The Pentel Pocket Brush Pen is the best brush pen for most artists. It has a synthetic bristle tip that creates bold, energetic lines. It also excels at filling in large swathes of shading. The brush pen’s rich black ink stays crisp under watercolor paint and alcohol-based Copic ink. It is also available in sepia and gray. Since it’s refillable, it can remain in your toolkit for years to come.

Its large bristle tip can be a bit tricky to control for beginners. Try working at a larger scale, or pick up a felt tip alternative—we recommend plenty of them below.

The first choice to make in picking a brush pen is whether you want black or colorful ink.

Black inks are most often used for outlines. They can vary in pigmentation and gloss, but they’re all still black inks. Choosing a black brush pen allows you to focus on the tip’s performance and the lines it creates.

When selecting colorful ink brush pens, there are other factors to consider, like how many colors are available or whether or not the ink can blend into smooth gradients.

Usually, you want the ink flow of a brush pen to be wet, but not so wet the marks take ages to dry. A drier pen can sometimes create interesting texture effects, especially if the tip is made of individual bristles.

“Solubility” describes whether or not an ink’s dyes or pigments will dissolve and mix into another liquid. This mixing causes blurring and smearing. You may want to avoid this, or it may be the painterly effect you’re searching for.

Most artists want their black inks to be waterproof, not water soluble, so that they can be colored over with paint or markers. Almost all colorful markers use water-based inks, but some—like Copic Markers—use alcohol-based inks. While waterproofness varies for black inks, almost all of them are Copic proof.

Brush pens can have either felt tips or bristle tips. Both will create flowing lines, but they behave a little differently.

A felt tip is made from a single piece of fiber. It soaks up ink from the brush pen’s internal reservoir and applies it to the drawing surface. A felt tip brush pen is easier to control and better for beginners.

A bristle tip is made up of individual strands of fiber like the tip of a paintbrush. Bristles are often more responsive to the amount of pressure applied to the tip, and they can create interesting effects. These tips create lines with more dramatic variation from thick to thin.

Tip size affects both line behavior and how a tip feels to draw with.

A short tip is more predictable, while a long tip can whip around and has a greater difference between thick and thin. A narrow tip will be better for details, while a wide tip will shine in filling in large areas with ink.

Generally, only black brush pens offer varieties of tip sizes within the same product line, but a few colorful pens are double-sided and have two different tips on the same body.

Your typical felt tip marker with its firm tip simply can’t create the same dynamic, swooping lines as a brush pen. The consistency and variety of those lines will be determined by tip flexibility: whether a tip is firm or yields under pressure, and whether it quickly springs back to its original shape after pressure is applied.

Flexibility is also affected by tip type and size. Choose a firmer, shorter felt tip for more regular lines. A longer, springier bristle tip can create a greater range of line widths.

If you’re a professional artist, you may want to invest in refillable pens. Cartridge- and converter-filled pens can hold a few milliliters of ink at a time. Depending on how much ink you use at a time, this could be enough for twenty sketches or one dramatic finished piece.

High-capacity bodies and ink-filled water brushes are excellent options for artists who want to be able to draw for a long time without needing to stop and refill their pens, or those who need to fill in large areas in their drawings.

Zebra Disposable Brush Pens are perfect beginner tools for brush pen art. Firm and controllable, their tips create lively lines and are capable of plenty of detail.

Choose between extra fine, fine, and medium tip sizes—the latter two are even available in a double-sided pen. This pen’s ink is both waterproof and Copic proof. If vigorously erased, its pigment lifts, creating a slightly faded end result.

If you know you love to work small, you can’t go wrong with the Sakura Pigma Professional Fine Brush Pen. Its tip is slightly springier and more sharply pointed than those of the Zebra pens, yet it’s not so long that it flops around. These traits make this brush pen is perfect for tiny artworks.

Its ink is waterproof and Copic proof, though it fades somewhat when erased.

The tip of a Kuretake Bimoji Broad Brush Pen puts down a generous amount of black ink. It’s certainly on the firmer side but still creates energetic marks.

We’re also fond of the Bimoji’s body design, which features a wide, padded grip. Its ink doesn’t react to water or alcohol.

Kuretake No. 13 Fountain Brush Pens are compatible with both cartridges and converters. While converters hold less volume, they can be paired with any fountain pen ink. The No. 13’s soft, flexible tip can even be replaced, too. This long-lived pen is a perfect investment for a working artist.

Kuretake High Grade Sable Hair Brush Pens have similar form factors but, crucially, real sable hair tips. Sable hair is much more durable and a little softer.

The Komamono Lab Fonte Brush Pen Body is an affordable alternative. Its tip is a little wider and softer, and its plastic construction is lighter and less durable. However, it works well and can even be customized with snazzy caps.

Pentel Pigment and Standard Brush Pens are available in a variety of tip sizes and even two different ink formulations. All tip sizes are springy and put down a lot of ink.

The whole body of the pen is a refill, so it can hold a lot of ink. You can squeeze the body to make the brush tip wetter, but be careful not to drip any ink on your artwork. The pigment ink is close to waterproof, but the dye ink definitely isn’t.

For more pigment ink tip sizes, try the similar Kuretake Fude Pigment Brush Pens.

The miniscule tip of the Kuretake Ai Liner Brush Pen was inspired by makeup tools. As this snappy tip dances and flicks along the page, it creates wonderfully dynamic marks.

It’s not the best option for drawing on the go because its cap can’t be posted on the back of the barrel, so be sure to put it somewhere safe.

Additionally, its water-resistant ink moves around a little when wet. However, it can create tiny lines that other brush pens simply can’t manage.

Faber-Castell PITT Artist Brush Pens have felt tips that lay down lines of vibrant, permanent inks. This ink isn’t only waterproof, though. On each pen’s barrel are asterisks indicating lightfastness: one asterisk, the minimum, means the ink can resist five years of light exposure. Three asterisks mean over a hundred years!

The ink colors also perfectly match other lines of Faber-Castell markers and colored pencils. You can learn more about PITT Artist Pens in our guide.

Kuretake ZIG Brushables Double-Sided Brush Markers feature big, flexible felt tips. Each pen combines two colors, one slightly lighter than the other, in a single body.

We found the ink colors of this pen could be blended into nice gradients. Marks stay crisply defined when wet, though we would say that these brush pens are just shy of being 100% waterproof.

The Copic Sketch Marker features a medium-firm felt brush tip on one side and a chisel tip on the other. It’s filled with alcohol ink that’s available in more than three hundred colors. This ink is not lightfast, and Copics require special smooth, non-absorbent paper for the best effects, but they can create luminous results unmatched by any other marker.

Learn more about Copics in our guide.

The big, springy tips of Royal Talens Ecoline Watercolor Brush Pens are just plain fun to draw with. These pens put down so much ink that you can create dramatic shading effects where it pools. You can also use a water brush to bring out even more variation from your artworks (though we recommend practicing this technique on scrap paper first). Combined with impressive color selection, these brush pens are incredibly fun to use. We recommend using watercolor paper for the best results.

The Tombow Dual Brush Pen includes a long felt tip on one side and a small bullet tip on the other. This combination makes it great at anything from sketching to filling in large areas of color. These pens are available in a huge range of colors and aren’t so wet that you need heavy-duty paper to use them.

Tombow Dual Brush Pens blend nicely and dry quickly, and brushing them with water creates lovely painterly effects. Their one flaw: they are long enough that they don’t fit into every pencil case (but you can find compatible pencil cases here).

Small Kuretake ZIG Fudebiyori Brush Pens tuck handily into crammed pencil cases and even pockets. Their short yet comfortably wide bodies hold generously-sized brush tips that are firm and controllable for delicate detail. Their color selections include some great bright hues and earth tones. Water teases out soft, light marks from their lines.

If you would prefer a more flexible tip, Sakura Koi Coloring Brush Pens are an otherwise very similar runner up. They have narrower bodies and a smaller color range.

Akashiya Sai Watercolor Brush Pens feature synthetic bristle tips that are the perfect medium size for a variety of uses. Their soft yet springy tips glide along the page and can be easily used for beautiful dry brush textures. We love how their clear caps showcase the brush tip and color.

The default line drawn by a Kuretake ZIG Clean Color Real Brush Pen is tiny, but this little brush is flexible enough for dramatic line variation. It’s also another good pick if you crave dry brush effects.

The ink in a Kuretake ZIG Clean Color is highly saturated and incredibly water-soluble: a water brush can wash lines away entirely. For a more defined look, let your page dry and then redraw over your wash.

If you’re working big, pick up some Pentel Art Brush Pens. Their tips are flexible, energetic, and can deliver super-wide lines. Their high-capacity bodies can be squeezed to increase ink flow, though you might not need to: we found these to be almost startlingly wet writers. Their lines are ultra-saturated, and the amount of ink they leave on the page makes blending a dream. They’re even refillable.

Their high capacities, lightweight designs, and precise, springy tips make Pentel Vistage Water Brushes reliable companions. The barrels have large openings that are easy to fill under running faucets—or even in mountain streams.

For most applications, the Medium tip is a perfect all-arounder. If you’re working on the go in a compact sketchbook, we’re especially fond of the Fine, which can easily go from delicate details to broad and energetic lines.

The Kuretake 2 Way Flat Head Water Brush can transform from a flat fan of bristles to a long round tip by removing a special ring that shapes the bristles. Either way you use it, this generous tip is great for large swathes of water and color.

Be careful when putting the ring back on: it’s easy to squish a few straggling bristles underneath it. We recommend shaping the bristles with a bit of water to keep them all together before sliding the ring on.

The handy piston-fill mechanism of the Caran d'Ache Water Brush makes it a snap to fill up with bottled ink. Just remove the tip, dip the pen body into ink, and pull up on the end—ta-da! A waterbrush loaded with the ink of your choice.

The tips of these pens are comparatively big, soft, and flexible, so some care must be taken when making small marks.