The Well-Appointed Desk

Pen Review: Pentel Artist Brush Sign Pen

When I first saw the package of Pentel Artist Brush Sign Pens I thought to myself, “I need another set of brush pens like I need a hole in my head.” Let’s just say I have purchased just about every brush pen on the market at one point or another thinking it would be the key to unlocking either brush pen lettering or watercolor/marker pen drawing. Needless to say, pens won’t make me a better artist. Sure, some tools might inspire us to practice more or might be more conducive to our particular drawing or writing style but after almost ten years of publicly testing pens, it’s about time I figured this out, right?

But I digress..

The Pentel Artist Brush Sign Pen is a, for lack of a better turn-of-phrase, wolf in sheep’s clothing. The original Sign Pen is a very unassuming bullet tip fiber-tipped marker. The Artist Brush Sign Pen is a WHOLE OTHER beast.

I received the 6-color set to try and was struck by the colors included in the set. Usually, a 6-color set will feature standard colors like red, blue, green, purple, black and either orange or pink but the Pentel Artist Brush Sign Pens mixed it all up and included grey, yellow ochre, and sky blue with the more expected orange, violet and pink. But no black or true blue or green. I’m not complaining. I find the choice fascinating.

Each pen in the set features long slender, extra fine polymer fiber brush hairs. Tina reviewed the black model earlier this year for drawing and compared it to several other brush pens for drawing. The close-up above makes the bristles seem huge but the photo below will provide more sense of scale. What I wanted you to see is that the bristles are individual strands in the above image.

The bristles are firm with a lot of snap back. If you’ve used other bristle-based brush markers or natural fiber brushes you may have experienced some that are slow to spring back. The Pentel Artist Brush Sign Pens are different. The quick spring back makes them easier to use for anyone new to brush lettering because the brush returns more quickly to a perfect point.

The firmer brush tip also means that the range of thicks to thins is epic. With a light touch, the thin lines can be extremely fine and with firm pressure, the thick lines can be super wide and lay down a lot of ink.

Ignore the “5 min” note above. I forgot to wet test the ink. So, look at the photo below. The grey and yellow ochre were fairly water resistant. The sky blue is not water resistant at all and the orange did not fair well either. The purple and pink showed some resistance but bled a good deal when wet.

These brush pens are not watercolor pens like the Winsor & Newton Watercolor brush pens , Akashiya Sai Watercolor Pens or Tombow Dual Brush Pens. The inks will not blend or flow like watercolor but the Pentel Artist Brush Sign Pens have their own merits. The extra fine tips with firm bristle tips make them worth the investment and the unique colors are a nice break from the standard assortment sets.

Tools:

Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet
Pens: Pentel Artist Brush Sign Pens 6-Color set (12-color set available at JetPens for $43)

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Pentel of America for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

In Ink Review

Ink Review: Sailor Studio 670

Jessica ColesNovember 7, 2019November 8, 2019Leave a comment

Great news! Now everyone who hates using a phone to order Sailor Studio inks is now free to order the same inks online! No more talking to people or refraining from a purchase because you have lost your voice. This also helps the middle of the night ink cravings – no need to wait until morning. Night owls rejoice.

11/8/19 UPDATE: I have just been informed by Dromgoole’s that they are offering free shipping at $35 until the end of the year! Two bottles of Sailor Studio qualify for this free shipping.

My newest Sailor Studio ink is 670. My usual choices in Sailor Studio lines are in the 100, 200, or 300 inks – the lighter, almost pastel inks. I’ve strayed up to a 400 series ink, but that was a bit unusual and outside of my confort zone. But 400 series inks are quite beautiful as well! So I decided to push my comfort zone to the max and select an ink from the 600 series. Scary.

From the outside of the bottle, Sailor Studio looks like a vibrant yellow with green thoughts.

But these hints can be misleading.

Once opened, the ink looks quite yellow, less green even than the lable. In larger pools, it can look brown. But this is not how the ink looks on swatch cards. The color here, especially in writing, is a green tinged by yellow and can shade into a greenish-brown.

In writing, Sailor Studio 670 is close to Platinum Classic Citrus Black.

When I first swabbed Sailor Studio 670, I was struck by the color. It is pickle juice. Not ordinary pickle juice, either. It is the exact color of the pickle juice in the jars of sweet pickles that my grandmother used to serve during Christmas each year when the entire extended family would get together and stay for the week at her house. Nearly 20 people packed into a house. For a week. With this many people, the pickles were store brand and had juice colored almost a neon yellow-green.

As unappetizing as those pickles sound now that I’m an adult (they were wonderful when I was about 8), Sailor Studio 670 is actually quite nice to use in writing. The shading is pleasant with colors from light pickle juice to a seaweed green.

Another Sailor Studio ink that I have reviewed, Sailor Studio 370, lacks the strong yellow component found in Sailor Studio 670.

In writing, the colors of Sailor Studio strongly depend on lighting. Bright light brings out the yellow while lower light shows the ink as closer to green. Below are the same “Pickle Juice” words in different lighting.

In large swatches, Sailor Studio 670 shows more tones of green with brown haloing. Even a small bit of silver sheen.

I’m enjoying this ink – it is a perfect match for my Pelikan Honey and White Tortoise Shell pen, even with an extra-fine nib. I wouldn’t choose 670 as my only ink, but in combination with other colors, I love the contrast this adds to my journal.

Remember, the main barrier of ordering Sailor Studio inks has now been removed. Head to Dromgoole’s site now to order online!

Tools:

Paper: Musubi Tomoe River Refill ($30-35 USD)
Pen: Pelikan Honey and White Tortoise Shell M400, EF nib
Ink: Sailor Studio 670 (aka Pickle Juice) ($18 for 20mL)
Swatch Cards: Col-o-ring ink testing cards ($10 for 100 card pack)

DISCLAIMER: The ink included in this review was provided for free by Dromgoole’s for the purpose of review; all other materials were purchased by me. Please see the About page for more details.

In Pen Review

Pen Review: Signo RT1 vs Signo Needle

AnaNovember 6, 2019November 6, 20193 Comments

Inktober lead me back to some of the “old classics”. I got out drawing fineliner pens and fine gel pens that I enjoy using for drawing. That lead me back to an old favorite which is the Uni Signo 0.38. Much has been written elsewhere about this excellent gel pen but I don’t think I’ve ever written about this classic pen. So, I thought I’d use this as an opportunity to compare the Signo RT1 (UMN-155) ($2.85) and the Signo Needle (UM-151ND) ($3.30).

The RT1 (Retractable) is, as it’s moniker suggests, a retractable version of the the regular Signo DX and features the classic, conical shaped tip but it’s housed in a wider barrel, quick-click retracable pen. The barrel is wrapped from the tip to halfway up the barrel in a grippy rubber and then smoothly transitions into a smooth plastic barrel. It features a built-in clip and the knock mechanism is a wide, flat button on the top of the pen giving you plenty of fidget space to click to your heart’s content.

The Needle is the same pen barrel design as the DX line. The barrel is a clear plastic with a rubberized grip section with divots and then the silver, metal cone that tapers to its unique needle tip.

This close-up photo above shows the difference in the tip designs. The Needle is on the left, the RT1 is on the right.

In writing and drawing tests, I had a hard time telling the difference between the two in terms of actual ink-on-paper coverage. The Needle gives a little more clearance from the paper so that I could see around the lines I’d previously made without the pen tip blocking my view. The RT1, however, with its slightly wider, grippier barrel was very comfortable in the hand and made me want to hold onto it. In the end, even though the tips were the same diameter, the RT1 seemed to lay down a bit heavier application of ink and the Needle seemed better suited for fine, detail work.

Once again, I did not wait long enough to test the waterproofiness. I only waited a couple minutes and got some smearing when I applied a water brush to the inks. I tried again this morning and the inks did not budge. I even went over the writing and the drawings and nothing happened except that I made the paper “taco” (that’s my husband’s official printer term for what happens to paper when it starts to bend).

My final note is that the capped Needle is not going to leak in a pocket or bag if stored closed. The RT1, with its easy-to-knock knock could accidentally be left open and leak if that’s a consideration.

Do I favor one of these over the other? No. I like them both. A lot.

Tools:

Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet
Pens: Uni-ball Signo RT1 (UMN-155) 0.38 mm Gel Pen in Black ($2.85) and Uni-ball Signo Needle (UM-151ND) 0.38 mm Gel Pen in Black ($3.30)

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

In Link Love

Link Love: The Future is Now the Past

AnaNovember 6, 2019November 6, 20191 Comment

For someone known for her love of vintage, my two most formative moments in cinema as a child were seeing Star Wars and then seeing Bladerunner. Bladerunner was set in the near-future 2019 with a slightly-retro, brutalistic architecture and 1940s-inspired fashion. But, as of this week, Bladerunner is now showing us what the past looks like. Austin Kleon provides a link to a wiki list of other stories now set in the past-future.

A list of stories set in a future now past (via Austin Kleon)

What do these stories tell us about what our past selves thought we could accomplish and haven’t? Or what we would destroy but didn’t?

Pen Review: Uni Pin Pens

AnaNovember 5, 2019November 5, 20197 Comments

Just when I thought I’d reviewed every possible brand and variety of felt-tipped or fiber-tipped pen, I find another one. The Uni Pin ($1.65-$2.45) pigment ink fineliner pens are available in a variety of tip sizes and colors. What caught my interest specifically was the availability of two shades of grey and a sepia. The only other fineliner I could find that has a sepia is the Sakura Pigma. And the Uni Pin was the only one that came in greys.

I grabbed a couple point sizes for each color, trying to be consistent in sizing across the colors as best as I could. Unfortunately, some were out of stock so I got close. I ended up with 01 (0.28mm) in all four colors, 05 (0.5mm) in light grey, dark gray and sepia and 02 (0.33mm) and 04 (0.4mm) in black.

The Uni Pin numbering system is similar to that of the Sakura Pigma Microns where the number doesn’t always reference the tip size. A Pigma in 005 is actually 0.2mm, an 01 is 0.25mm, an 04 is 0.4mm, an 05 is is 0.45mm and an 08 is 0.5mm. Confused yet?

The pen bodies are all plastic except for a metal clip and the metal tip. The barrels are a matte finish so they are not slippery to the touch. It’s a nice detail to a plastic pen.

The tips look pretty solid across the various sizes. The metal sheaths protecting the plastics tips seem to be reinforced at the end where they meet with the housing which may keep the points from getting bent.

The black seems on par with most of the other brands I’ve tried. I think the only thing that might set it apart is the longevity of the tips which will only be determined over time and the blackness of the ink. The dark and light grey pens are very interesting and would make nice alternatives or additions in drawing. The sepia was disappointly dark, almost black. I would have preferred a lighter, warmer brown.

I tested the waterproofiness after only about five minutes so I’m not sure how dry the ink was. YMMV. The pens say on the side “waterproof”. The Rhodia paper is very smooth so that might affected how the ink adhered to the fibers and skewed the results here. I tested the ink again later and it did not move so the dry time was a bit longer than I anticipated. It may have been because of the Rhodia paper specifically. If you plan on painting over this pen, give it a good 15 minutes to dry or test it on a scrap piece before adding water to your art.

Overall, the Uni Pin has a lot to recommend it. The price is competitive. The availability of greys in a variety of widths is commendable. If you’ve already settled on a fineliner, however, I’m hardpressed to convince anyone to switch brands on these points alone. The only other factor will be to determine longevity which is something a lot of the other brands don’t have. So, stay tuned.

Tools:

Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet
Pens: Uni Pin Pens (Pigment Based) in Sepia, Dark Grey, Light Grey and Black

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

In DIY

Guide Sheet Updates

AnaNovember 4, 2019November 4, 20196 Comments

Thanks to a comment by a reader, I took a look at the guide sheets and made some updates. If you’re not familiar with the guide sheets, these are free downloadable pages that can be slipped behind a blank page to provide guidelines for writing. I’ve provided them on a separate page in an array of sizes and configurations and, occasionally, I add sizes and formats when requested.

First, the initial request was for a version of the guide sheets in A5 with darker lines for heavier weight paper. Done. If anyone needs these in other sizes, let me know.

Then, I also created one great big PDF file with all the standard guide sheets so you only have to download one file and you get everything. In Adobe Acrobat, if you open the bookmarks tab on the lefthand side, it will reveal a series of bookmarks to the page/format you might need. Click on it and the document will jump to that page. Choose print and make sure print “current page” is selected. Then you don’t have to remember page numbers. The screenshot further down will show the box checked accordingly.

Guide Sheet Bookmarks

Also remember to set your print size to actual size or 100%.

Guide Sheet Print Window

Then trim the page to fit into your notebook.

In news

Hey, Art Supply Posse Fans!

AnaNovember 4, 2019November 4, 20191 Comment

Art Supply Posse is trying to mix in episodes that focus entirely on art supplies. Episode 76 with Alan Trautman was the first episode to feature a listener of the show and his art supply toolbox.

As the Queen Mum of ASP, I am reaching out to Desk readers and ASP listeners, old and new, with a call for participants. Art Supply Posse is looking for more people willing to (re)discover their unused art supplies on the podcast. Alternatively, you can gush about some of your favorite art supplies. That’s right, you can be a guest on the podcast!

All you need is a laptop/desktop computer. (Headphones or earbuds with built-in microphone and a quiet room would probably be helpful but not a deal breaker.)

Contact ASP via email (hello (at) artsupplyposse (dot) com) — take out the spaces and put in appropriate characters, Instagram DM, or the ASP forum.

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Ink:

Pencils:

Notebooks & Paper:

Art & Creativity:

Other Interesting Things:

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