Art materials: felt tip pens

In this video I share some thoughts about using markers and felt tip pens in my sketchbook and share some of my favourites.

I really enjoy using this type of pen in my sketchbook practice, they are quick, portable and accessible. There is something playful, easeful and joyful about them. The brilliantly bright colours seem cheerful, optimistic and exuberant to me.

ART MATERIALS

Here are some of the felt tip pens I like to use, these are just my personal preferences, I tend to mix and match brands to find the colours I like. You may like to explore adding multiple layers of colour on top of each other to build up intensity and get a more unusual colour palette or experiment with combining felt tips pens, with other art materials such as collage and paint…

I mostly use water-based or indian ink based pens in my sketchbook, I find that alcohol based markers always seem to seep through to the page beneath no-matter the paper quality and I find their smell a little overpowering, so I mostly used water based….

These are the brands I use most often:

• Pentel Pocket Brush Pen ( this is the black brush pen I use the most which is refillable)

• Ecoline Brush Pens ( these pens can be refilled with Ecoline liquid watercolour which comes in bottles)

• Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens (indian ink based so waterproof)

• Stabilo Pen 68 BRUSH

• Staedtler 3001 double ended watercolour brush pen

• TomBow ABT Dual Brush Pens

  The Faber Castell and Tombow’s are the more expensive high-end ones, they are not cheap, but as a professional artist I do invest in materials. The Staedtler ones I find to be really good quality and excellent value. The Ecoline pens can be refilled. Please don’t feel you need to start with expensive pens, the best felt tip pens to use are always the ones you already own…(or perhaps the ones your kids or grandchildren own!)