Technical pens were originally designed for engineers and architects, but quickly became popular among artists for their precision. Although software programs like CAD and SolidWorks have become the industry standard, technical pens are still often used during the early stages of the design process to draw flow-charts, schematics, equations, and the like. They’re good for projects that require exhaustive detail, like creating a pointillist portrait or detailing the ornaments on a building. The larger tip sizes (0.2 mm and up) can be used for writing notes, but the smaller tip sizes will feel scratchy and might even skip, depending on how fast you write.

Have you ever looked at a perfect hand-inked drawing and wondered, how are the lines so clean?

To some extent, you must have steady hands -- like a surgeon or a pianist. And you can always modify things digitally, with programs like Photoshop and GIMP. But the first and most basic component is always the quality of the instrument you hold in your hand. Just as you wouldn’t use an Xacto knife to perform surgery, you wouldn’t use a ballpoint pen to ink a pencil sketch. Instead, artists use drawing pens with archival (meaning waterproof and fade-resistant) ink because they produce consistent, fluid, and graceful lines that stay put on the paper.

Graphic drawing pens are also highly recommended by academics and writers of all kinds: researchers in the field, journalists, Asian language students, and Youth Group pastors alike find the precision and quality of drawing pens to be quite useful. Although they’re made to satisfy the rigorous demands of professional artists, they require no special care or maintenance.

Continue reading for ideas on how drawing pens can be used for notes, journaling, outlining sketches, and illustrations -- plus product recommendations tailored to each use case.