Ink Drop: March 2012

Ink Drop March 2012

I received my second Ink Drop shipment from Goulet Pens this weekend and it is full of sunny, springy bright colors! Included this month was Schaeffer Skrip Brown, Noodler’s Summer Tanager, Platinum Cyclamen Pink, Private Reserve Foam Green and Diamine Washable Blue.

To be honest, I am loving all of the colors and quite enjoy that this month’s samples are so widely different in color. Just when I want more color in my world, even my ink samples provide!

Also included was a vial of  J.B.’s Perfect Pen Flush to help clean ink residue from inside your pens. I haven’t tried the Pen Flush yet but I’ll let you know all about it when I do. I’ll put it to the test with one of my craggy vintage fountain pens to really see how it works!

I ran a quick swab of each color and then just scratched out some text with a dip nib just to see how the colors looked in actual writing. Again, I am using my Miquelrius grid notebook as a constant for all my samples. It is not overly fond of dip nibs (bleeds a lot!) but seems to hold up well to the same inks when used in an actual fountain pen.

To demonstrate, when I dipped into the Noodler’s Summer Tanager, it bled so badly as to be nearly illegible. When I put the same ink into my Lamy with a 1.1mm nib, there was no bleeding or feathering at all. So, the same inks can behave radically differently depending on the tool. The Private Reserve Foam Green and Diamine Washable Blue performed best in the dip pen with very little feathering on the paper so I suspect they will be excellent in my fountain pens.

Noodler's Summer Tanger

And since I now have four different brown inks here I can compare, I added the Sheaffer Skrip Brown to my brown swabs.

IMG_8334

The Sheaffer Skrip Brown is the lightest brown I have so far and the most terra cotta in color. In writing, it looks the most “brown” where the Havana Brown and Chocolat look more like a brown-black. (Pardon my spelling in the photo)

I purchased the KUM PenCut folding scissors a couple years ago but fin them a little uncomfortable to use. I continue to carry them because they fit in my bad without ever stabbing me or poking a hole in my bag but I’ve hoped a better option would come available. These Sun-Star Stickyle Pen scissors may be a good substitute. At a mere $8.25 and available in 4 different colors, I may “upgrade” to these soon.

(via JetPens.com)

More About Red-and-Blue Pencils

I received lots of great response about the two-tone pencils we posted about last week. It turns out teachers used them for grading (red) and writing in the correct answers (blue), copy editing if one end was non-reproduction blue and for keeping records for playing Go. One of our readers Knyphe included a link to for Peanuts-themed red/blue pencils from Japan.

Another reader from Hungary said that the red/blue pencils were used in early primary school but could not recall the specific circumstances. Maybe in helping children to write their letters and then use the red to correct?

And yesterday, while perusing the pages of Julia Rothman’s book Drawn In: A Peek into the Inspiring Sketchbooks of 44 Fine Artists, Illustrators, Graphic Designers, and Cartoonists , I found the artist Meg Hunt who uses the red and blue pencil to lay down her sketches before inking them. She says,

“The red and blue pencil is for two reasons: one, sketching in colored pencil is less smudgy, and as a left-handed artist I find it easier to work with than graphite. Secondly, it’s very light, and I can be a little rough with the drawing without having to worry about it needing to be erased once I need to scan the finished ink work — in Photoshop I can adjust the lines and lose the colored pencil work easily.”

Thanks to all you wonderful readers for all the input and places to buy these lovely pencils!

These vintage ones come from Present & Correct for £3 each.

(via Present&Correct)