Many people who do cartoons or ink outlines to their pencil sketches often use mechanical/technical ink pens (shown below), also called ‘liner’ pens.

While I do use these myself, I thought I’d show the difference that using a brush pen can make.

Brush pens come in different shapes, sizes, and makes. The one I use is shown left and is a Pentel Water Brush. Normally you fill it with water and use it with watercolour paints/pencils, but I fill mine with Indian ink and use it for cartoon/illustration work. You can also buy a ‘brush-pen’ which comes with ink refills, but I find the water brush more cost effective and I can fill it with whichever brand of ink that I prefer.

Technical/mechanical pens give a constant line thickness, this is handy if your an architect drawing out house plans, but not when it comes to cartooning/illustrative work, you want your lines to be of varying thickness to make it look less-technical.

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Tags: brush, brush pen, cartoon, cartooning, cartoonist, illustration, illustrative, indian ink, ink, liner, mechanical, outline, pen, pentel, technical, water brush