Newly stocked, and quite a new product in South Africa in general, the Sakura Pigma Micron PN differs slightly from the standard, beloved Micron range.

Normal Microns feature a sturdy felt tip, which is great for line consistency, but lacks the versatility for line width variation. Of course, sometimes consistency is what you want in your linework, but for a more organic look, the Micron PN is there to save the day!

The Micron PN differs from the traditional Micron range in that the tip is made from a conical, tapered ‘plastic nib’ (no surprises here, but that’s what PN stands for). Working with it is difficult to explain and should really be experienced first hand, but it’s not unlike a mix between a fine tip brush pen and a dipping pen.

The durable tip is still sturdy enough to create consistent lines, but with a little bit of added pressure you can widen the stroke that you draw, ranging from around 0.1mm to 1mm. This line variation mimics the effect achieved by a brush pen without it actually being a brush pen – it sounds confusing, but just bear with us. Many find brush pens to be unwieldy and difficult to use, so the Micron PN gives you the best of both worlds of precision and versatility in a single pen!

This makes it the perfect tool for drawing and sketching, inking comics, manga, and illustrations, and definitely has its place in other applications such as technical drawing too. The size width variation can be incredibly helpful to create more dynamically inked drawings that have a greater sense of depth. For this reason, the PN is a favoured tool for many industry leaders including the likes of Chrissie Zullo (a professional comic book artist at DC Comics).

Feature-wise, aside from the unique nib, the PN still boasts the same archival, waterproof and fade-proof pigment ink that we all know and love from Microns. It does not bleed into paper, and dries very quickly for a no-smudge drawing experience. It comes in a variety of colours, including black, red, blue, rose, purple, sepia/brown, burgundy, and blue-black, which you can buy in a nifty 8-piece set.

We’ve created the drawing in this post using the black Micron PN pen to show its use in a practical application. We’ve included a photo of the original drawing, as well as the unedited scan (so that you can check the details). We started the drawing by adding pressure to create the thick outlines, pressing down harder on the edges that are away from the light to create depth. We lifted some of the pressure to work on the finer details and shading. We thought we’d keep it fun and add some digital colour to our scan to bring it to life to make it look like our character belongs in a real comic!

As you can see, it’s not difficult to get the results you’re after with such a versatile tool, and we urge you to give them a try!