orange ink

Colors Review: Pentel R.S.V.P. Eight-Color Set, 1.0mm Ballpoint 

by Andrew

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The Pentel R.S.V.P. is a pen that’s ubiquitous to the school-supply isle. It’s nicer than the cheapo pens you’ll find in the typical office supply cabinet, but it’s inexpensive enough – and durable enough – that you could probably throw it into a kid’s backpack without much thought. This eight-color set of Pentel R.S.V.P. ballpoints follows along those same lines; they work, but there’s little that’s noteworthy.

The colors included here all feel fairly basic. The blue, red, purple, and green lend themselves best to utilitarian tasks like grading papers or taking notes. The orange, light blue, and pink are a bit brighter, but still might be best suited to highlight or mark passages in a book. Drawing, doodling, or coloring is best treated as an after-thought.

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These R.S.V.P. colors don’t provide a particularly smooth or smear-free writing/drawing experience. Color with them too long and you’re bound to find ink blobs smeared across the side of your hand. And despite the soft grip section, hand-cramps are likely to occur after only a few minutes of continual use. Like most ballpoint pens, the ink works great for shading and darkening (depending on how hard you press down on the paper), but they don’t fill in areas particularly well either.

These pens are best put to work in a calendar, textbook, or notebook – anywhere drawing, doodling, or coloring will be secondary.

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Colors Review: Paper Mate Liquid Flair, Assorted Colors, Medium Point

by Andrew

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Although I didn’t like the Paper Mate Liquid Flair for writing, it turns out that it’s a pretty great pen for drawing and coloring. It’s comfortable to hold, and the medium, felt tip does a great job at filling in areas. Though smearing and bleeding can definitely be an issue, it might be worth the trouble for some of the bright and vivid colors.

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This set comes with seven colors (plus black): blue, red, green, pink, orange, turquoise, and purple. Some of the colors almost look like highlighters, which isn’t something I tend to like. But the red, blue, and purple are dark and vivid – great colors.

If you’re doing detailed work, this might not be the pen for you – the medium point and the smearing issues would make it less than ideal for that application. But for general coloring, it does a great job. Each pen also has a different design on the barrel, which is a nice touch.

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Colors Review: Pilot G-2 Fashion Collection, Gel Pens

by Andrew

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It’s very easy to criticize the Pilot G-2 Fashion Collection for its lack of originality. Pilot simply took their G-2 design, slapped on a flower pattern, and gave it a silly name. But, honestly, covering up that ugly clear barrel is one of the better decisions that Pilot has ever made (even if they already did it before).

There are four colors included in the pack – pink, blue, green, and orange – all of which are very bright. In fact, the orange is so bright that it might make a good highlighter. And the green, my favorite in the pack, has the beautiful color of summer grass, which is a lovely color to draw with.

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Though they’re really just an old pen wrapped in a new skin, I really have nothing particularly negative to say about the G-2 Fashion Collection. They’re fairly smooth, have a good consistency, and they don’t excessively smear. Overall, a nice pen for coloring and doodling.

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And if you just like barrel design of the pen, the Fashion Collection also comes in a series of black-ink pens. They have the same blue, green, pink, and orange-colored barrels, but the grip, knock, and clip sections are black. At first I accidentally bought a set of these black-ink pens thinking that they had colored ink, so be careful not to make the same mistake that I did.

Black Ink G-2 Fashion Collection
The black-ink version of the G-2 Fashion Collection

Colors Review: Sharpie Pen, Basic Six Color Set

by Andrew

Sharpie Pen Colors

Lately I’ve been a big fan of the Sharpie Pen – they draw such clean lines, it feels like my handwriting always looks better when I use one. So I was excited to play around with this set of six basic colors: black, blue, red, orange, green, and purple.

The blue and green look fairly standard to my eye, but the orange and red are quite bright. On the other side of the scale, the purple is fairly dark. In fact, I would actually consider using the purple in place of a black pen for writing.

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These pens aren’t the greatest at filling an area with color. However, this might be a good addition for anyone using Sharpie permanent markers in their artwork, as it could allow for adding more details. And luckily, I didn’t have any bleeding issues with these colors like I did with the standard black Sharpie Pen.

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