I’ve been using my PITT brush pen for a few years now, and for the most part it makes me very happy. I like the variations in line width it gives me, and I don’t have to keep dipping it and cleaning it. I just get a new one when the brush nib wears out. Which brings me to my quandry. Lately, I’ve been running through these brush pens very quickly – I’ll wear one down drawing maybe two weeks’ worth of comics. That’s just too fast; they used to last me at least a month.

At the same time, I’ve been considering going back to a regular pen, like a Micron (or the PITT equivalent). They don’t give me the brush-like line quality, but I do like the way it looks. Less chunky lines would help my drawing style, is what someone suggested to me.

So should I switch to a regular old pen? Or stick with my brush pen? I wonder if other cartoonists change the types of pens they use as often as I do. Comic strips are well known for their consistency; I imagine a cartoonist could get letters of complaint if readers spotted a marked difference in the drawings from one day to the next. On the other hand, I think I’m in a good place to make changes. Falling Rock is, at two years, still a relatively young strip.

Any suggestions?