Black clothes roost in my closet, in their solidarity of darkness. This penchant for black has somehow stretched into other cabinets, that hold ink bottles. Why do I have so many different kinds of black ink? Why do I have 10 pairs of black pants? Why is the sky black? Noodler’s Dark Matter has a …
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 …
Parallel Pen with Platinum Carbon Black, watercolor. Noodler’s Antietam, Habanero, Golden Brown. Noodler’s Habanero, Golden Brown. Noodler’s Golden Brown, Habanero, Antietam, Platinum Carbon Black. Private Reserve Shoreline Gold, Pilot iroshizuku momiji, Noodler’s Singapore Sepia.
Artists always play with the relationship of medium to ground. Pastel on brown wrapping paper, silverpoint on gesso, ink on parchment, spray acrylic on brick. Pastel artists use toned backgrounds and colored paper to add body and contrast to what is really just powder hanging on to microscopic protrusions, for dear life and art. It …
I found this in Kinokuniya, beside calligraphy brushes, brush pens and student sumi ink. The Platinum Soft Pen is a felt-tip, demonstrator-style pen. It comes with a cartridge of red ink, “Marking Red,” and a spare felt tip. I decided to pop in a Nakaya goldfish converter, thinking it would look good showing through the …
We used to do it in art class: plop a blob of watercolor on oslo paper, lean forward, and blow. The watercolor traveled on paper with every energetic exhalation, looking like rivulets or branches or skeletal fingers. Yesterday I had a lens blower on my table. I also had a notebook and a pen. And …
Thanks to Julie of Whatever I have a Noodler’s Creaper flexible nib fountain pen. She gave it good marks in her review and that made me look forward to trying it. It really is the creepy, is-my-nib-going-to-split-in-two slit responsible for the tines being able to spread. The steel itself looks slightly thicker than the Tachikawa School-G …
Fountain pen ink normally behaves modestly, emerging in a prim, controlled line from the nib of a pen. That’s why I take it out to play every so often, with bamboo and folded pens, and even tap water. This doodle has Noodler’s Ottoman Rose, Private Reserve Shoreline Gold, and Noodler’s Samsui Red. The red is …
Fountain pen ink exhibits all sorts of weirdness when worked wet-in-wet, the waterproof and bulletproof kind even more so. Thus began a quick Sunday adventure with a watercolor brush, a tray of inks and watercolor paper. The ink that spreads green is Waterman Blue-Black (for those of you who swear it’s not blue-black but green, …
I see them often on eBay, but somehow never snagged one. Imagine my joy when TAO shipped me one he’d had lying around in a drawer. (In the same package he also packed a bottle each of almond butter and cashew butter; to a girl who grew up thinking only peanuts could be pounded into …