Like a lot of cartoonists, I’m always on the hunt for the perfect pen. Over the years, I’ve used a lot of different pens. I’ve probably experimented with dozens of pen brands, makes, and styles. I’ve used fat nibs and thin nibs. I’ve purchased expensive and economical pens. I’ve bought pens in a box and one at a time. After all the searching and test driving, I don’t think I’ll ever find the perfect pen. But looking for one sure has been a lot of fun over the years!

Just to be clear, when most cartoonists talk about pens, it sometimes becomes an inclusive word to mean markers, flair pens, porous tipped pens, dip and ink nib pens and everything and anything containing ink. For this blog post, I’ll limit myself to porous tipped pens. I use these more and more to produce my cartoon work due to their fast drying ink. It’s very easy to draw a cartoon and seconds later, slap it down on the a scanner without smudging and smearing the artwork.

I like pens that have nice, dark ink and allow me to produce thin and thick lines when I vary my hand pressure..

Here then, are the top five pens I use to draw cartoons:.

5.) The Classic Paper Mate Flair Pen . This is a porous nib marker and gives a nice quality of line. Like most porous nib pens, the lines fade over time, but if you scan your artwork, you’ll always have a nice crisp copy of your cartoons! The only problem with the flair pen is the nib tends to mash down and lose it’s crispness over time. But this is an advantage of sorts. As the nib mashes down, it starts to produce a wider line. You simply line up the pens next to you, newest (thinnest line) to oldest (widest line). Grab the appropriate pen for whichever line you need. I learned this from Art Sansom, the creator of the comic strip The Born Loser. It’s a method I believe his son Chip still uses to draw his late father’s comic strip.

Flair Pen

4.) The Pentel Rolling Writer is a great pen for cartooning! It gives the same kinds of great lines as the Flair, but because it’s a roller ball pen, the nib is very hearty and won’t mash down! I use this pen when I need a consistent even line. The ink is nice and dark, too!

Rolling Writer

3.) The Sanford Liquid Expresso Pen is a cross between the Flair and the Rolling Writer. Its nib is as hearty as the Rolling Writer’s, but it has the feel flexibility of the Flair. The nib doesn’t appear to wear down. It stays flexible and crisp

Sanford Liquid Expresso

2.) The Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen. I recently blogged about some supplies I received from the nice folks at Faber-Castell. In the package they sent me, they included the Pitt Graphics Artists pen. This pen is quickly becoming one of my favorites. You can get it in a variety of pen widths. But the bigs selling point is that it uses true India ink. It makes lines that are dark, crisp, and fast drying. And the ink is light fast. Your original art won’t fade over time.

Pitt Artists Pen

1.) The Tradio Pen. This is absolutely the most amazing pen I’ve ever used! Made by Pentel, it’s everything the first three pens are and more! It has a fountain pen shaped nib that holds up over a long period of time. It gives thin and thick lines and has a great looking ink. It uses replacement ink cartridges. This replacement cartridge also contains the pen nib. So when you run out of ink and replace the cartridge, you also get a new pen nib. The only part you don’t replace is the pen body. This is the same system used by a lot of upscale executive pens like Cross and Parker.  The pen initially is pretty pricey. It costs about $12.00 and comes with an ink cartridge. The ink cartridges are approximately $3.00 each. It’s a terrific pen and I use it all the time!

Tradio Pen

Even when using all these terrific pens, I still make mistakes. So I recommend picking up a BIC Wite-Out Pen. It handles just like a pen and covers inking mistakes in a single pass. For major corrections, I’ll scan the artwork and digitally edit it using the Gimp.

Bic Wite Out

All these pens are available at Amazon.com. Do a little online shopping and give them a try. As I said earlier, half the fun in cartooning is trying out different pens. At times, the journey to find a pen is more fun than actually finding the pen.