I’m sketching a lot more these days. Mostly life drawings. The fundamentals, you know? It’s the best way to sharpen your cartooning skills regardless of your style. At first I used the pens on hand, however my desk is a forest of micro-liners (see previous pen reviews), and nothing against them, I wanted a sketchy pen. I miss doodling on napkins or placemats with a Bic in awe of how such a cheap pen can produce such intricate shading.

Of course the one drawback of the Bics and their cousins are the ink boogers. Little glops of ink that stain your drawing right in the middle of a delicate shade of grey. So I set out to find some alternative ballpoint pens. The journey (so far) ended with two amazing winners.

First up is the SKB. If you Google “ballpoint pen drawing” you won’t miss this one. It’s also known as the James Jean pen. Wonder if they sponsor him? Off topic a bit, I’d love to have a pen manufacture as a sponsor. Alas there aren’t any TAPOUTs in the cartooning world.

 

Back on point, the SKB is exactly what I wanted. Simple, relatively comfortable and most importantly it thinks it’s a pencil:

 

http://www.skbpens.com/

 

I discovered the second pen on jetpens.com (I know, shocking huh?). The Zebra Techno Line is barely distinguishable from the SKB. Not quite as good, in the pen imitating pencil category, but it is a tad more comfy to draw with. And it’s retractable:

http://www.jetpens.com/product_info.php/products_id/4854&utm_source=pr&utm_medium=site

 

 

 

 

 

 

Help make toys! Vote for Alabama Lab here:

http://www.patchtogether.com/designs/alabama-lab-3168.html

 

 

 

 

Dog eat Doug Book Store	Dog eat Doug Book Store	Original Art Store

And, of course, don’t forget about my upcoming graphic novel. Swing by the site and get a glimpse: 

http://harbor-moon.com/ 

Me on twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/dogeatdoug

http://www.sealfund.org/index.html

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 1:49 am and is filed under Comic, Pens and Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.