Brush Pen Comparison: Pentel Pocket Pen vs Kuretake No. 13

A brush pen is a handy thing to have for pen and ink drawings; it’s easier to use a brush pen, especially on the go, compared to dipping a paintbrush in ink. It’s less messy, with less change of dripping and splotches. I often use disposable brush pens, but find they can get used up quickly.

So I tried two popular reusable brush pens used for brush drawing in ink: the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and the Kuretake No. 13.

Similarities

Both of these pens have these basic attributes:

• Synthetic brush tip
• Refillable; they use cartridges, similar to a fountain pen. (The Kuretake can also use the Platinum ink converter.)
• About the same size (similar to a #4 round brush). The Kuretake’s brush tip is slightly shorter in length.
• Both are floppier than the typical disposable brush pens I use (Zebra Zensations or Tombow Fudenosuke). They definitely feel more like brushes than like felt tip pens.
• Typically the body is black but it’s possible to find limited edition colors (red for Kuretake, various colors/patterns for Pentel – I got Kirari Sakura, a frosted pink.)

In terms of cost, for me at the moment, the Pentel is cheaper than the Kuretake (~$17 vs ~$30 USD).

I was curious if I would be able to see any difference or have any preferences, so I tried both head to head.

General impressions

For these tests, I used the Kuretake with a converter filled with De Atrementis Document Black Ink, a waterproof fountain pen ink. For the Pentel, there’s no converter available, so I used the default ink that it comes with, since I have no other option.

Brush Strokes

The most obvious difference I can see in my sketches is that the brush strokes from the De Atrementis ink in the Kuretake appear layered while the Pentel’s ink is matte and flat. This seems like an attribute of the ink rather than the pen itself. (Although with the Pentel, since it doesn’t take a converter and must use its own ink cartridges, they’re one and the same.) It’s an unfair comparison because I used non-standard ink in the Kuretake! I like De Atrementis ink in a fountain pen, but it seems not quite opaque and matte enough for large areas.

The Pentel seems to sometimes do a bit of drybrush, especially at the ends of strokes (like at the ends of the leaves in the upper tree on page 1), while the Kuretake always ends abruptly. Ink flow in general seems more smooth in the Kuretake.

Waterproofness

The Pentel’s default ink cartridge is waterproof, though not immediately. If you try to wet it while the paint is still wet, it of course smears, and it even continues to smear a bit for the first few minutes. However, after testing it at various time signatures, I found that it was very waterproof after 5 minutes and its waterproofness increased and was even more waterproof after an hour.

Some people use the lag time before the Pentel becomes waterproof to do ink wash effects. Lemons into lemonade!

The De Atrementis Document Ink I am using in the Kuretake is more waterproof, faster. I like using this ink when I am planning to paint over it.

Kuretake’s default ink is not waterproof so I didn’t bother to test it.

Shapes

My Kuretake drawings kind of look … rounder? while my Pentel drawings look more angular, especially in the lower evergreen sketch. The must have to do with the shape and length of the brush head; perhaps I’m making rounder motions but they are getting an angular shape to them because of the length and sharpness of the Pentel brush, maybe. I have to say I prefer the angular shapes.

Line Variation

Both can create lines with quite a bit of variation, but the Pentel can definitely create larger shapes in one stroke.

Fine Lines

I have heard that the Kuretake’s shorter brush head makes it easier to control; the general consensus seems to be that it’s easier to get a fine line with the Kuretake. I’m the weirdo who doesn’t feel that way; I think it’s slightly easier to get a fine line with the longer tip of the Pentel, but this could just be because it handles more like a brush than a pen.

Writing

Neither of these is great to write with (at least not Roman alphabet letters), but the Kuretake is a bit easier.

Conclusion

Some people say these brush pens are identical and interchangeables. Others say they’re night and day, with one being unmanageable and the other being a huge improvement. I have heard someone say that they felt like they couldn’t draw with the Pentel but they could with the Kuretake. So this is definitely a pretty personal and subjective choice.

On paper, the Kuretake seems like a better choice to me because you aren’t locked into a particular type of ink. I didn’t particularly like my usual fountain pen ink in this pen, but I could have tried to find a more matte variety of I wanted to stick with the pen. You could also use colored inks for other interesting experiments. Plus, if you use waterproof ink, you can use it with watercolor. It’s more versatile.

I also found the Kuretake more versatile in that it was a bit easier to control for the purposes of line drawing and writing. It’s not like it was easy, though. I still wouldn’t choose a floppy brush pen for these purposes if I had another option available, like fineliner or a firm brush pen.

This is why I think versatility might be a false economy with a brush pen. It is inherently not a versatile tool. The niche in which a soft brush pen excels is in sumi-style pen and ink drawings with large black shapes, larger than one can easily get from a fine drawing pen (e.g. the shadows on a mountain). For this specific purpose I preferred the Pentel, because of the matte quality of its ink, the angularness of its shapes, and the wide variety of its lines which made creating large shapes a breeze. The waterproofness is not as good as De Atrementis, and it takes some time to “take”, but I think compared to fountain pens, I am less likely to use a brush pen with watercolor (a medium where I have a brush and can just paint in black).

Verdict: I’m personally going with the Pentel, but I’m not comfortable saying it’s a better pen. It feels like a personal choice which one you click with more.

Wanna try it? You can support the blog by shopping from my affiliate links.

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (Kirari, cute barrel colors): Amazon.com
Pentel Pocket Bursh Pen (black): Jackson’s US

Kuretake No. 13 (red): Amazon.com