Are Posca Pens Really Worth the Money?
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I love buying art supplies, but I also enjoy saving money (probably so I can buy more art supplies!) and I like having the ‘in’ thing. Everybody was raving about their Posca paint pens, so of course, I had to have some. I loved the idea of being able to apply acrylic paint with a fine-tip pen!
The day I purchased my first Posca paint pens, fine and extra-fine tips were hard to find! I could only find black, white, and gold. I know my art style, so this is all I need for most applications.
I loved my Poscas, so I decided to try colors.
In addition to a set of colorful Posca Pens with a 1.8-2.5 mm reversible tip (six colors plus black and white, currently $18.97 on Amazon), I purchased a much less expensive set (15 colors, plus black, white, and gray, currently on Amazon for $13.99) by SUPKIZ. This isn’t really comparing apples-to-apples because the SUPKIZ pens are 0.7 mm width, but I couldn’t find a similar set of Posca Pens – and I didn’t really want a bunch of pens in the same size and color anyway!
The Posca Pens, even for being juicer, seemed to dry a tad quicker. When I tried smudging the paint with my finger, as I sometimes do when I’m painting, the SUPKIZ pens were easier to smudge.
To test the opaqueness and brilliance of the coverage, I painted some tags with a strip of white, black, and yellow, then tested all the pens on these tags. For the colors in both sets, I swatched them next to each other. Because of the difference in tip sizes, it’s very easy to tell which is which.
As you can see, both pens are fairly opaque, but the Posca Pens are slightly more opaque. As expected, some colors are more opaque than others; the coverage of the blues is much better, for example, than the coverage of the yellows.
So, how do I use these paint pens? I’ve been obsessed with making postcards lately, so I most often use my paint pens as final splashes of color to help pull the composition together. These are a couple of ‘rejects’ with no real composition or design. (I make parent sheets or master sheets and cut them into postcards.) After adding some paint pen to the cards, I like them much better!
Still, these may end up getting punched out with my circle punch for more art prompt cards!
So, to answer my own question: It depends on what’s more important to you — opacity or tip size. I do still love my extra-fine tip Posca Pens, but for the occasional splash of color, I’m happy with the SUPKIZ pens.
