My favourite water-soluble pen

Last year I discovered the Platinum Preppy pen at my local pen shop. It’s an inexpensive fountain pen —$10.50 CDN at my local shop — but it now has a permanent spot in my sketch kit. It’s a pen that feels great in the hand, flows beautifully on paper, has a stainless steel nib (I use EF) that responds to pressure and best of all, the cartridges are filled with water-soluble ink. It’s a great complement to my other fountain pens which are filled with permanent ink.

So when would I use this? Besides this little sketch that I did in studio today, it’s a wonderful pen for airport sketching. All I need to keep it company is a small sketchbook and a waterbrush pen. My favourite feature of the water-soluble ink is that it dissolves completely when you brush it with water. So if I want a really black area, I do some cross-hatching and then go over it with the water brush. If I want a lighter grey area, I use the residual ink on the waterbrush pen to get a paler grey. And so far, it has not leaked on an airplane like my Platinum desk pen, the cartridges hold lots of ink and it’s maintenance free.