Le Pen Technical Drawing Pens – To my planner and journaling people, I’ve been using some great pens recently! Like some of you, I too have specific qualities I look for when using pens to study, journal and plan. The weight of the pen doesn’t have to be substantial but it shouldn’t feel super cheap and overly ‘plasticky’ (you know what I mean).
I’m a ‘finetip’ girl when it comes to journaling and note-taking, so I like to a pen with a small millimeter, but not so small that you have to use a considerable amount of effort to make your writing legible. In addition, I like to use watercolor markers for coloring and highlighting over text, so I switched to using waterproof or water-resistant ink exclusively for black pens.
Specifically to that last point, I’ve been using some great waterproof pens lately and I’ve already started to post short pen test videos for some of them.
The first one is the Marvy Le Pen Technical Drawing pen. I LOVE this pen. You guys, this pen’s barrel is slightly larger than the average multiliner making it wonderful to use for long periods of writing, inking your original drawings, or tracing over images which are preprinted in non-waterproof ink.
The ink is a jet black, dark pigment ink, which means it’s permanent once dry. This feature is great for drawing, and especially for use with watercolors. The pen’s build is high quality as well. It doesn’t feel overly cheap, none of the plastic is warping nor has the writing on the pens’ body flaking off yet.
I just learned about this pen in the past few months. I’m sure people have been posting about and loving these pens for a long time now. They come in a variety of point sizes:
0.03 mm
0.05 mm
0.1 mm
0.3 mm
0.5 mm
0.8 mm
Brush
Millimeters, in terms of pen size, has to do with the width of the line the pen makes when you write. It comes from the term “technical pen”, which is “a specialized instrument used by an engineer, architect, or drafter to make lines of constant width for architectural, engineering, or technical drawings” (wikipedia.com)
This is the first time I noticed a pen coming in so small of a point size. I bought the Le Pen Technical Drawing pens separately (not in a pack) so I didn’t have the pleasure of testing out the 0.03. But 0.03 mm seems way too small to use comfortably for taking notes or journaling.
I initially purchased 3 sizes: 0.3, 0.5 and 0.8 from TexasArtSupply.com. The pens were $1.59 each, which is cheaper than some other waterproof multiliners.
By the way, I DO NOT recommend using TexasArtSupply for purchasing loose pens. They didn’t offer any shipping deals or flat rates. Shipping cost for my order was almost $14. That was nearly the price of my entire purchase. It was higher than the price of any single item I purchased — which wasn’t a lot at all. And then the shipping was slower than expected. But I digress.
I liked the 0.3mm Le Pen Technical Drawing pen so much that I bought 3 more from Jetpens.com. After using these pens for months, I actually think I could have gone with the 0.1 and not had any issues at all.
With some pens, you can barely notice a difference between the point sizes. With the Le Pen pens, there is a noticeable difference between the 0.3, 0.5 and 0.8 sizes in this set. You can also feel the difference as you’re writing.
CONCLUSION
If you are looking for an alternative to the popular Sakura Pigma Microns, but with a slightly larger barrel for more comfort, please give these a try. There’s a difference between waterproof and water-resistant. Maybe sure you’re not getting counterfeit pens, which won’t be resistant to water at all.
Source material:
http://www.uchida.com/p-103-le-pen-drawing.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_pen
