Six sketchers gathered at Citykonditoriet in central Stockholm yesterday,  for the 34th International Sketchcrawl – two new faces and a few “veterans”. We had a plan to move on to a museum, but decided to stay put – this café has lots of funny details to draw, and the lunch crowd tends to stay on for a while, so we had lots of opportunities to draw people.

Thank you Johanna, Charlotte, Anna, Pat and Riber for making this day a great one!

Top drawing: 20 x 18 cm, Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon black ink and watercolours on Arches Satinée 300 g watercolour paper.
Bottom drawing: 20 x 16 cm, technique as above but without the watercolours.

It´s time to tell what this December post was all about: I had the honor of doing the drawing for the spring program poster for the Tellus cinema theater in my neighborhood, and now it´s printed and out there. I sat in a shop window across the street from the cinema drawing this, it was a bit too cold for drawing outdoors.

Tellus bio is a super cozy place, a little cinema from the thirties, now run by a small organisation of local people. Apart from watching movies, you can come here to have a coffee, play board games, hear a lecture, listen to after work jazz, see a concert, join a life drawing session… It´s a great place for meeting people, and a true gem of Stockholm´s history.

Size A3 (29,7 x 42 cm), Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon black ink, and watercolours on Arches 640g watercolour 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.

My December challenge is done, and I am overwhelmed by all the encouragement I have had by YOU! I have had so many nice comments, emails and Facebook interaction during this month, it´s been so much fun. I am afraid I will not be able to keep up this pace in posting on my blog, but I feel very inspired to draw, and I have a few sketching ideas that I want to realise during 2012.

I did draw something today too, but instead of posting that, I am taking the opportunity to share my very first sketching video. I have been wanting to do these for a long time, and finally got around to it yesterday. I love watching others draw, and figured I would try to capture my own process too.

I wish all my readers and friends a Happy New Year, I hope 2012 will bring you lots of drawing joy! : )

Looking out the kitchen window this time. A splendid winter´s day today, but without the snow. Only one day left of my December challenge. And of 2011.

21 x 16 cm, Namiki-Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours on Arches Satinée 300 g watercolour paper.

Peeking out the little door viewer in our apartment door, this is what I see – a Stockholm staircase from the forties. A bit gloomy right now, since it´s dark outside.

My smaller sketchbook didn´t quite reach all the way through December, I finished it with yesterday´s drawing, so I´m continuing in the large book.

Approx. 18,5 x 18,5 cm, Namiki-Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink on Arches Satinée 300 g watercolour paper.

Traveling day today, we have been out of town for a few days for Christmas. When we got home, this little fellow had woken up. It´s been standing in window for a few weeks not making much noise at all (or whatever it is that flowers do), but suddenly it seems to know that it´s time. Isn´t that kind of magical? I love amaryllises, their process from bulb to a huge flower is so beautiful.

17,5 x 12.8 cm, Snowman ink pen and watercolours on Plano drawing paper.

Posted one hour late, due to the above mentioned party. : )

17,5 x 12.8 cm, Snowman ink pen and watercolours on Plano drawing paper.

Mum´s dachshund Baloo is showing how you should go about all this Christmas business.

17,5 x 12.8 cm, Snowman ink pen on Plano drawing paper.

Mum´s orchids are always beautiful, and I´m secretly trying to find out what she does to please them.

17,5 x 12.8 cm, Snowman ink pen and watercolours on Plano drawing paper.