Review: A Uniball Double-Sided Pocket Brush Pen meets a Special Moleskine

This review is by Kalina Wilson, who can also be found at Geminica.com.

I was recently given this adorable little Limited Edition Pac Man Moleskine notebook as a gift.  Despite the book's obvious charm I didn't have much idea what to do with it.  The pages are very thin.  Most ink sinks right through, and watercolor is out of the question. 

Since the paper wasn't inspiring, I coated some pages with acrylic paint as an experiment, but this added a new challenge since some of the acrylic was glossy and wouldn't take ink.

Enter the Uniball Pocket Brush Pen.

This pen was recommended by Pen Addict commenter and pen/pencil blogger ThirdeYe in response to my Kuretake Hair Brush review.  I wasn't optimistic, but gave it a shot in the Moleskine and it quickly came out on top!  

The Uniball lays down a nice wet line that is fantastic for quick, loose sketching - similar to the Pilot brushes but with a faster dry time.  You can see from some smearing below (center image, lower right) that this was still an issue due to all that ink, but the Pilot brushes were unusable for me for this reason and the Uniball was a big improvement.

You can see that the brush is visible through the paper, but it's not bad - my other brush pens were much worse in this regard.  The large molded foam tip is very flexible with no weird springback issues such as I've had with some disposable Kuretakes and the Copic brushes. It is so fun to work with that these days I keep it in my hand while watching TV and am constantly freezing frames for quick sketches.

Additionally, the pen works great over acrylic, even glossy acrylic.

  
 

I don't switch to the small tip often (actually I kept forgetting it was there) but it works well - not sure I'd choose it above the Tombow Fudenosuke Soft for normal use but it's convenient to have it on the other end of the pen.  Both caps are postable.

Now we come to the bad news.

When I spoke with friend and urban sketcher Alanna Randall  about this pen, she reported that hers quickly became unwieldy due to a frayed tip on the larger brush.  Not two days later, mine had become identical to hers, and started giving a weaker, dryer line - here's a post-fray sketch.

Besides this tip issue, the major drawback of the pen is that it is not waterproof.  I love it for quick sketches, but wouldn't use it for longer drawings that might later want watercolors.

 In conclusion, I have to assume this pen's tip can only last through perhaps a week of moderately heavy use - if that.  I'd feel a little better about the short lifespan if the pen were made out of recycled materials, which it isn't.  However, it works better than any other pen I have as a quick, wet brush for use on regular Moleskine notebook paper and over acrylic paint.  I recommend this pen as a lot of fun, just be prepared for it to be short-lived.

Review: Gray Kuretake Fudegokochi Brush Pen

This review is by Kalina Wilson, who can also be found at geminica.com.

The Kuretake Fudegokochi gray brush pen is a water-soluble pen with a soft felt tip and middle-toned gray ink that seems especially suitable for use in drawing.  

The pen costs around $3 and has been a real workhorse.  It does have one quirk, however, which is that sometimes upon opening the cap I find the ink has beaded up around the nib like so: 

Luckily, the design of the pen keeps me from putting my hands in the ink, so it just stays where it is around the nib.  

The ink is not only water soluble, it's very water soluble.  Once the ink is down it can be washed out like watercolors, as long as it's used on sized paper such as watercolor or mixed media paper - or this vintage accounting ledger paper I've been trying out after meeting urban sketcher and illustrator Lapin.  

(Actually, this drawing captures another urban sketcher trick as well; it was Liz Steel that clued me in to wearing an absorbent wristband as a convenient alternative to a watercolors rag.  Mine is actually the top of an old cotton sock, and it works great.)

But back to the Fudegokochi!  In the drawing of my hand, I used the Fudegokochi first to sketch and add shadow, then added black line and watercolors, washing away the gray lines in most places and sometimes adding more back in to darken.  You can still see the initial gray shading in some places, and it's also influencing the tone of the watercolors in a way that I really enjoy. 

My other favorite way to use this pen is to imply distance, using the gray to add buildings that are farther afield and a warmer tone in the foreground.  That's what I did with this drawing that you already saw in the last review, pairing the gray pen with J. Herbin's Lie de Thé fountain pen ink. You can see that the water solubility again worked to my advantage.

In case you can't tell, I really love using this pen as a fast way to add soft gray to a drawing, and highly recommend it for this purpose.  

Review: Copic Wine Multiliner and Brush Pen SP

This review is by Kalina Wilson, who can also be found at geminica.com.

I became interested in Copic's wine colored pens when Urban Sketcher Correspondent Matthew Brehm joined the Portland Urban Sketchers for a sketchcrawl and made this beautiful and very long drawing.  The purple segment really stands out to my eyes, and it was made with the Copic Multiliner in wine.

The Brush Pen in wine is much darker than the Multiliner - no matter how much I layered the Multiliner's strokes, the ink never got as dark as is generated in one quick stroke by the Brush Pen though it did layer nicely.

Copic's brush pens aren't actual brushes.  Like the popular Faber-Pitt Artist Brush Pens and most other brush pen options out there, they have a molded tip that mimics brush behavior by allowing a lot of line variation.  In some ways this style of pen is easier to use than an actual brush with a bunch of separate hairs that can get damaged or in disarray.  I find it easier with Copic's faux brushes to keep the line at a medium weight without unintentionally turning the brush the wrong way and ending up with a really thick line where I didn't want one.

However, there are some big drawbacks to these brush-mimic tips as well.  You can see in the sample above that using the full potential width of the brush resulted in a strange uneven shape at the end of the stroke.  You don't get that problem with the brush pens that have actual bristles  (such as the Pentel Pocket Brush and the Kuretake Hair Brush).   Also, it was a challenge to get a fine line with the Copic brush.

I love that Copic is so focused on making permanent tools.  Since I can order wine ink refills online and the brush tips and Multiliner tips are available at my local art store ($2.50), both the brush pen and the multiliner pen with their sleek silver bodies could potentially stay in my collection forever.

But will they?  

The Multiliner will.  It's got good waterproof ink, it's a lovely color that can layer to a darker tone, a good line, replaceable nib.  I'll use this pen again, and look forward to experimenting to adding watercolors in tones to complement the wine color.

As for the brush pen, I'm not so sure.  Actual hair brush pens make a nicer line, and the Kuretake can be refilled with any fountain pen ink.  The Copic's advantage then becomes that their ink is waterproof and replacement nibs are cheaper. Here's a drawing using the Copic brush pen with watercolors - I have no other purple ink that could take watercolors without running.

I also tried using the multiliner and the brush together in one drawing.  It would work better if I could get a finer minimum line width with the brush.  

 This was supposed to be Benedict Cumberbatch, star of Steven Moffat's new BBC Sherlock Holmes remake, Sherlock.  Note how it's very clear whether each line was made with the brush pen or the multiliner!  Ah well, I'll keep the Multiliner in my travel bag but the Brush Pen will probably get relegated to the "occasional use" pile, only because there are some phenomenal brush options out there if you go through the bother to track them down.

Thanks to Copic for generously providing these sample products!