Today I'd like to talk about my latest obsession and that is the Tombow Dual Brush Pens. What can I say? I'm in love with them! They are so versatile and easy to use, adding colour to my every day life. In this post, I'll show you the colours I've got, I'll talk about their characteristics and then I'll show you some of the techniques I use, so that you get the most out of them.

The Tombow Dual Pens are water based, odourless and acid free. That means that they are easy to blend and that your designs will last for a long time. They come with two types of tips:

A flexible nylon brush tip

And a fine tip

The two tips give you lines with a wide range of thickness. With the flexible tip you can create fine, medium or bold strokes by a change in the brush pressure, or you can use the fine tip for more consistent lines.

As you can see in the image above, you can get lines with thickness from 1 cm to 1/2 mm. That makes them great for any project, including colouring, hand lettering, doodling, journaling and much more!

I'm using them constantly to practice my hand lettering.

I get my hand lettering practice sheets from the Brush Letter Practice Guide.

And I also use them every day in my bullet journal:

They don't bleed through the pages, they are easy to blend and they add colour to my pages 😊 They come in 96 amazing colours. Each marker has a number that indicates that colour.

I'm currently building my collection slowly-slowly, and I hope that very soon I'll have all 96 of them. 😉 I started with the basic colours, then bought the more light and pastel ones, and from there I add as I go along. The ones I've got so far are:

• 173 - Willow Green
• 245 - Sap Green
• 277 - Dark Green
• 346 - Gray Green
• 192 - Asparagus
• 243 - Mint

• 373 - Sea Blue
• 493 - Reflex Blue
• 553 - Mist Purple
• 476 - Cyan
• 528 - Navy Blue
• 565 - Deep Blue

• 636 - Imperial Purple
• 603 - Periwinkle
• 620 - Lilac
• 673 - Orchid
• 665 - Purple
• 703 - Pink Rose
• 723 - Pink

• 835 - Persimmon
• 847 - Crimson
• 925 - Scarlet
• 933 - Orange
• 025 - Light Orange
• 055 - Process Yellow
• 062 - Pale Yellow

• 990 - Light Sand
• N89 - Warm Gray 1
• N75 - Cool Grey 3
• N15 - Black

You can also get a colourless blender, that you can use with the colours to create a gradient effect and blend them. In the Tombow website

you can find and download the Dual Brush Pen Colour Selector, in order to see the swatches and choose the colours you want. You can also download the Dual Brush Pen Colour Tracker to swatch the colours you have like I did below:

You can get the whole set or you can buy them individually. They also come in convenient smaller sets.

You can use them as they are and have great results, or you can use any of the following techniques to make your drawings have more depth and dimension.

Tips & Techniques

The Tombow pens are water reactive and they will turn into water colours. All you have to do is use the Tombow blending palette, any plastic surface or a porcelain plate (like I did), some water and a brush. I used my Pentel brush, because I just love it, but you can use any brush you want.

Take some colour on your brush and then start colouring on your paper. The result will be a really nice gradient effect:

You can do the same with more than one colours:

You can also use the blender pen instead of a brush, even without water and have similar results.

One more way to use the plastic surface or plate like before, is to use two different colours. Place one colour on the plate and then use a lighter colour to pick some up like in the picture.

Then start colouring on a piece of paper and you'll see the transition from one colour to the next.

The more colour you pick up, the bigger the ombre effect you'll get. In the picture I only picked up a tiny bit and you can see the result. One good thing about these pens is that the tips self clean after blending, so you don't have to worry about ruining them. 😉

You can also touch the tips of two different Tombow pens and have a similar ombre effect too. I like to touch the two tips for about 7 seconds and then start drawing.

Using the above techniques you can colour any page you want and add more depth and dimension like I did in my colouring page below:

By the way, you can download this colouring page from the Resources Library  after you've subscribed to my Newsletter 😉.

I was thinking of creating Colouring Secrets: an e-course that will cover tips and techniques on how to colour using coloured pencils, markers and watercolours. If you'd be interested in a fun and affordable ($20) e-course on colouring, enter your info below and I'll notify you when it launches!

Have you used the Tombow Dual Brush Pens before? What do you think about them? Any colours you'd suggest I buy next?