Pen review: Sakura Pigma Professional Brush Pen FB
I have SO MANY drawing pens. All shapes and types, brush pens and hard points and dip pens with a dozen different types of black ink, purchased on recommendations or on a whim or on the quest for just the right style for the comic, for ink that could withstand heavy erasing of pencil under-drawing and resist feathering on imperfect illustration board, and in the pursuit of the finest, thinnest line. Many of these pens were set aside while I drew the comic with the workhorse pens: Sakura Pigma Microns in sizes 005, 01, 03, 05, and 08, plus the Copic Multiliner SP in 003 for extremely delicate details on Iusta’s nose and Felix’s V-o’clock shadow.
I haven’t quite decided whether to stay with the no-nonsense, no-give Microns for Chapter V. Part of me wants to go back to using brush pens. I even toyed with drawing it in pencil. Since my Cintiq suddenly stopped functioning ( ::::weep:::: ), I won’t be drawing it digitally. This month I’m doing an inventory of all the black pens in my pen cases to remind myself of their different qualities.
Here’s one I might have described before, but I’m starting all over to get a new perspective on the collection: the Sakura Pigma Professional Brush Pen in (no surprise) fine point.
This pen is currently available for US$3.90 from JetPens.
click image to see larger:
I can’t draw for squat (one drawing class in college), and have long admired your line style. Always have written small, so I always liked thin-line pens myself, and mostly used the Pilot Precise V5 Extra-fine pens when we used to mark up hard copy (0.5 mm, I think). I’d buy them myself when the corporate overlords cheaped out and tried to make us use Bic ballpoints.
The standard-issue pens at my previous previous job were Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine (hurrah). At the previous job, the standard pens (which you might get one of, if you begged) were so cheap and shoddy I don’t even remember what they were. And this was also at a job where there was constant need to mark up printouts. I figure it was just a plot to get people to buy their own office supplies. It’s not like the company produced a property that sold millions of, um, units twice a year and could afford pens or anything ( ::ahem:: ::coff:: but I have said too much…).
It never ceases to amaze me how corporate overlords don’t understand that giving employees quality tools improves both production and morale–and that the little things matter. Instead, previous-job usually just kept everyone inebriated (this didn’t help production much 🙂 ).