If I were to be reincarnated as a pen, I’d like to be a Nakaya. In my next life I would like to be serene, subtle, quietly reeking of artistic merit, and fully functional, instead of frivolous, clumsy and more obvious than a horn on a unicorn. During a quick trip to Aesthetic Bay a …
If you use fountain pens for journaling, and want to add texture to your doodles, consider adding a waterbrush and water-soluble graphite to your case. My old comic strips were unrelieved black and white, with an occasional foray into gray. Even now, I find relief in grayed pink, grayed turquoise, grayed color – pure shades …
Demonstrator pens are blatant about what they do, and how they do it. In the Obviousness Sweepstakes nothing comes close to the Pelikan M1005 demonstrator. The M1000 is the largest in the Pelikan range. The “5” refers to the white trim (palladium-plated in this case). Ink fetishists with poor impulse control should not bring this …
How could I not buy something called a witch pen? It would certainly come in handy for writing conjurations and threatening newts that didn’t want to give me their eyes. “Witch” is most likely a contraction of William Mitchell, manufacturer of dip pen nibs and accessories, and has nothing to do with cauldrons and mandrakes. …
Muji makes great notebooks, but what about sketchbooks? I wasn’t expecting much for P85 (around USD2). Surprise, surprise. The Muji sketchbook paper loves fountain pen ink and watercolor. For the above sketch, I used the Hicks fountain pen (which has heavy ink flow) and Schminke watercolors with a #5 Da Vinci brush (it came with …
“Why is that notebook submerged in an aquarium?” I met Stone Paper notebooks thanks to an intriguing display at Fully Booked. They placed a Stone Paper notebook in a tiny aquarium and encouraged people to scribble in the notebook and drop it back into the water. The paper is made by Terraskin from calcium carbonate …
Good inks come in threes. Pilot iroshizuku shin-ryoku, Noodler’s Spirit of Bamboo, J. Herbin Vert Empire. Private Reserve Cosmic Cobalt, Sailor Nioi-Sumire, Pilot iroshizuku kon-peki. Private Reserve Arabian Rose, J. Herbin Larmes de Cassis, Pilot iroshizuku tsutsuji. Wouldn’t it be great to have a triple-chambered piston filler that you could fill with three different ink …
I was in Boracay, voted one of the world’s best beach destinations, for eight days. I worked on my tan. I worked as a judge in the Kidlat Awards. And I worked on my quick-draw watercolor skills. I brought my Schminke box, waterbrushes, a dropper bottle, and a Daycraft sketch notebook. I kept painting women …
The Stipula Passaporto presses the same buttons tail-wagging puppies and wide-eyed kittens do. It’s barely longer than my longest finger. The Passaporto, as it name more than merely implies, is for travel. It comes with a cartridge and an eyedropper, because you can use it either way. The threads feel tight and secure, which makes …
An Italian pen has not appeared on this blog in ages. I have found them too erratic. The newer Stipula Model T is an eyedropper, which made me reconsider it – cartridge/converter pens simply can’t keep up with what I do to flex nibs. The material is called pyrite resin, and it is gorgeous. (If …