. It's not a fake brush. It's just a brush. If you've ever used a paint brush, then this is just that. But the difference is that the ink (or watercolor or whatever) is in the pen body and feeds by gravity like a fountain pen. These are essentially or identically like fountain pens, but they have brush tips.

What a felt tip brush pen looks like after a few uses.

Now, I need to be clear here. Because there are tons of disposable brush pens that are not actually brushes. They don't have hairs or fibers, they have felt tips. The Pitt, Micron, and Copic Miltiliner brush pens are not "real brushes" in that they are felt tips shaped like a brush. They are called brush pens, and that's fine. I'm not here to gatekeep these wonderful disposable tools. I used them a ton. Just wanted to be clear about what I'm referring to. Herein when I say "brush pen" I do in fact mean brushes with hairs or other fibers, not felt tips.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

There are a small handful of brush pens that get talked about the most. They are the most common and easiest to get your hands on. Here's a short list of them.

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

Pentel Pocket Brush: I think this is the most common one. I bought one in the mid-2000s and loved it. I still  have that one and even though it sat unused for a decade it's still a good brush pen to this day. This little bastard is great. The tip is synthetic fibers but very durable, from what I can tell. The tip is super responsive, the flow is good, and you can get super thin lines or fat ones if you want. It's biggest downfall is that it is not designed to take an ink converter... meaning you have to use the Pentel ink cartridges designed for it. That's fine. They are not very expensive and the ink is pretty good. And, hint hint, you can refill them with a blunt syringe or hack an ink converter to be used with them. It's not hard to do. This one is around $15. Worth it.

Sailor Profit Brush Pen

Sailor Profit: I'm not sure how popular this one is, but I see it reviewed a lot next to the Pentel. So I think it's fairly widely popular but not nearly as easy to find as the Pentel. I love this pen. The body is thicker than a typical pen body, being based on the "profit" pen body style: a cigar shape that is a bit thicker and feels better in the hand. The tip is a very nice synthetic brush, very responsive and easy to get a fat line out of. I don't think it holds the super fine tip as long as the Pentel, but honestly I prefer the Sailor over the Pentel. This one is about $20 or so. Worth it, I think.

Kuretake 50

Kuretake 40 and 50: Kuretake makes a lot of cool stuff. The 40 is a synthetic hair brush pen while the 50 is a natural sable hair brush pen. Both are functionally the same. The 50 has a metal body, which is very nice. The 40, I think, might also have a metal body but of a different color and feel. I don't have a 40. What I noticed about the 50 is that when you post the cap it can/does scratch the coating off the body. Not a good feature. The brush tip is fantastic. It's a natural hair, so it is feels and IS just a sable brush tip. If you like a good sable brush, this is one. The flow is good. It can take an ink converter so if you don't want to use the Kuretake disposable ink cartridges you can use whatever ink you like. I had a bad experience with mine because I think the ink I was using didn't agree with the pen. I'm not sure but that sable tip is still not in good shape. I replaced it with the synthetic fiber (you can buy replacement tips). Good tool, but finicky. Price is high (like $40-$50 range). I'm not sure it's worth it. Very good tool, pleasure to draw with. If you have disposable cash, then go for it. But honestly the use of this tool is not much better than a Pentel.

Pentel Fude

Pentel Fude: This is a simpler brush pen with a disposable ink body (you can buy replacements or you can refill them with a little simple ingenuity). It's the type that you can squeeze in order to get more ink into the brush. It has a longer brush tip than the others, slightly narrower. Gives a very fine line. It's fun to play with. Price point is around $7, so not too bad. Well worth picking one up. When the ink runs out, either buy a new ink barrel or pry off the top of the barrel with a knife and squirt some ink into it.

So... out of these, the big dogs of brush pens, I gotta say I love the Sailor best. And it's really down to the feel. It just feels better in the hand. But popular opinion is that Pentel kicks ass. And that is not wrong. You can't fail with any of these. If you're on a tight budget, get yourself a Pentel Pocket if you can. Barring that, get the Pentel Fude and just refill it on your own.

But there's more to this story. Next up: some alternates. One of them being even less expensive and more useful than the Pentel Fude.