The never ending war with pen and ink

Because I told myself I'd study for a midterm, I did art this afternoon. My midterm and art have nothing to do with each other, but I have this tendency to be creative when I'm I plan to do or should be doing school work.

Ink and I have a bit of a rivalry going. We rarely get along. I feel a bit like a lion tamer. Or like I'm trying to draw with a live snake... It just doesn't work very well. Most of what comes out is less than pleasant and I need to cover it up with color and hope no one notices. (This is part of the reason that my mind is boggled by the amount of favorites my mokona bookmark on deviantart.com has gotten.*)

I've tried various liners pens (Zig, Sakura, Copic) and even a ballpoint one by Koh-I-No0r. None of them really work for me. The Koh-I-Noor pen was always my favorite, it's never dried out, gave a good variation on line weight, and most of all it actually felt like using ink, because you could see it dry. Unfortunately, it's a bit like tight-rope walking these days; it has a tendency to randomly bubble and spurt ink.

I've been thinking, again, about getting a nibbed pen. One of those pens with interchangeable metal bits... Sort of like fountain pen, but, well, I'm not sure where then ink is contained. And then I remembered I had fountain pen! I actually have two, but the nib is broken off on one of them. I got them from my grandpa, ages back. So I pulled out my indian ink, and did a little doodle.


I really love this. I loved drawing it too. It was so much more satisfactory actually moving the ink around with a nib. I can get much more definition and weight and texture! And I don't have to worry about wrecking the nib, like on the liners... I also love how it looks rather like a lino block print. I did have some difficulty getting ink to come out of the pen regularly, I'm not sure what that was about. And I did have a big drop come out on my first attempt. That was pretty fun, :p.

Truth be told, I can do a similar effect with my Koh-I-Noor pen. I began to wonder why I haven't used it (I mean, besides the spurt...). Then I tried my copic markers with the indian ink...

On the right, you have me just going to the edge of the ink. On the left you have me going overtop of the ink. It does tend to smudge when I go over it.
That said, most of my inking process is done after I color something these days. I rely heavily on my glass topped desk as a light box.

The smudging is the very reason I wasn't using my Koh-I-Noor pen lately. it smudges very much when copics go over it. And even though I'm inking last, there's still touch ups to be done afterward. But this indian ink might be worth a try at least. It's also very black, which makes me happy.

And because Rei asked, here's pictures of the fountain pens:




*I know, I know, it's mokona. mokona is cute. I get it...