Over the past few weeks I have accumulated mountains of new art supplies.
These are physical manifestations of a pat on the back for actually following through on the whole “drawing a little bit each and every day” thing (the only reason you don’t see them here more often is that they have yet to create an inexpensive digital camera that automatically uploads pictures via wifi onto my weblog/flickr in the correct proportions and file format. Oh what a dream).
The highlights of my purchases include:
a uni-ball vision elite,
a pentel pocket brush pen,
and
a rotring art pen.
I am obsessed with finding the perfect pen. And, indeed each pen has so far served his purpose well enough.
The uniball is waterproof, acid-free, non-smearing, non-fading, smooth-writing and safe for airline travel. If I ever go anywhere that is. Sigh. It’s probably my favourite so far as it is cheap, small, holds a ton of ink and is also refillable. It’s terribly convenient to stick in a purse (along with a moleskine perhaps)?
The runner up would have to be the pentel pocket brush. It looks like your average black pen on the outside (all be it with a sexy silver Japanese character on the cap) but on the inside it is quite miraculous. It looks like a brush tip marker, but is in fact a real live brush with separate bristles and everything. It writes just like a brush and ink. It has glorious dark black waterproof India ink refills, although they are a bit expensive (and I think they might be hard to track down on short notice).
Finally there is the rotring art pen. I’ve heard bad things about it in the past, but it’s really not quite as bad as all that. It just isn’t waterproof. That’s about my only beef. It is a nice fountain style drawing pen. It gives results very similar to a dip ink caligraphy pen, but without any messy spatter. It is a delight to draw with, and while, (for a drawing pen) it ain’t cheap, it is probably one of the most inexpensive refillable fountain pens out there. Believe me, I’ve looked. Refills are cheap and plentiful (although, again, probably hard to track down). There is a cartridge that would allow you to fill the pen by hand with ink of your own choosing, but I’ve heard that it leaks, so I’ve yet to try it out.