Brush or Pen? Both!

One of the really interesting things at the recent conventions here was the tools the artists were using. 3 of them (Agnes Garbowska, Mike Allred, and Francis Manapul) were using the same ink pen, and I'd never seen it before.

It's a nifty little cross between a brush and a pen, using bristles but running off an ink cartridge. Which of course means you can do everything from detail to thick lines, and vary the weight of a line like you can with a brush, but without the hassle (and mess) of dipping from an ink well.

I wasn't the only one taken with this. The 3 of them combined could probably have sold a couple of dozen of the things, with the number of people asking them what it was they were using. Mike Allred put me on to the above Jetpens website, so I quickly put in an order (side note: don't visit "jetpen.com" by mistake, it is... disturbing). They arrived a couple of days ago (can't get them locally), so today I had a bit of a play, doing this in around 30 minutes:

It's really cool not having to change pens, or to fill in a think line using a thin tip. If your hand's not steady doing the thin lines then it really shows, had the shakes a few times. Doesn't seem like it will take a heck of a lot of practise to get used to though, the above came out pretty good for a first attempt.