- Katie Smith
How to Organize Your Tombow Dual Brush Pens + What those numbers on the side mean:
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Let’s say you’ve recently gotten the big pack of Tombow Dual Brush Pens, how do you organize them? I’ve had mine for a while, but I just got a replacement set (perks of being a part of the design team.) and wanted to do show you how I organized them!
Color Designation Numbers:
First let’s talk about what those numbers on the sides of the markers mean:
On each Dual Brush Pen you’ll find 3 numbers. These are hue, chroma and value.
For example, the first 2 digits denote the hue and chrome, so 00 to 10 are yellows, 10 to 20 are greens, etc.
The last number on each pen marks the value of each color, with 0 being the lightest and 9 the darkest.
The grey/neutral markers are numbered slightly different so you have to keep that in mind. Instead of the first number they have an N for Neutral. This is followed by 2 numbers: the first is the value, 1 being the darkest & 9 being the lightest (opposite of the colored markers where 9 is the darkest), and the 2nd number denotes the temperature of the gray from cool to warm. 1 being cooler, 9 being warmer.
Now to organize my Dual Brush Pens I printed off the free 108 Dual Brush Pen Color Tracker from Tombowusa.com. Next I followed the chart from the back of their Blending Palette which actually has all of the marker colors on there from 020-N00 organized by their designation.
As I placed each marker in the case, I also swatched it onto the chart so that I will have a handy reference if I ever want to see all the colors together (and incase I need to know where it goes again.).
If you don’t want to swatch all of yours, Tombow also has a printable chart that is colored already. Get it here.
And that’s pretty much it! Knowing what the numbers mean can come in handy if you’re choosing colors to go together, choosing markers with a similar value makes for a lovely palette!
I hope you learned something! I learned most of this from classes with Marie Browning, and her book Brush Marker Magic.
Want some Tombow tutorials? Check out my online class, Tombow Techniques! or check out my Tombow archives here on the blog.