In the drawings from 2023-01 to 2024-01 (inclusive) I mostly used a 1.5 Pitt Artist Pen bullet nib, Black 199*** (Faber Castell). I started with brush pens, but found more and more that this plain 1.5 pen supports my drawing style even though it wasn’t my first choice.

Since 2024-02 I mostly used a fude nib medium, Black 199*** which seems a good fit for the smaller scales in which I draw and has more predictable thickness than the 1.5 bullet nib. I do not yet know whether I’ll stick to it (as of 2026 I still like it best).

Highlights are mostly with Pitt Artist Pen Brushes (B): Cold Grey III 232***, Orange Glaze 113*** (sun orange), Chrome Yellow 109*** (earth yellow), Cobalt turquoise 154***, and May Green 170*** (grass green).

Details about choosing the colors (with a focus on colorblindness, being able to sketch different kinds of scenes with a small number of colors, and lightfastness) are written in Farb-Ersatz (in German).

The *** or ** are a measure of lightresistance of the colors. *** is document-proof quality.

Drawn in an A6 notebook.

But to take a decision about materials to use, don’t only take this single experience. There are comparisons of many different pens online. For example

• fine liner pen shootout (missing the Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens) and
• Tool Duel: Faber-Castell VS. Sakura Pigma Pens (which adds the comparison between Faber-Castell PITT and Sakura Pigma) — thanks to this article and then direct testing in the store I nowadays have a Sakura 005 in addition to my Faber-Castell PITT pens and they go well together. Though I found out afterwards that nowadays there is also the PITT fineliner XXS which from my testing performs exactly like the Sakura 005, so the comparison might be a bit outdated. But Sakura nowadays has the Micron 003, so the finer fineliner is likely still the one by Sakura.
• The only one as fine as the finest Sakura (that I know) is the refillable rOtring isograph I used in school to solve math homework in margin notes. I got very lucky that my teacher accepted that. By their description, it is even finer than the Sakura 003 (0.1mm vs. 0.15mm).

(this is just my personal take. I don’t get any pay or similar for it.)

As an aside: I postprocess the scans with Gimp (color curves) and optimize the PNGs to half their size with pngquant --speed=1.