Best Gel Pens for Adult Coloring Books

Most people either prefer markers or colored pencils to work within their coloring books for adults but both of those groups also like to supplement their work with gel pens, particularly if you want to highlight an area with a glitter or metallic effect. ALL pens will smear if you don’t give them time to dry so be sure to work left to right for right-handed colorists and the opposite for lefties. For the lift of markers, you should store them horizontally so the ink stays evenly distributed and has a consistent flow. Gel pens are exceptions and should be stored vertically with tips pointing up.* Always store pens and markers with their caps on.

Best Gel Pens for Adult Coloring Pens

Color-It Gel Pens

These pens have to HUGE pluses that I’ve never seen in a gel pen before. They are numbered and have color names. PLUS… they come in a great storage case. I have more gel pens than anyone should have but I’ve never seen either of those selling points for a gel pen. They dry quickly and they have refills available so they are a tiny bit more eco-friendly than the rest of the field.

The Color-it gel pens come in a few varieties. The combo pack has 48 Artist Quality Coloring Pens: 24 Glitter, 12 Metallic, 12 Neon Plus 48 Matching Refills For 96 Total Pieces.

Click to Order Amazon US, UK or Canada You can also get a set of just the refills here.

Color-it Glitter Gel Pens

Yes, it’s a problem. For me the more glitter I can get on my coloring book pages the happier I am, so for those of you always looking for more colors of glitter gel pens, here you go! This pack of Color-it comes with 48 glitter gel pens and a set of 48 refills.

This set also comes with a storage case and each pen is numbered and named.

Click to Order Amazon US or the UK Or in Canada

If you can’t decide which one you want more, you are in luck, Color-it also has a combo pack so you can get all 96 pens plus 96 refills and two carrying cases.

Click to Order Amazon US, UK Or Canada

Soucolor Gel Pens

There’s another option with a case for your pens, the Soucolor packhas 60 Colored Gel Pens, 60 Refills and Travel Case, with 40% More Ink Gel. The reviews on these are fantastic.

Click to Order Amazon US, UK, Europe, Mexico Or Canada

Shuttle Art Gel Pens

This set comes with 120 different colors including 41 glitters, 3 rainbows, 13 standards, 24 metallic, 17 neon, 18 pastel and 4 swirl. The swirl & rainbow pens aren’t really too useful for coloring but you can give those to the kids or find another use for them. They come in a plastic case.

Click here to Order

Tanmit Gel Pens

240 Gel Pens Set 120 Colored Pens plus 120 Refills including Glitter, Metallic, Neon, Pastel, Fluorescent, Dye Colors, Rainbow, and Standard. These gel pens also have numbers so you can keep track of the colors you’ve used.

Click to Order Amazon US, UK or Canada

Gelly Roll Pens

Gelly Rolls have been around for a couple of decades and continue to be favorites with colorists and crafters alike. You may even have a few tucked into your scrapbooking or stamping supplies. Our favorite Gelly rolls are the starlight glitter pens and metallic pens. These pens have a visible sheen and glitter effects and bright colors that really accentuate areas in your coloring such as using metallic ones for a padlock on an old door in the elf’s cottage or the crowns sprinkled throughout Hanna Karlzon’s Dagdrommar / DayDreams  & Sommernatt / Summer Nights Coloring Books.  They are the priciest but a favorite nonetheless. I just wish they came in more colors but I find myself looking for them when I have a special project.

Sakura’s Gelly Roll Pens come in several different types of Gel Pens for Coloring

1. Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust Meteor Pen Set which includes: silver, marine, copper, pink, green and blue.
2. Full Set of Glitter Gelly Rolls aka Stardust all 16 colors
3. Sakura Stardust Galaxy Set which includes: rose, sky, lime, purple, golden and red. Click to Order Amazon US   ~  UK  ~  Canada
4. Metallic Gel Pens -1.0 Metallic: 2 Gold, Silver, Copper, Blue, Purple, Pink,  Green, Teal and Red Click to Order Amazon US   ~  UK  ~  Canada
5. White Gelly Rolls – These are really fun to use for special effects over your pencils or to highlight or dot however we actually prefer the Signo White Gel Pens or White Posca Pens for that purpose.
6. Clear Glitter Gelly Roll Pens – Perhaps our favorite of them all is the clear glitter because you can apply it over the top of the pencil and some markers to get any color of glitter you want. Very effective for fairy wings or crystals.
7. Classic Gelly Roll Pens– White, Black, Brown, Orange, Burgandy, Red, Pink, Purple, Royal Navy, Blue & Green
   Click to order:  Amazon US   ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon Canada
8. 75 piece Gelly Roll Artists Collection of Pens. Of course, the granddaddy and the best value, if you are splurging, is this pack with all of the pens.

We aren’t fans of their Shadow Pens where gold or silver are mixed with other color pens, they just make a muddy uninteresting shade that’s not well suited for coloring although it probably has other purposes.

Gelly Roll Gel pen care

It is very important to put the correct cap on the pen between uses because unlike regular ballpoint pen ink, gel inks need to be kept sealed away from air. Prolonged exposure to air will cause the gel ink to dry out in the tip/ball chamber.

In our Gelly Roll ink system, there is a tiny silicone ball inside the cap that touches the tip and helps prevents any air from drying out the gel in the ball chamber when the cap is on. If this silicone ball is damaged or removed, the pen will eventually dry out and not work.

*Gelly Rolls can be stored horizontally or vertically because of the properties of gel ink. But if you store them vertically, just be sure that you don’t drop them into whatever pen holder (like a pencil cup) you’re using. Jarring the pen (i.e. dropping into a cup) can cause air bubbles to form in the gel which will disrupt the ink flow.

The best way to see if a Gelly Roll pen can be revived is to start scribbling in circles and/or firmly tap the tip on a pad of paper. The motion makes the tip (ball) roll and causes the gel ink to be pulled into the ball tip chamber. It might take a few tries, but this might work. There is no guarantee though that this will start the pen again. Heating a Gelly Roll tip or shaking the pen will not correct the problem of a clogged nib. This technique only works for oil-based ballpoint pens.

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Special Purpose Gel Pens

One pen I really couldn’t live without anymore is my White Uniball Signo Gel Pen with a broad point. I use it ALL the time for highlights on jewels, to run a line of dots around the edge of a flower petal, the list goes on and on. You will see the dots idea in the Peta Hewitt video at the end of this page. Go ahead and get the 3 pack because you are going to want one in all your coloring bags.  Worth another mention is the clear glitter gelly roll. It doesn’t come in any of the packs but it’s such a workhorse and once you use it you will be addicted.
Click to Order White Uniball Signo on Amazon US   UK    Canada or Dick Blick
Click to Order Clear Glitter Gelly Roll Pen   Amazon US     UK     Canada

How to work with Pens in your Coloring Books

This article had some neat ideas on using gel pens for coloring books that aren’t your basic filling-in-blank space rather this technique uses stippling, cross-hatching, and scribbling. I had never thought to use this method for coloring but love the effect it gives you in their examples below.

Hatching is a series of parallel strokes. It can give your art a very uniform look based on the angle of the hatches. Try some cross-hatching for a different effect as well.

Stippling is basically placing several dots together to create a texture. Uniform dots, non-uniformed ones, the tightness of the pattern and even the use of several different colors can make big changes to your coloring. When you gradually change the density of dots you can make some really fun gradations that will give your coloring a more 3D effect.

Scribbling is just that; making a bunch of scribbles in an area to create that textured look. Again, the tightness of the pattern, different types of scribbles and different colors will make all sorts of interesting coloring. Experiment and see.

Gel Pen Videos

If you have been following us for long, you know we are a huge fan of Peta Hewitt. She uses the gel pen techniques that I normally employ in my coloring, that of using gel pens to highlight and fancify my colored pencil work. This video shows her speed coloring a fish from Lost Ocean using gold and white gel pens at the end of the process to enhance her picture. I subscribe to her Youtube channel so I don’t miss anything. Some of her videos run long because she is a fabulous in-depth teacher and you will learn a TON by the end of it. This particular video is a quickie.

Color it has this tutorial on using their pens (I’d skip to about 2:40)

I really enjoyed this intermediate tutorial from Cher Kauffman on using Gel Pens with water and other fun effects.

How to Blend GelPens with Colored Pencils

There are so many book deals to explore on  Dover / Creative Haven Books

It is highly recommended to download the Michaels App to your smartphone. That way you always have the coupons with you.

If you are new to coloring or just want to dive in a little deeper be sure to read our expansive supply recommendations along with our tips and tricks articles.

*How to Get Started with Adult Coloring Best Colored Pencils
*Best Gel Pens
*Best Markers that Don’t Bleed Through the Paper
* Background Supplies
*Coloring Tutorials
*13 Tips & Tricks for Colorists