I recently came across a minizine called “Underrated Birds,” but felt that basically all of the included birds were, in fact, rated. (Downy woodpecker? Underrated?? Come on.)

Maybe at some point I will make my own underrated birds zine, which would absolutely include the cassowary.

In other news, I finished another pen review! It’s under 1,000 words!! Praise be!

Predictably, on a recent Japan trip, my entire party had to wait for me while I raided the Daiso in Ginza at closing. Stationary stuff was still ¥100 a piece!! At the current exchange, that’s $0.63!!

Among my spoils is a Daiso disposable fountain pen, confusingly described on its packing as a “fountain pen without cartridge.” I originally thought this meant you had to supply your own cartridge, which I was fine with. It could conceivably also be interpreted as coming with a converter instead, but that’d be nuts.

My moment of realisation came as I tried to wrench the pen barrel from the section. No, the barrel and ink reservoir cannot be separated from the section and feed. Ah, it’s a disposable.

This fountain pen is totally normal in length (5.5in capped) and diameter (~0.7in), is well-balanced, and has a very rollerball pen aesthetic, but it helpfully has “fountain pen” labeled on the side, so you don’t forget! The label is on a window to the ink reservoir, though this isn’t obvious since it’s black ink.

The pen cap has an additional spring-backed seal-cap inside to keep the nib from drying out. I’m kind of dubious of the effectiveness of inner seal-caps because they didn’t work well for me in the Platinum Preppy or Prefounte, but this Daiso disposable wrote perfectly out of the gate…

The 0.5mm medium nib is nice and smooth; ink flow is good. Dry time is average-to-good at ~5 seconds on smooth fountain pen-friendly paper (the Colorverse Nebula pad uses some variety of Tomoe River paper, I think, but it’s heavier than average and I’m not sure if it’s pre- or post-Sanzen). Dry time is faster on thinner and more absorbent papers, like standard printer paper.

It writes readily and easily in a way that lets you not think about it at all. There was no skipping, even when I started doodling with it on slightly textured paper at an angle very quickly. Fountain pens’ tendency to skip when sketching quickly was one of the initial reasons I didn’t like using them much for drawing, but this Daiso disposable handled it better than some tech pens, even. Fast undersketches, anime hair, no problem.

It’s basically a perfect first fountain pen? I have no complaints whatsoever, but it’s kind of a shame this is a disposable!

The ink in the pen is not waterproof, but it holds up quite well against fountain pen ink in a brush pen, so adding grey value with a Pentel pocket brush didn’t cause lines to run.

You can see the lines darken and bleed slightly on the shar pei below though, and it’s a bit more obvious in the cassowary sketches, because I didn’t wait as long between sketching and adding grey.

This disposable fountain pen writes noticeably smoother than my original cartridge-fill Daiso fountain pen, which has a small bit of scratchy feedback. Visually, the nib on the cartridge pen looks a teeny bit smaller, but they write about the same? I currently have a fresh standard Daiso blue-black refill in the cartridge pen, but ink can make a small difference in line width (how much does it feather?).

I still love the cartridge-fill Daiso fountain pen a lot, but this disposable has been a smoother overall experience so far. It’ll be interesting to see how it performs over time — whether that seal-cap keeps the ink flow good, whether the ink window accurately gauges remaining capacity, etc.

Aside from the “original,” there have been a few other cartridge fountain pens at Daiso over the years, but never a disposable that I’ve seen.

I’m not sure if the disposable is much cheaper to produce, but I’m also not sure how many people keep using their cartridge pens after they run out of the cartridges they come with? Daiso used to sell a multi-pack of International short cartridge refills, but as with all inventory at Daiso, things come and go. The disposable is much simpler in that regard.

It’s just too bad that such a nice, smooth nib can’t be used (except as a dip pen) after the reservoir runs dry, but this is definitely a great, minimum-fuss way to see if you even like using fountain pens before exploring the plethora of other options out there. At 63 cents, this was a steal, but if you find this in North America for $2.25 or whatever, it’s still an amazing deal.

Okay, I finished a review, but it’s not short lmao.

This Artistro dual-tip acrylic marker¹ has a 1mm fine tip on one end and a 5mm dot tip on the other end. It’s pretty normal in length (6.375in capped), and slightly narrow in diameter (~0.375in) for a marker. The caps are identical and can post onto each other. There’s no protruding roll-stop, but the caps have flat planes on them that serve that function decently.

Lots of newer acrylic markers and pens have graduated from requiring pump-action priming to working right out of the box, and this pen is one of those.

¹ I’ll use “marker” and “pen” interchangeably throughout. While both can be used for either, for the most part, I think a pen’s primary purpose is to make lines, and a marker’s primary purpose is to fill in space. But acrylic paint pens really straddle that line and seem to be 50/50, especially for larger tip implements, so I dunno, whatever!

On medium weight sketchbook paper, the Artistro doesn’t feel that different from a basic water-based marker (like a Crayola). It works fine, but is unremarkable.

Acrylic flow is smooth from the get-go, and while it feels more like ink than paint, it’s solid and opaque. Filling in large areas is very easy. It might not be as opaque with lighter colors, but for black, coverage was great. You don’t need to go back over a spot at all to build color; it’s solid the first time — without stressing the paper too much.

With traditional pump-primed acrylic pens like Uni POSCA, the thicker, wetter acrylic paint soaks into and weakens flimsier papers. “Dust” also builds up from dried acrylic. A lot of my Posca drawings have accumulated bits you can see in photos. There are spots of texture build-up on the page. This is way less of a problem with non-primed acrylic pens.

The Artistro’s acrylic is thin in volume without being thin in terms of coverage. At least on paper, it’s solid without having texture build up from dried paint.

To be fair though, since I only have a black marker and have a big tip option, I’m not going over the page over and over again with it like I would when using multiple, different colors, or when trying to get coverage with very fine tips (as I was with my early Poscas), so it doesn’t have as much opportunity for build-up.

The two tips on the Artistro aren’t functionally that different — yes, it’s easier to get thinner lines with the fine and thicker lines with the dot, but it’s also possible to get thinner lines with the dot and thick lines with the fine… you just need to be more careful and intentional about it.

Pretty interesting to see a dot tip instead of a broad chisel or something, but I think it works better. I’ve never liked chisel tips for filling large areas. After coloring in a section, it’s easier to fill in corners and stuff with a dot than a chisel, and even if you have the option, it’s nice to not switch which tip you’re using all the time.

Unsurprisingly, the Artisto dual-tip acrylic marker plays nicely with other acrylic markers.

The flower below was orange (Posca) first, then black (Artistro) was added, then white (Posca) was added. I touched up some lines after, which involves all the colors going over each other a few more times in places. Each color went onto the previous one solidly.

Uglybooks have a heavier 135 gsm paper compared to my unknown medium weight sketchbook paper, but still, the pages will start to warp under multiple layers of acrylic paint marker. Again, since I only have the one black pen for Artistro, it’s hard to say how much page warp would happen if I were exclusively using Artistro pens to do a multi-color illustration, but even Posca doesn’t warp a page that much. The pages will flatten out under some books.

Acrylic markers are often advertised as being good for a lot of different surfaces. In the past, I’ve really only used them on cardboard, wood, particle board, and canvas: all relatively normal art surfaces. In most cases, those surfaces require more layering of a color for it to look solid. Wood is porous and canvas has a lot of texture: you need to build up the acrylic so it fills in those gaps.

I don’t have any raw wood or canvas handy right now, but on particle board, the black Artistro’s initial coverage is very similar a black Arrtx — another no-priming-needed acrylic marker: it’s decently solid, but not very dark. You can still see the fibers on the surface of the particle board. Layering it more gets it slightly darker, but a pump-primed Uni Posca comes down much darker immediately, even without additional layering.

If other colors of Artistro are similar to my experience with Arrtx, then lighter colors will need quite a lot of layering before they look solid on particle board, and it’d be even more tedious on materials like wood or glass.

I’ve never used acrylic pens on fabric before, but the sleeves I just cut off a cotton T-shirt took the Artistro marker decently? Most of the strokes above were a single go, without additional layering. The rough lines work well for this style, but it seems like it’d be a huge pain trying to do a multi-color drawing on fabric like this… especially if you want flat blocks of color.

I’m sure it’d have been helpful if I’d had the fabric stretched taut, but even still, the drawing surface would shift and move a little bit every time the pen goes down on it, which I don’t like… so drawing on fabric isn’t a thing I’ll ever do much.

The pack of markers came with a small insert that explained how to set the marker on fabric using an iron, but I don’t own one, so oh well!

On both plastic and glass, the acrylic in the Artistro paint pen comes down too thin for the color to be solid. Layering is also harder because the acrylic doesn’t hold well on the non-porous surfaces, so you end up pushing the existing paint around on the surface if you try to layer immediately. You need to wait for it to dry.

These are not materials I have much reason to draw on, personally. On one hand, I don’t like seeing acrylic markers being promoted for use on these surfaces because I don’t think they do very well on them; on the other hand, most of the application I see of acrylic marker on glass is for store window decorations and such, which are meant to be temporary anyway.

I’ll stick to using my acrylic pens on paper and similar materials. The Artistro does perfectly well there, even if it’s nothing special.

I’d never heard of Artistro before, but figured they were yet another Amazon brand. I’m right, though they do have their own store, are apparently US-based, and have been around since 2015. One of my complaints about these Amazon-mostly, online-only brands is that they suck at naming products.

The box these came in read “Artistro black acrylic dual-tip pen.” This would be fine, except if you go to their website and try to find an “acrylic dual-tip” implement, you’ll get this other product. Their entire catalogue of products is listed as keyword spam, because keyword spam is how they built their brand, but this makes it frustrating for anyone trying to find a specific item because half the stuff has the same keywords.

Artistro has another otherwise identical offering with a brush tip instead of a dot tip, but the products have the same “name” (what even is the product name? the first full line of the keyword spam?), so you just need to look closely at the packaging and/or description. It’s annoying as hell!! But I digress…

Actually, no, not digressing: there are apparently two listings for this 5-pack of acrylic pens on Artistro’s site. One is $9.99 and one is $10.99. These are the same set, right???

But Artistro doesn’t need to be clear or consistent in terms of product lines because their customers are just following keyword spam and would never encounter both of these listings naturally, so whatever? If you’re looking for “stocking stuffers, Christmas gift idea for teens, grandkids, kids” then you’re probably fine paying a dollar more, yeah? The artist who cares more about the “5mm dot + 1mm fine” keywords probably cares a bit more about price, is that it?

Artistro also has a 2-pack of the same pen… for $9.99, the same price as the cheaper 5-pack. I know this disingenuous crap is standard practice on Amazon and other large retailers, so I suppose it’s not surprising to see it in smaller companies that only really exist because of Amazon, but it’s annoying and disappointing all the same. Do some thorough searching before you buy, I guess…

Artistro’s Amazon store has the $9.99 list price for both the 5-pack and 2-pack, though both are currently 30% off at $6.99. So the pens are as low as $1.40/ea or as much as $5/ea, depending on where you get it and whether it was a 5- or 2-pack.

Going with their $9.99 list price for the 5-pack, it’s $2/marker. That’s really not bad for a dual-tip acrylic marker that doesn’t require priming. Standard Poscas are single-tip, requiring priming, and are usually $3-5/ea (but up to $8+), depending on size. The Artistro acrylic marker trades a bit of flow and opacity for ease of use, which is more than fair if you’re mostly working on paper. I’ve long been annoyed at how finicky Poscas can be. The Artistro pen is way more predictable, even if it’s slightly worse for some specific applications.

That said, Arrtx has a 8-pack of dual-tip black acrylic markers for $10.99, or $1.37/marker. I haven’t used that particular Arrtx marker, but it’s a 1.9mm fine tip and a brush tip (immediately superior, imo), compared to this Artistro’s 1mm fine and 5mm dot. Artistro’s 1mm fine and brush tip offering is $15.99 for a 5-pack., or $3.20/ea. (Maybe there’s a cheaper version with different keywords though. 🙄) Too bad my friend didn’t get the Artistro dual-tip 5-pack with the brush tip to test.

Anyway, this dual-tip black Artistro acrylic marker isn’t bad for what it is, but I probably won’t get more, personally.

Two speedpaints based on these two photos, which I thiiiink were taken from a similar spot.

Top is 100% Arrtx acrylic marker; bottom is Arrtx except the black, which is Artistro acrylic marker. I think they’re about the same in quality though — my Arrtx black is just older/more used/less saturated now and has a brush tip instead of a fine.

Colors were pretty different in the scan initially.

Chrysanthemums are so much easier for me to draw than cherry….. all of the curly petals are just relaxing.

I got handed this acrylic pen recently, and I’m trying to get a shorter/faster review out before I tackle some of the bigger things in my to-review backlog maybe… idk, I expect too much out of myself for reviews which stops me from getting them out at all, which is very dumb because no one cares but me anyway.

Somehow it’s been years since the last time I drew a con badge, much less one for myself. I’d been wanting a newer one to have at Slightly Furry events though, and speaking of, I’ll be at their Crosslake Connection Celebration & Craft Market this Saturday. It’ll be a busy day… Stop in after No Kings?

Phone call doodles.

Cover for Voidthrone’s upcoming Dreaming Rat album. Fun write-up about it here.

Thanks for the cool project, Zhenya!

This went through a lot of revisions, but still didn’t end up that different from the original concept: