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.

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.

Tool Talk

Digital drawing I like.

In 2009 I got my first pen tablet. It was a Wacom Bamboo, very small. I loved it so much I upgraded to a Wacom Intuos 4 medium tablet about a year later. I loved that one so much it's still on my desk right now, still in use, still working hard. What a god damn beautiful piece of equipment.

Anyway, prior to going digital I was deeply invested in my art tools. I obsessed over pens and brushes and brush pens and papers. In the 2000s I found that my favorite combination was a mechanical pencil (HB) + PITT brush pen + PITT or Micron .05 pen + Prismacolor markers + Paris Paper for Pens. This was the winning combo on which I drew all of my Pan-Gea art.

I went digital and found it to be so convenient and forgiving I just couldn't bring myself to draw on paper again for years. I mean YEARS. I had a brief period in the 2010s when I was drawing on paper quite a bit, doing stuff for Goodman Games and what-not (they had a no-digital art policy). After that, I switch back and forth but mostly drew digitally. The entirety of GOZR and about 50% of Black Pudding was created using my tablet.

But in late 2022 I suddenly started drawing on paper again. I can't even remember what happened to

Snot slug with Pentel brush.

make me switch. But since then, probably 95% of my art has been done traditionally. Almost all of the art I've created for ZSF (my space fantasy game) is on paper.

In the past week or two I've been sorting all my tools. I have a LOT OF TOOLS. Like, copious numbers of markers, pens, and brush pens. Nibs and brushes. Inks and papers. Some of these had to go away because they were dried out. But others were fine, some just needed a little TLC.

The tools on my desk right now that I'm favoring:

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

PITT Brush Pens

Sailor Profit Brush Pen

And I just revitalized an old fountain pen by Sensa and it has a deliciously smooth line... but it is unreliable as hell. In fact... it stopped working entirely and I can't seem to fix the damn thing.

I picked up a Kuratake brush pen (#50) and it's a dream too. Though, honestly, the line quality isn't any better than the much less expensive Pentel. The main difference is the Kuratake can take an ink converter so you don't have to rely on disposable refills. And it has a metal tube, which feels good.

Kuretake #50 brush pen (not my art or pic).

But I really do love that Sailor Profit brush pen's feel. Though it is a plastic tube, it has the shape and thickness that feels best in my hand. The only issue I have with that one is that the brush tip itself isn't as fine and precise as the Pentel or the Kuratake. It's very strange how much variation there is between these common brush pens, even though, speaking honestly, you can't go wrong with any of them.

Sailor Profit brush pen feels very nice.

In my opinion, if you are interested in trying a brush pen, you absolutely cannot go wrong with a Pentel Pocket Brush. They are very inexpensive and have wonderful tips. However, keep in mind that the Pentel does not take an ink converter. What this means is you'll have to rely on the Pentel ink cartridges.

But there are workarounds. You can refill those empty cartridges using a syringe. There is also a cool tutorial you can find that teaches you how to modify an ink converter to fit into a Pentel body, so you can just use that instead.

An ink converter is just a refillable ink cartridge. Typically you twist the top to suck up ink into the cartridge so you can put it into your pen or brush pen.

A very popular ink converter from Platinum.

Tool Talk

My camera really sucks

I love the Pental Pocket Brush. It is a brush pen, but not like the normal felt-style brush pens such as PITT or Tombow. Instead, the Pentel's tip is "real". That is, it is composed of actual hair-like fibers that come to a point and behave like a real brush. If you've used a synthetic brush (not made of actual animal fibers), then you know what this brush tip is like. It's basically the same.

The Pentel uses little cartridges, so when it runs dry you can just snap a new one in there. The tip is also replaceable, although honestly these tips don't seem to wear out. I'm pretty gentle with my tools, but if you're aggressive perhaps you'll have to replace it eventually.

Being a real brush tip, it is much softer and flexible than regular brush pens. The PITT, for example, has a firmer feel. You have to press a little bit hard to get it to produce a wider stroke. The Pentel will flair from micro-thin to very wide with the slightest pressure. This gives it a nice flowing vibe, like it is dancing along the surface of the paper.

The pigmented ink is typical for brush pens. I don't have any issues with it. The ink goes on dark but may fade a little with erasing, same as PITT, Tombow, Micron, etc. It takes alcohol markers like a champ.

There are some cons, though. Depending on your needs. For example, I actually love the tighter control of a PITT or Tomobow brush pen. Especially a nice, crisp, new PITT. You can't beat 'em. But the PITT's tip is fragile and will very quickly lose it's point and become a stubby blunt tip good only for fat lines and fills.

The Pentel retains its fine point. You can get ultra-thin lines with a careful hand. And, with a quick stroke, you get a nice dry brush effect.

Another great thing about these tools is they are relatively cheap. Last I checked, it was about $15 for the pen and 2 ink cartridges. You can get 12 ink cartridges for about $10. I checked on tips, but can't seem to find them anymore. Maybe they stopped selling them separately. Which is fine... just buy a new pen if necessary.