Product reviews pt.2: Micron pens and brushes.

Micron pens and brushes.

When it comes to decent felt tip drawing pens, Microns are one of the most well known and widely available brands out there. They’re reliable, long lasting, and come in a variety of sizes, including very small 005 tips and large “3” chisel tips. They tend to be inexpensive, and work well on a variety of media.

I tend to keep a lot of these on hand, in varying sizes. Given my focus on crosshatching and other forms of shading, I go through the 005 and 01 sizes very quickly. The 08 sizes are perfect for bold, dramatic outlines. The wide chisel tips are classified as “graphic” pens. In addition to these are “brush” pens, with a flexible, brush-like nib that can be useful for inking something that you want to have a very light, ephemeral sense of motion.

These are perfect for sketching, and the ink works just fine on sketch paper. The following, for instance, was inked with microns, in a windpower 30% post consumer sketchbook.

As you can see, microns come in various colors. The above was done with a set of sepia colored microns, with tips ranging from .005 to .05. Microns work well with most types of markers, including copics. The image below was created with both microns and copic markers.

Microns do have their drawbacks. They can’t be refilled, so you end up generating more solid waste with them than is preferable. Line consistency isn’t the best, so these aren’t ideal for anything that requires a very smooth, steady line. These aren’t very suitable for drafting. They can be fine for earlier drafts, but for a final draft of a hand-drawn drafted document, you should use a technical pen. another issues is that the lines tend to be more sensitive to erasing than others pens, and can become faded quite badly.

The biggest problem, however, is that the nibs aren’t always that durable. The nibs of the smaller sizes can sometimes bend/break, which can affect line quality. The brush nib and the chisel style microns will sometimes become rough or frayed after repeated use. This is, by no means, the case with every single pen. But it does happen often enough to be noticeable.

In any case, microns are fine pens for most sketching and illustration tasks, especially if you don’t plan on doing much erasing.