If you love acrylic paint by numbers kits, there’s a 70% chance you’ll love color drawing pens!
Drawing doesn’t get easier than paint by number kits, does it? In fact, it does!
More and more artists are starting to use drawing pens to make creative, detailed paintings, thanks to their effectiveness in producing high contrast drawings. Nowadays, you can find an abundance of drawing color pens instead of the good old black ink ones.
In this article, we’ll talk about drawing pens techniques, and we’ll review some of the best drawing color pens on the market.
Contents
What Are Some Drawing Pens Techniques?
Different pen and ink techniques have surfaced over the years, with many artists adding their contributions to the field. Here are some of the most well-known drawing pen techniques:
Hatching
As a beginner, always start with hatching; it’s the simplest technique. Hatching means to draw lines parallel to each other. With hatching, you shouldn’t let the lines cross each other.
How you draw the lines affects the darkness and brightness of your drawing. The closer the lines are to each other, the darker the picture. Likewise, the further the lines are from each other, the brighter your picture will be.
Cross Hatching
Cross-hatching is the same as hatching, but you cross the lines with each other. Meaning, you’ll draw some parallel lines going in one direction, then another set of parallel lines going in the opposite direction.
Like hatching, when you draw the lines closer together, the painting will appear darker.
Contouring
Contouring is the drawing technique where you curve the parallel lines you hatch, instead of keeping them straight. You have to blend the lines within the drawing’s outline, which gives the item a lovely 3D effect that adds to your drawing.
Cross Contouring
Cross-contouring is the same thing you did with cross-hatching, but with bent lines instead of straight ones. Draw a series of contours, then draw another series in the opposite direction and cross them together. Like contouring, you have to follow the outline of the object.
Stippling
Stippling basically means making a lot of dots clustered together in the shading area. The more dots you make, the darker the drawing gets.
Stippling can decorate your drawing and give it a concrete form. It’s also effortless and quite fun.
Scribbling
This sounds weird, but one of the famous pen and ink techniques is just scribbling your way through the shading area. It’s basically drawing random squiggly lines. As always, the more lines you make, the darker the shading gets.
Mix Ink Strokes
You can add more texture to your paintings by mixing strong lines with delicate lines. This makes your drawing more defined and outstanding. Try this technique with other techniques like cross-hatching to see the difference it makes in your picture.
Contrasting Lines
Contrasting is another simple technique you can go for. You can do it by making short angled lines in a specific direction, then drawing other short angled lines in the opposite direction without letting them cross each other.
This technique is meant to decorate your drawing and add detail to it.
The Best Color Drawing Pens for Artists
- Zebra pack of 48 pens - 24 Black and 24 Blue ink pen included in set, Zgrip, 1mm medium point ball point pen featuring low viscosity for a...
- Highly Recommended for business executive, Soft, latex-free rubberized grip provides increased comfort while the plastic barrel allows for ink...
- Convenient metal pocket clip for quick, easy access, and to ensure you never lose your favorite pen again
Using color drawing pens will make a huge difference in your drawing’s outcome. You can use the same techniques you go for with a regular black ink pen, but with colors.
Here are six of the best color drawing pens on the market. We picked them for their convenience, durability, and high quality.
Tombow 56167 Dual Brush Drawing Pen Art Markers
- Updated color palette now includes 606 Violet
- Ideal for hand lettering, watercolor, fine art, illustrations, doodling, journaling, coloring and more
- Water-based
The Tombow Dual Brush set includes ten different colors. Each pen has two interchangeable tips: a fine tip and a brush tip. The fine end is perfect for drawing lines consistently, using the pen and ink techniques. Meanwhile, the brush tip is nylon and can create different brush strokes types.
The professional set comes with a colorless blender, which you can use to soften and blend colors together to enhance your drawing. You also needn’t worry about children using this set; its ink is odorless, non-toxic, and non-bleeding.
SkyRainbow Fineliner Color Drawing Pen Set
The SkyRainbow set includes 12 fine line pens of different colors. The ink inside is non-toxic and acid-free, so it’s safe to use. Adding to its safety factor, the set also has the SDS certificate.
The pens have durable, long-lasting ink and felt tips. The ink is also smudge-proof and fast-drying, which makes it smooth enough to use in daily writings, not just for drawing.
You can be sure that the ink won’t bleed or dry out, thanks to the metal pen tip. The tip is also the same color as the pen, so it won’t take you long to find the color you want.
Copic Marker SB12 Drawing Pens
- 【PREMIUM ALCOHOL-BASED MARKERS MADE IN JAPAN】A fast-drying, transparent alcohol ink will not harm the surface or fibers in the paper allowing...
- 【REPLACEABLE NIBS】SUPER BRUSH & MEDIUM BROAD: The flexible brush nib is ideal for blending, shading, and for drawing both thick and thin...
- 【REFILLABLE】a separate ink refill product "Copic Ink" allows you to save money and be friendly to the environment.
The Copic Marker SB12 set offers 12 colored pens. The ink used in the pens is alcohol-based, which means it’s permanent and won’t fade away anytime soon. The ink is also acid-free and non-toxic, which ensures safety for children.
The ink in these pens is refillable, and the pen nibs are replaceable, so you can guarantee that the pen won’t be useless even if you run out of ink or lose the nib. The ink is waterproof as well, in case you wish to try adding water to your drawing pen paintings.
Tanmit Gel Drawing Pens Set
- All Unique Colors: Tanmit gel pens set bring 120 colors to your life. Including Glitter, Metallic, Neon, Pastel, Fluorescent, Dye Colors,...
- Extra 120 Matched Refills: Those ink has 20% more ink than normal gel pens. What a great GIFT for children, teens and adults who love to color....
- Unlimited Uses: Ideal for drawing, doodle, coloring, scrapbook, writing, doodling, journaling. Also show your creative side like greeting cards,...
The Tanmit Gel Pens set consists of 120 drawing pens of different shades and colors. It also comes with 120 refills for the pens. It’s safe to say this set is huge!
The set’s colors come in all kinds: standard, metallic, glitter, rainbow, nylon, and Fluorescent. I’m sure children and adults alike will be excited over this color collection.
The acid-free, smooth ink can be used in writing as well as drawing. With the set’s size, you won’t have to worry about running out of pens anytime soon.
To ease refilling, Tanmit puts color numbers on the refills that match those on the drawing pens, so you won’t get things mixed up.
Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush Drawing Pens
- PITT Artist Pens combine modern brush nib design with traditional India ink
- These artist pens are extremely fade resistant and feature waterproof pigmented acid free India ink
- The durable nib gives the freedom to create versatile ink brush strokes
No list of drawing equipment will be complete without at least one product from the well-established Faber-Castell!
This Faber-Castell set includes 12 colored drawing pens, along with a brush nib and pen ink.
The ink used is permanent Indian ink, meaning it’s archival and acid-free. It’s also waterproof and less likely to fade away with time.
Many users have vouched for these pens to be non-bleeding.
Taotree Glitter Gel Drawing Pens
- 32 INDIVIDULE vivid colors glitter gel pens, included Glitter and Neon-Glitter. 40% more ink for Long Lasting, Great glitter pens for Adults...
- Smooth glitter colored pens with fine point tip 0.7mm - 1.0mm. Taotree gel markers will produce smooth fine lines and make your artwork pop right...
- Each Colored Pen is fitted with Comfort Grip, easy to hold and comfortable for writing, drawing, scrapbooking, sketching, Crafting, doodling, art...
The Taotree Glitter Gel Pens is another reasonably big set, consisting of 32 drawing pens. All the pens are glitter and neon-glitter, which will make your drawing more glowy.
The pens have comfortable grips, so they won’t hurt your hand if you’re drawing or writing for a long time. Additionally, the ink in this set is non-toxic, and the pens come with 40% more ink to last longer. The ink is also acid-free; thus, it won’t fade away or smear.
Conclusion – Color Drawing Pens
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All art techniques have their own beauty. While acrylic paint by numbers kits help beginners produce well-organized drawings, color drawing pens produce beautiful, detailed artworks.
Take a go at developing your artistic skills by trying out drawing color pens. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find out that they’re your best tool yet!
To view our full gallery of paint by numbers kits, CLICK HERE!