Review: Fineliner Pens

Summary
I review a wide range of differently branded fineliner pens and examine their useability, smoothness of ink flow, nib quality, ink quality and overall handling.

Caveat: This review represents my own personal opinion. I am not sponsored by any company. The comments I make relate directly to me own personal style of inking, yours might be different so I advise purchasing a couple of brands of pens and trying them out yourself to find the best one for you.

Introduction
Fineliner pens are typically identified as tiny width, fibre-tipped, technical drawing or sketching pens. The ink is invariably pigment based, lightfast and permanent. They are best used on smooth paper with little grain. There are dozens of brands each varying considerably in price and each with their own handling quirks. I decided to buy a whole bunch of these and test them out over a number of drawing projects.

Dragon Fly

I often write and shoot photos for a UK based magazine called Jiu Jitsu Style. I was also asked by them to create art for a rashguard that will be made by Tatami Fightwear and bear the Jiu Jitsu Style branding. The result is my 'Dragon Fly' creation: half dragon, half dragonfly!

Here's how this crazy chimera came about...

Tap Cancer Out T-shirt Design

Tap Cancer Out is a charity non-profit that is run by members of the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Community. The charity raises funds through the sale of merchandise and events for various established cancer charities. I designed this t-shirt alongside fightwear brand Scramble and proceeds from the sale of this tee will go towards Tap Cancer Out.

Here's how I put it together...

Kappa v Dragon Cover Art for Fight Soap

This was a very cool project that I had a lot of fun creating. Fight Soap are a US based soap brand that markets their products to the MMA and BJJ community. They have a huge following online and are very popular with a large group of grapplers and combat sports athletes. It was a no brainer to me when they asked me to design some new cover art for them. Here's how I put it all together...

Meerkatsu interviewed by The Shirt List

Top t-shirt art website The Shirt List agreed to write up a little interview with me and showcase some of my designs. The interview gave me a chance to present my designs and also discuss Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to a whole new audience. It's a light hearted read which I hope you'll find entertaining and enjoyable. Go check it out!

http://www.theshirtlist.com/interview-with-seymour-yang-aka-meerkatsu/

My thanks to Alan for taking the time to ask some very interesting questions and delving into the world of BJJ fightwear design.


:)

OctJitsu Man and OctoDragon

I designed these for Guam-based fightwear company Competidor Brand. OctJitsu Man is a t-shirt on either white or black and OctoDragon is a desktop wallpaper.

3200x2400 size version here:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7001/6735814283_9ac993fcbf_o.jpg

They were both really fun projects to work on. Read on for more details on how I produced these...

T-shirt: Skullorantula

Let me introduce my hairy little friend 'Skullorantula'. I designed him for t-shirts and the base of the design carries the Portuguese words: Guarda Aranha, which translates to 'spider guard' a popular techniques used in the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ).

Skullorantula never nearly made it to real life status. Originally, I drew him as one of a series of tee concepts for a BJJ instructor in Japan - but he chose something else instead. Below is my original sketch:

And as is evident from the final image below, I kept pretty faithful when tracing over my original pencil sketch using Illustrator:

For the final image, I used a cross hatching technique I saw somewhere else and I've been dying for an excuse to try it on a project myself. I tend to use cross hatching a lot with pen and ink artwork, but have never tried it with vector drawn work before. I think it came out ok.

For colours, I tried out a number of combinations, eventually sticking to a fairly primary range of colours plus the base t-shirt - which came in either navy, brown, maroon or black - colour that reflect (not accurately mind) the belt colours of BJJ.

For the back of the t-shirt, I always like to add a little reprise of the front design:

Possibly not one for the arachnophobes!


:)