A Cool Drawing Pen: Sarsa by Zebra
Lately, I had an itch to get back into creating art with “real” art materials. You know because my digital ones are “fake”. Little known fact, I can draw AND paint with traditional mediums. And let me tell you something…not all materials are the same. Using generic art supplies isn’t like taking a generic over the counter pain relief tablet…..
Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of access to art supplies. My town was literally a Podunk Junction. If it wasn’t available at Wal-mart, K-Mart, Winn-Dixie, Kroger, or Taylor Drugs you weren’t getting it anytime soon. I remember my grandmother having to order things like Pizzaz from Jem and the Holograms through the Sears catalog for me because we just didn’t get stuff like that on the shelf often. Heck, we didn’t even get movies when they were released until I was almost in college.
So, essentially for most of my life I have had to make do with whatever art supplies the stores sold. There were no professional grade items or even really a selection. This meant whatever I could gather at Wal-Mart was what I had to work with. Therefore, my exposure to such luxuries as “professional grade” didn’t happen until recently. With the opening of an art supply store here in town a few years ago and the ability to obtain many items from Amazon, I have finally been able to select higher quality materials for my “real art”. And boy howdy, I just have to say WOW to some of these things.
Of course, I sometimes stumble upon hidden gems in weird places like Wal-Greens. Random fact about me…you can’t trust me in any office supply, art supply, or back to school isle. I *WILL* come out with something LOL.
Last year I wandered into Wal-Greens for something. It was definitely NOT a pen, but I came out with a set of these Zebra Sarsa Fineliner pens. OK, I came out with MANY Zebra branded pens that day, but it was buy 1 get 1 50% off.

I really liked how these pens wrote. By the time I found these, I had already tried Sharpie pens, Sakura pens, and some other pens promising a smooth writing experience. Yeah, no. I’m sorry, but the Sharpie pens SUCK. And the Sakura pens are so hit and miss. I don’t like the nib to scratch into the ink. I don’t want to have to put forth too much effort to get the ink to flow. I also don’t want smearing or bleed through.
However, I didn’t fall into total love with these pens until I discovered the ink is water resistant…which I found out as I was following a water color tutorial. The pen combined with the watercolor made my picture pop.

I guess there has always been something about black pen on white paper for me. I remember being in a field drawing a flower in some long ago middle school art class. I used a felt tipped pen to apply stippling. I am pretty sure I got the pen at McDonald’s back when they handed out weird things. The picture turned out magnificent.
The week after I got into watercolor big, I saw an ad for one of those “tangle” courses. I bought it, was thoroughly disappointed as it didn’t teach you anything. No friends, a Procreate time lapse video is NOT a tutorial. So, I started looking around and found Zentangle (R) the supposedly original tangle company.
I purchased their primer book and took out my trusty black pen. I was addicted immediately. I had made my own squares out of multimedia paper, but given my birthday was the next week, I put out a call for tiles and more Sarsa pens. I ended up with a WHOLE box of the black pens. They really are versatile. I do everything from drawing with them to balancing my check book.
You really should try them if you haven’t. In fact, I love most of the pens Zebra offers. The Doodler’z and the Sarsa clip gel pens are awesome.
