Gel pens are great for artwork, but like many other things, there are a few complaints. Some people claim that their pens skip a lot and don’t make nice lines, or they are not visible enough, and attribute the inconsistency to a poor brand. What they don’t realize is that good results can only be achieved under certain circumstances:
Faded lines are influenced by the surface. The darker the surface you are working on, the better and shinier the drawing will be. Generally, drawing over too transparent watercolor layers will make the lines less visible, and cause you to riffle the paper.
When you experience too little or too much ink, it is probably because you changing the drawing direction too frequently. Gel pens don’t like this. The best way to draw a continuous line is to move the pen in one direction, and then clean the nib before starting another line. Changing the direction causes skips, while drawing too many lines in the same direction without cleaning the nib causes ink blobs.
A new pen usually works well with few or no skips. But the more it is used, the tougher it gets to work with it. It can be very frustrating to have a pen with just a little ink left, and the nib is barely able to let any ink out. To avoid such challenges, you should consider having a few nibs at hand when working on an important painting to ensure that you see it through with minimal challenges.
Now that you know how to use your gel pens, all that is left is to get a reliable vendor to buy from. Elkos Pens are one of the leading global manufacturers of gel pens, and provide a wide variety of colors and sizes to suit your art needs.
