the other day i was at the stationers' when i decided to try out the pilot precise rolling ball pen series. i've been thinking of trying them out for some time but i didn't want to change the whole system i had going. i guess i just never see a point in changing when you have a good thing going.
for pens my two standbys are the uniball vision & the pilot p-500/700. both pens are great pens, the vision is a rollerball pen & the pilot p500/700's use gel ink. both pens are made in japan & claim to be archival. i usually use the vision to go over pencil on my roughs & then the pilot when i am doing my trace-over with my lightbox on a new piece of paper. if i'm doodling i prefer the needle tip of the pilot to the pointy tip of the uniball. it has a nicer balance to it as well.
i would use the p-500/700 exclusively if it could trace over pencil better but because it is gel ink it doesn't really soak into the paper so when you erase pencil markings a good amount of the ink usually goes along with it making your line very faint. you usually will have to go over it again which is both a pain & can often compromise your line. when i bought the pilot precises i was hoping to maybe find a rollerball alternative that wrote like the pilot gel pen. this would really save me a lot of time because maybe i wouldn't always have to draw things over 3 times (pencil, rollerball, trace over with gel)!
the pilot precise has a needle tip which is similar to the pilot gel pens. in fact, i think pilot is supposed to have some patented needle tip technology that they often advertise on their packaging. so far i am having positive experiences with it. it draws great! i like the weight of the pen as well as the line it makes which is similar to the pilot gel pens but a little looser. in many ways i like it more than the gel pen. probably the biggest argument against using this pen for art is that the ink is not archival. i'm not sure how much this matters in the digital age, especially in my process where most everything i draw ends up scanned on a computer anyway, but it's nice when you do something & you know it's not going to eventually turn your paper brown even if you probably won't be alive to see it happen. another small problem i had with the pen is that the ink flows quite liberally so if you stay in one spot and are applying pressure you have a good chance of bleeding through the paper -- especially if you are not using bristol board or a thick stock. this shouldn't be a huge problem unless you are drawing on the top of a pad! i definitely wouldn't draw ruled frames for comics with this pen unless i was feeling gentle as a surgeon or i had a good solid 2 ply bristol board.
all in all, i'm going to switch over from the uniball vision to the pilot rollerballs because of the tip of the pen. i often find myself having to clean the tips of the visions because they tend to somehow get ink all over them. after a long day of inking the fingertips of my left hand will be black from rubbing ink off the tips of the visions. a non archival alternative that doesn't make that much of a mess is a welcome addition to my inventory, especially if used primariy on rough drafts. i think i will continue drawing final pieces on a clean sheet of paper with the gel pens because they are archival & i always seem to miss erasing that one line of pencil & it's a pain to deal with when it's all scanned in the computer. two kinds of pilot pens?? if i bought stocks now would probably be a good time to invest in pilot!
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