Four Things I’m Digging

1. Multi Pens

Okay, so maybe I’m not as ecstatic about multi pens as The Pen Addict, but they’re damn convenient for my new job. I owned the Style Fit a while ago and really enjoyed it, but apparently not enough to prevent losing it sometime during the move across the country.

I ordered the Uni Signo MF3 and the Uni Jetstream 4+1 from Jetpens. The Jetstream was an attempt to branch out from gel ink, but after having played around with it a bit, it’s just not living up to my expectations. Plus, the barrel is enormous.

I was so tempted to buy a Zebra Sharbo X, but I have yet to invent a good justification for spending that much money…

2. Glazing With Acrylics

Acrylics, you say? As in, those mediocre craft-quality paints from high school art class? Oil paints for a poor artist?

…Yes, I mean those. And I am a poor artist, so I decided to paint in acrylic when I needed to fill a lonely blank spot on our apartment wall.

It turned out to be a totally pleasurable experiment. Maybe because acrylics aren’t as “serious” as oils, I was able to have a little more fun with them. I had painted with oils for my AP art portfolio in high school (and damaged my health in the process by turning my bedroom into a turpentine-fume bubble… but that’s another story).

The idea when glazing with acrylics is basically the same as glazing with oils, but it dries in a fraction of the time. Click on the image to the left to view a close-up detail section.

I finished this piece in one day, and I’m moderately happy with it. It’s no masterpiece, but I was able to experiment with a lot of different methods which I want to explore more in the future. The green stripe across the top was a last-minute addition, and I think it really completed the piece.

3. How Pretty Art Supplies Are

Yeah, you heard me: I’m digging my own art supplies. This is such a failing of mine– to see my art supplies as works of art in themselves, rather than as tools for making art. Although both views have their merits, there is also a crucial distinction between them: seeing art supplies as just beautiful turns you into a consumer, while seeing art supplies as tools for making art turns you into a producer. And I don’t want to be a consumer! I wanna produce. Produce beautiful things, that is.

I was reading about DIY watercolor palettes last night, and several different articles warned that you might spend more time creating your palette than actually using it. Oh, sigh, alright.

So, despite how much I enjoy the sunlight glinting through the bristles of my Robert Simmons Sapphire brushes, my goal for next week is to create a piece of art outside of the apartment every day.

4. Cherry Season

I especially love cherry season when they are free from my friend’s back yard. These sour cherries are better for baking than munching, so I’ve been experimenting with cherry tarts and crisps, all with great success. My friend’s family, though, is making cherry vodka –which also happens to be reason #11 that local foods are badass.

Nib Grinding, in Brief

…it scares the crap out of me.

But also, I have a pipe dream of apprenticing some day under a local nibmeister. Let us only hope that I don’t giggle at the term “nibmeister” in his presence.

It seems that there are less women in the pen world, similar to… well, just like most other trades (there are less women tattoo artists, less women metalsmiths…). Anyone who says feminism is over and women have achieved equality in the workplace should take a look at the stats. And well, it would rock to make some money off pen grinding/making in the long run.

But for now, I successfully turned my skipping, dry-writing Parker 45 M nib to a smooth-writing stub. Which, I think, is one step closer to being a Hot Pen Babe.

I didn’t completely get rid of its skipping problems; it requires priming every so often (sliding the converter to push the ink up the feed). But it’s a hell of a lot smoother, and more of a stub than it was before. Overall, I’m very satisfied with this little experiment…

A more recent writing sample

Pen Review: Parker 45

I posted recently about the Parker IM, which I bought for a friend through the ebay seller lewertowski. Of course, I took advantage of the opportunity to test out a Parker for myself, so I also purchased a blue Parker 45 with a medium nib.

The Parker 45

Parker 45 in package

Interestingly, the (gold-nibbed) Parker 45 came in cheaper packaging than the steel-nibbed IM. I guess I always assume that a gold nib means higher quality overall, but that’s certainly not true. The IM came in a solid plastic case, almost like a glasses case, while the 45 came in this thinner clear plastic case. I appreciate less packaging as a general rule, but the plastic is wasteful in both pens’ packaging.

Cartridge included

So the Parker 45 includes both a converter and a cartridge, while the IM came with only a cartridge. However, the cartridge included was one of those pull-catridges, as opposed to the twist (piston converter) that I’m used to. I also have no idea what the little metal ball is for– does it help with the physics of the suction, I wonder? If anybody has an answer, I’m curious to know. In any case, I ended up purchasing two higher-quality piston converters, one for the IM and one for this pen.

The included (lower-quality) cartridge

Old converter (top) and newer converter (bottom)

So here’s the catch. I was under the impression that the standard Parker converter would fit the Parker 45 (maybe I mis-read something in the ebay description). And certainly the newer converter fits, but I don’t think it fits quite perfectly. It seems to “plug in” fairly well at the very top, but then leaves a gap between the cartridge and the body of the pen, which leads to it seeming a bit loose. I think you can see in the picture below:

That slight gap causes a "wiggly" converter

Nonetheless, the converter worked– I’ll have to switch them out in the future to see if the other converter performs any better. On to the writing experience…

Parker 45 nib

Ah, a lovely semi-hooded nib. I don’t often write with medium nibs, so this is a bit of a new experience for me. I’ve found that I have to adjust my handwriting, because otherwise a medium nib obscures all the smaller letters. Still practicing! But this nib makes for a lovely writing experience, not flexible but definitely soft enough to have some nice line variation. The medium nib almost has some stub-like qualities, with the downstrokes being wider than the cross-strokes. and it leaves a wide enough line for some lovely shading. I also found that this nib allows for a big difference between writing at a low angle and at a more upright angle (with the pen being more perpendicular to the page).

The only drawback I’ve found is that, compared to the Parker IM’s steel nib, this nib sometimes has trouble starting up at the beginning of a stroke. I can’t tell if I’m rotating the nib, or if the flow just goes dry, but it is a bit obnoxious in any case. You can see an example of this in the last picture.

Pelikan 120

So I found a Pelikan 120 at my father’s office yesterday– he’s an architect, and I’ve been raiding his toolkit for as long as I can remember. Despite having sat around for a few years, it needed nothing more than a quick flush before I could ink it up and test it out. I used Lamy black because it’s the only bottled ink I have at the house right now. As it turns out, the quality is still pretty good! It lays down a crisp, fine line and flexes nicely (click on the image for a closer view).

The Pelikan 120 is a lower-end version of the 140, and apparently came in three versions: from the looks of this one, it seems to be the 2nd version which was picked up by many artists and architects.

The only flaw is that the nib is a bit scratchy on strokes to the right… I drew a circle on the sample page to show where the scratchy section was. After a bit of research, I found that you can smooth a scratchy nib on kraft paper, so I did that (very carefully) and it’s much smoother now. Certainly not buttery, but it doesn’t catch the paper now. Hooray!

 

New Tools!

I cashed some paychecks yesterday, so I decided to purchase a set of water-soluble color tools. Little did I know how overwhelmed I would be by the choices.. so I ended up holding off my purchase until I could read some reviews online. Instead, I bought a few individual items to try them out.

From left to right: Kuretake water brush, a Derwent watersoluble Graphitone in 8B, 3 Derwent watercolour pencils, 2  Derwent Aquatones, and a pencil that isn’t shown in this photo but is included below.

Derwent Watercolour Pencils

I was deciding between Derwent, Prismacolor, and Faber Castell watercolour pencils. And then I saw Derwent’s ink-tense pencils, and some watercolour crayons, and decided to opt out of the decision. The Derwent pencils were the only ones available individually, which is why they came home with me. I bought a light color (Turquoise Blue), a bright color (Magenta), and a somewhat dark color (Bottle Green)– just to test a range out.

Derwent Aquatones

Kuretake Water Brush - Medium

I really like the water brush technology, though I don’t want to give up my brush roll for the sake of convenience.

Derwent Graphitone - 8B

I don’t know how I feel about the graphitones. I need to play around more with them. Here’s a test that I did to try the 8B out:

Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth Triograph 1830 pencil

I’m totally into this pencil. It’s huge, but not childish. The triangle-shape reminds me of carpenter’s pencils, which I fell in love with this summer while working construction on an apartment (the pencils are angles either flat or triangular so that they don’t roll off a roof). PencilTalk tells me that it weighs 11.2 grams. And, like the Pencil Talk review, I keep noticing the attractive wood finish. It feels expensive, like a real wood stain, which is something I was most struck by in the process of whittling my own pen a few months ago. This pencil also requires sharpening by knife, which I find super-therapeutic (too much information?]

(using all tools except the triograph)