Nina Johansson

Mini watercolour kit by Ed in Bath, UK

Just a short post with no drawing for those of you who (like me) enjoy seeing the tools that other sketchers use:

Go check out Urban Sketcher Ed´s (Bath, UK) great pages about his sketching gear. Among other things, he has come up with some pretty nifty ideas for making really small watercolour kits like the one in the image here. I wouldn´t mind having one of those in my back pocket when I go sketching…

Follow the link below to his blog, and don´t forget to hover over “Sketching kit” in the main menu on his site, there is plenty more there! (And plenty of sketches on the main page too, of course.)

Mostly Drawing Sketching gear

Another Monday off spent drawing. I went back to Slussen again (have been drawing quite a lot there before), this time with an updated carpenter´s pencil in hand. I was drawing with actual carpenter´s pencils this summer, but missed the real blackness of a good soft pencil.

Then I found this one in an art supply store here in Stockholm, the artsy alternative of the old trusted carpenter´s friend – it is actually a 6B! Much better.

I have been thinking that I need to start trying out tools that would work with mittens on, to be able to do some winter sketching later on. I think this pencil might be a winner. It´s a sturdy tool with lots of expression built in, and doesn´t involve any ink (avoiding freezing issues). And since it has such a clumsy point anyway, it should be ok that mittens are not ideal for delicate detail work.

17 x 24 cm, broad 6B pencil on lousy cheap paper in a folded sketchbook.

I am preparing for the workshop at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Santo Domingo in July. It´s going to be all about getting out of your drawing comfort zone by giving yourself some limitations when you work (limited time, tools, colours, subjects – we will try to challenge ourselves in many ways).

In one of the exercises in the workshop, to relax from the pressure of producing great results, we are going to work on messed up papers. A pristine white surface can stifle creativity a bit sometimes, and I´m trying out some nice methods to make paper less threatening. Turns out shoes are a great help in this process.

Another important ingredient in the workshop is to avoid working with your usual tools. I hope each participant will get a chance to try some tools they never tried before. This is something I´ve been working on a lot lately myself, trying to broaden my repertoire of drawing utensils beyond my fountain pens and watercolours.

The BY FAR most annoying tool I´ve tried so far is this carpenter´s pencil (which is what I used in the drawing above). This thing drives me nuts, and I love it.

One second it gives me beautiful expressive lines, the next I completely miss the spot I intended to draw on, because the nib shape is so crazy. I´m definitely bringing some of these pencils to Santo Domingo.

Top drawing: 24 x 19 cm, carpenter´s pencil on half ruined Plano drawing paper.

First: THANK YOU so much for all the comments concerning the video in my last post – I am overwhelmed by the positive attention it got, and I´m so happy that so many people seemed to appreciate it. I hope I can put together some more videos in a not too far away future.

I got a lot of questions after the video, about what ink I use. It seems a lot of people are struggling to find fountain pen inks that are waterproof without ruining the pens, so I thought I´d write a few lines about what I use. If you intend to try the Platinum ink that I´m using, please read this long ink nerd text to the end. I don´t want to be the one who tells you this is the perfect ink, and then you end up with expensive fountain pens ruined…

So, here goes: I draw mainly with two inks, or maybe three, when using fountain pens: Noodler´s Lexington grey, Platinum Carbon Black and sometimes Platinum Pigmented Sepia.

Platinum Pigmented Sepia

Platinum Pigmented Sepia is a quite new acquaintance for me, so I don´t have that much to say about it yet. It´s waterproof, a nice colour, and I think it´s probably a good idea to rinse the pen every now and then if you use it, though it´s not as mean as the Carbon black.

Noodler´s Lexington Grey

I´m not going to say so much about the Lexington grey either, because I have rambled on about that before, but I can say that it has never caused me any trouble whatsoever. I love it a lot, I like that it isn´t black, it´s a soft grey, very unobtrusive in a drawing. These days I even dilute it with water before filling my pens with it, to make it even lighter. It´s easier to use than the other Bulletproof inks from Noodler´s that I´ve tried, simply because it dries faster. It doesn´t smudge when painted over with watercolours, and works on any paper that I have used.

BUT. Because there is always a but when something sounds too good, right?

A while back, I got struck by Flex Pen Love. It started with Noodler´s flex pen, then a fantastic renovated vintage Wahl-Eversharp, and then I bought myself a Namiki Falcon with a customized nib (added flex), which is now my preferred drawing tool on some papers. And here´s where the ink “but” comes in.

Noodler´s bulletproof inks are meant to be somewhat waterproof, but they only turn waterproof in contact with the cellulose in the paper. With a flex pen, especielly the Namiki Falcon in my case, you lay down quite a bit of ink on the paper surface, because the pen has a really juicy ink flow. This means that some of the ink never comes in contact with the paper to become waterproof, it just lies on top like a drop. With the Noodler´s ink, this causes the ink to dissolve when you lay down watercolours on top of your lines.

Platinum Carbon Black – with a warning

So I started looking for something else to use with the Namiki Falcon, and found the Platinum Carbon Black ink, which works perfectly for me. It is black, and behaves well with watercolours. It dries fairly quickly, but not super fast. I often accidentally smudge a line with my drawing hand, as in the image above (lower right corner of the bottle). My bad.

BUT. Cause there´s a but here too. Two, actually.

But number one:
I have had to spend a lot of time finding good paper for this ink. It has a tendency to spread and creap on some papers, and a juicy pen makes it even worse. I am quite fuzzy about the surface of the papers I use, they need to be strong enough for working with several layers of watercolours, and still be smooth and good for drawing too, and this ink made some of my favorite papers impossible to use.

But number two, and the most important one:
Platinum Carbon Black ink isn´t very kind to fountain pens. It is a fountain pen ink, but you need to really take care of your pens to use it. I used to never clean my Lamy Safaris while using Noodler´s inks in them, but I have had to change my habits with this one.

If you leave Platinum Carbon black in a pen for too long without using it, there is a serious risk of the pen getting clogged. I have started a habit of rinsing the nib under the tap every time I refill the pen, and then taking the pen apart for cleaning every third or fourth refill. I always make sure to keep the pen capped when not in use – the ink dries quite fast on the nib, which is not what you want with a fountain pen.

During Christmas I had my pens with me on a flight to Northern Sweden, and usually flying is not an issue with the fountain pens that I use. This time, however, a Lamy ink converter containing Platinum Carbon ink decided to leak inside a bright red Lamy Safari, only I didn´t notice until I took the cap off the pen one and a half week later. The nib section of this pen is now severely stained by the black ink, and I haven´t been able to clean it off no matter what I tried. So this is a mean black ink, if you treat it the wrong way.

I think this product page on Platinum Carbon Black over at Cult Pens (I´m not associated with them in any way) is well worth reading before deciding to use this ink. Please scroll down to read all the way down to the end. For your own good.

With all this badness said, I have never had any problems with the ink other than the leaking accident. I do dare to put it in my Namiki Falcon, which is quite an expensive pen, but I make sure to treat the pen to a good cleaning now and then.

If you have any questions about this, please don´t hesitate to ask in the comments section, I´m sure others would be interested too. Ink is an important dark matter, isn´t it? ; )

13 x 12 cm, Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon black ink, and pencil and watercolours on Arches Satinée 300 g watercolour paper.

I´ve been having quite the adventure with fountain pens during the last few weeks. The Noodler´s Flex pen started the whole thing. I have drawn with Lamy Safaris for years, but I had never tried a flexible fountain pen before, and I have had some good fun with the Noodler´s pen.

Then for some reason I remembered my mum´s old Montblanc that she gave me when I was around 17-18 years old, and I decided to find it to see if it still worked. My dear M helped me looking for it, but instead of the Montblanc, we ended up finding some other old fountain pens in a box full of junk. They were all in horrible shape, completely unusable, but one of them was quite a beauty, an old Wahl-Eversharp. I searched the internet and found some info on it, and in the process I realized there are actually people out there who repair fountain pens. Well whaddya know!

We sent the Eversharp to Björn at Pennspecialisten (www.pennspecialisten.se) in Malmö, the only person we could find in Sweden that does this kind of work. And lo and behold, the pen came back as good as new! The filling mechanism had stopped rattling around inside, the old rusty and broken nib was gone, and on the pen was the most beautyful vintage Eversharp flexible nib. This pen is now a soft creamy dream to draw and write with. The line variation is fantastic (check the drawings – I´ve written a few words with every pen), and it beats the Noodler´s completely in smoothness and ease of flex (now, there´s a new expression for you). Of course, there are some drawbacks to a pen like this if you like drawing the way I do: you don´t bring a somewhat rare pen from the thirties out sketching, and you don´t fill it with waterproof black fountain pen ink either.

Anyway. Eventually, we found the Montblanc. It was leaking, but otherwise ok. We decided to let Björn work some more of his magic, and sent it to him, along with two of the other oldies that we found. Again the pens came back in fantastic shape. I´m amazed at the fact that someone is able to pick these things apart and mend them! Hats off for this man´s craftmanship.

The Wahl-Eversharp pen has made quite an impact on me. While the Noodler´s pen is sturdy and fun to play around with, this old beauty lets me draw with such ease and flow – I have never drawn with anything quite like it. I started dreaming of finding something similar, but preferably new, so I don´t have to worry about destroying a treasure if I drop the pen. Pilot Namiki-Falcon turned out to be the answer, but that´s another story, well worth it´s own post.

18 x 12 cm, drawings made with Namiki-Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours, writing done with Noodler´s Flex Nib pen, Wahl-Eversharp Gold Seal, Montblanc 252, Parker VS, Swan Junior pen and Namiki-Falcon with various inks.

I´ve been playing around with the Noodler´s flex pen for a bit. When I first got this pen, I was quite careful with it when I tried it out. (See my first impressions here.) Since then I have started to push the limits a little, trying to figure out how far I can go with this pen in terms of line variation.

It is not an easy flowing, easy flexing pen. It is flexible, but it is not a ‘wet noodle’ – far from it. You have to use a little force to make those maximum wide lines, but when you do, the pen delivers. The ink feed can´t quite keep up with the widest lines if you draw them too fast, there is always a risk of ‘railroading’ (see image if you don´t know what it is), but if you doodle around with it, you get the hang of it after a while. It´s kind of like an old car – once you get to know it, with it´s quirks and limits, it´s really charming.

One thing that is a bit disturbing is that the ink sometimes tend to smear on top of the nib, so you may get inky fingers if you don´t watch out. Plus the ink that I use (Platinum carbon ink) sometimes dries up a bit in the nib, so you have to start up the pen with a few strokes if it has been unused for a couple of days. Otherwise this is a nifty little pen. Plastic, cheap, actually a bit too small for my taste and with a somewhat funny smell, but really cool to draw with.

14 x 14,5 cm, Noodler´s flex pen with Platinum Carbon ink on Schoellershammer drawing paper.

I have tried out the inks I ordered from Goulet pens some weeks ago (see earlier post) , and came to the conclusion that Platinum Carbon Black is going to cause a slight revolution in my drawing habits. There actually is an ink that is black, can be used in a fountain pen AND that I can splash watercolour over without dissolving the lines and smudging the colours. And I´m able to paint over the lines almost immediately after drawing. Heaven!

Platinum Pigmented Sepia is nice too, a light brown shade, very nice to draw with. It does dissolve a tiny little bit when washed over with watercolours, but little enough that I can live with it. The rest of the ink samples I got were not for me. Beautiful colours, nice behavior in the fountain pens, and perhaps even possible to paint over – but not immediately. I hate waiting for ink to dry!

Check out the images below to see how the inks behaved with watercolour. Click them if you want to see the details better, they are quite big. The text is in Swedish, but it´s mostly nonsense, so don´t ask for a translation. ; )

They say with pigmented inks (such as Platinum Carbon black) you have to take better care of your fountain pens, since the ink has a tendency to clog the pen if you leave it unused for some time. I have tried the Carbon black in both my Lamy Safaris and a Noodler´s Flex Nib pen since April 20th, sometimes leaving the pens unused for several days with ink in them. With the Lamys I have had no problems whatsoever (my darling Lamys…), while the Noodler´s pen has dried up twice. However, I only had to rinse the nib under running water (without disassembling the pen, just putting the nib under the tap) and wipe it off and it worked just fine again. I don´t know if this has to do with how airtight the pen cap is, or how the pen feed is constructed, or whatever. I am just saying: be a little careful with your pens with these inks. I´m going to give mine a rinse every time I refill the converter.

But still. Waterproof black fountain pen ink, huh? : )

I ordered some ink samples and a bottle of Platinum Carbon ink last week from Goulet pens, and they arrived today. Yay! So I have some testing to do, I will let you know how it goes.

So, I have been drawing some with the Noodler´s flex pens I got, and I have a few thoughts on this new tool. The text is long, so if you are not into fountain pens, just click a link in the sidebar and go somewhere else to enjoy yourself. : )

First of all, this pen is still absolutely wonderful to draw with. Fabulous. I love the variety in line width it offers, and how easily it flows on the paper. It feels very smooth, no scratching or strange behavior ever. (Mind you, I have only tried it on very smooth paper so far, in a Moleskine sketchbook, so I am not sure yet how it behaves on a bit of texture.) It is a great drawing tool, and I know I am going to use it a lot.

I had Noodler´s Fox red ink in one of my two pens, and had a few incidents with that – there are a few red ink blobs in the lower left corner of the drawing above to prove it. I´m not really fond of the Fox red ink, it´s a bit ’stickier’ than the Lexington gray I use otherwise, and I think that´s what made these problems occur. It seems the ink in the nib dried a little when I didn´t use the pen for a few days (stored with the nib up), and when I tried to – perhaps a tad violently – start it up again by drawing with a bit of pressure, it suddenly flooded and ink ran out on the drawing. The Lexington gray dried a little too, but the pen was never hard to ’start up’ again, I just drew a few lines with it and it was ok. The red ink seems a little trickier. Hardly the pen´s fault, really.

I am very used to my Lamy Safaris, and as I wrote in my last post, I am a bit harsh with them sometimes. I often draw with more pressure with them to get a bit of variety in line width, and I had to really readjust my drawing habits to avoid tormenting the Noodler´s pens in the same way. The flex nibs are much more sensitive, and I often had a too wet nib in the beginning, before I realized I was pressing too hard. Once I got the hang of it, the flex pens behaved extremely well.

There is always ink in the nib of a fountain pen, but sometimes some of it ends up on top of the nib, ready to make a mess if you don´t watch out. On the Lamys, I simply wipe that excess ink off with a paper towel with a ‘pulling-out’ movement. I did the same on the Noodler´s flex nib:

Oops. (No worries, it´s not blood, it´s Noodler´s Fox red ink.)  The flex pen couldn´t take it.

The first time this happened (yes, I did it again later, how stupid is that?) I panicked a bit – partly because I thought I had ruined the pen, and partly because my white desk at work wasn´t exactly looking pristine anymore – but then I remembered this video over at Goulet pens´ Ink Nouveau blog. These pens come apart completely for cleaning, and you can adjust the nib the way you want it, since it is detachable from the pen and the feed:

I simply have to stop wiping the nib off the way I did, and all will be well. After cleaning, the pen is easy to put back together, and this one works just fine now. : )

A few other things:
The Noodler´s flex pen as a whole is rather small, very slim and very lightweight. It doesn´t have that heavy, sturdy feel to it that many other fountain pens have. With the cap posted it feels nice and balanced, without it it is more like holding any plastic Pilot roller ball or the like. It is more goodlooking than cheap Pilots, though.

I carry my Lamy Safaris with me every day at work, I usually clip them onto the neckband of my t-shirt. They get shaken, stirred, dropped and borrowed but never leak, and never cause any problems. (The only really bad thing that can happen is dropping them on the floor without the cap on, but luckily the nibs are easy to replace…) I have tried to use the Noodler´s flex pens the same way, but they can´t really take this kind of abuse. They are more sensitive than the Lamys. Either the ink dries up a bit in the nib, or it suddenly flows a little too much. Now I just carry them in my pen case, and use them only for drawing, not for every day work use.

And then there´s the surprising ’smell issue’. I read a few reviews on this pen before buying it, and some people thought it smelled funny. I have never had a pen that smelled before, but this one actually does. It has a bit of some sweet plasticky smell when you put the pen under your nose, but it´s not disturbing at all in my opinion. One person referred to ‘vomit’ to describe the smell, but honestly, he or she must have had something else than the pen close to his/her nose… Using the pen in a normal way, i.e. on a paper, with your face far above it, will cause no problems unless you are extremely sensitive to smells.

On the whole, I love this pen. It´s not an everyday durable workhorse in the way that the Lamy Safaris are, but it is definitely a fav drawing tool. It has already won a permanent place in my pen case, along with the Lamys. I am sure there are ‘better’ flex pens out there, vintage or expensive ones, but for $14, honestly, I don´t think you can get anything as great as this little pen.

17 x 13 cm, Noodler´s flex pen with Noodler´s Lexington gray and Noodler´s Fox red ink on small Moleskine Sketchbook spread.

If you have followed this blog for a while, you have probably noticed I am an avid Lamy Safari user. I draw with them, I write with them, I use them every day at work, and they are lovely. I never clean them, I just keep filling them up with Noodler´s bulletproof ink, treat them badly and keep on using them.

Last week, however, I ordered two Noodler´s flex nib pens from the Goulet pen company in USA. I have read a little about fountain pens with flex nibs online, but they all seemed to be vintage, and you have to be more or less a rich fanatic to even get hold of one. Then I found a review on the $14 Noodler´s pen, and I was curious to try a nib with more flex than the Lamy, so I ordered a couple. The pens arrived yesterday – surprisingly fast, in my opinion, for an order from the US.

I have only used them for a few hours yet, but I love them. As in LOVE them. So far. The flex in these nibs has to be spelled in capital letters, they are really FLEXY. They are super sensitive to the way I draw, just a slight change in pressure against the paper surface gives a lot of variety in line width.

So what could go wrong? Well, they could start leaking. I hate that. And they could become scratchy, or start dripping. They could skip, or dry out so I´d have to clean them. I hate that too. (I know you´re supposed to clean fountain pens, but the Lamy Safaris have set the standard for how often I do it. Which is never.)

I´ll keep drawing with these fellas for a few days and let you know how it goes.

18 x 14 cm, Noodler´s flex nib pen with Noodler´s Lexington grey and Noodler´s Fox Red ink on small Moleskine sketchbook spread.