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.

The yellows

Posted: December 2, 2024 | Author: Shari Blaukopf | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: paint tubes, watercolour, yellows | 38 Comments

I have way too many tubes of paint. If you paint, you probably do too. The oldest ones are left over from my university days. The next oldest ones made their way to me from my mother’s collection, after she stopped painting. Some have come from sponsors at various events, and of course there are many that I have purchased. Colours that I have wanted to try because I’ve seen them used successfully by other artists or colours that have simply called out to me from a shelf at the art supply store.

There are very few that I don’t like. In this bin, there’s a Jaune Brilliant that I bought for an online course. It’s the only one that was a real mistake, at least for me. This bin of yellows lives in a drawer with bins of the reds, the blues, the greens, the purples/blacks, and two bins of earth tones, separated into raw and burnt pigments. I may have a paint addiction, but at least I’m organized.