I tend to wax philosophic about higher end writing instruments while stating “You can make art with anything!” I also write more often about fountain pens, since fountain pens are a passion of mine and I enjoy using them I tend to shove that love into everyone’s face. In some sense I think that if you try a FP you’ll love it, but the truth is that sometimes, a ballpoint or rollerball pen will do just fine. My next few reviews are going to focus on the lower end of price spectrum, while one is for a fountain pen, it’s one I think is worth reviewing (but that’s next week.) This week it’s all about the cheap, old fashioned, clicking ballpoint pen. If you are of a certain age you remember a time when businesses handed out pens with their contact info on them. My Grandmother always kept a cup of them handy near her phone. Because we lived in the country and we frequented places that sold feed and seed a good number of them were for that sort of location. The gas company, gas stations, electric company, and other places handed these out. At one point you could order the Bic Clic or Papermate pens in school colors. These pens were ubiquitous. They were the business party favors from the 50s to the 80s. In the mid 80s everything switched over from the refillable click pen with a metal clip to the Bic Clic Stic. You can still find the old metal clip Bic Clic online, if you want to order 300 of them you can get them for about 75 cents each, less if you order more. Well I don’t have about $200 laying around to buy cheapo pens, but I did have $6.

Kikkerland, the company known for selling the SuckUk and as being the former districbutor of Moleskine in the US, sells “Retro Pens.” For about $6 (less if you have an artist and craftsman near you) you get 5 made in China old school style click pens. They arrive in a hard plastic box, that is useful for storing the unused pens.

The five pens are mixed colors of dusty blue, cream, grey, green and black. Each pen has 2 colors, again a nod to the fact that most of the advertising pens you could buy had 2 colors with an imprint on the bottom half of the pen. In the middle of each pen is a slim metal ring with a matte finish. The clip and knock are the same matte silver metal. The clip is printed KIKKERLAND. The plastic is smooth and shiny. I noted a few scuff on each pen from being tossed about in the plastic box, but nothing that I really cared much about, considering this is a $1.25 pen.

The point deploys via a satisfying click from the knock. The point itself has a very small amount of wiggle at the tip. It isn’t noticeable as I write and draw. The knock does flop around loosely after the tip is deployed, but not an issue if you aren’t a pen spinner or jiggler as you think. Again it’s just not noticeable if you are writing or drawing.

So, how does it write? Not bad. As far as cheap pens go, it could always be improved with a better refill. But straight out of the box it does okay in writing and drawing. It flows smoothly and evenly. It also has what I call the ability to create a “sensitive”line. Which means it responds to the pressure I use as I draw or write. Low pressure= light line higher pressure= darker line. For the style of drawing I’ve been doing this is very useful. The ink is nice and dark.  Do I think i’m going to be drawn to start taking class notes with this pen? Probably not. I’ll keep using my fountain pens and gel inks for class notes. I got these specifically to draw on the subway and train. For that purpose they are wonderful.

I have to say that the variety of colors is nice, especially if you are into matching your pen to your notebook/journal cover.

You can get these on Amazon . You can also buy retro or vintage pens on etsy. Sometimes the sellers have rehabbed the pens to be in working order, and others you can get a few pens that need work or a new refill. 
  You can get refills on amazon or almost any office supply store. These are new pens so I haven’t messed around with refills yet, but when I do, I’ll keep you updated.

I've been using one of these non-stop for a little over a week. I've been putting it through it's paces as my EDC pen and thus far it's performing admirably well. While it's not as tough as an all metal bodied pen, I'm decidedly NOT careful with it. It's been getting shoved into my back pocket with my notebook and sat on, walked around, and generally abused. It's really getting the ass end of the deal… Anyway, sophomoric humor aside. The point is a little scratchy at a couple of angles. If I rotate the pen, the scratchiness disappears. This is, I think a function of the cheap refill. Which I've used over half while nearly continuously writing or drawing over the last week. I suspect that in another week I'll have killed the refill. As I've learned, I use a lot of ink. I might have to go hit up the refill display at Bob Slate again…

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While I can say I've never been a big fan of the color that is Bay State Blue (BSB) I've never been a detractor either. Even though it stained my pen, sink and hands I shrugged my shoulders andfigured whatever, to each their own. I like Private Reserve Electric DC blue. Not everyone likes that.

I ordered one sample of BSB in 2011 and used it prretty much straight away in a Noodler's Nib Creeper pen. I  used most of it in a Rhodia Webbie. I noted that there was some show through and some bleed through, but not all of the time. I used it for journaling and for drawing.

Like my Fisher Space pen in red, it ghosts after a few years. What is ghosting? When an ink migrates through to the reverse side of the page and you can see a "ghost" of the image on the front. The ghosting with the Space pen red was dispersed and faded, very pink. Also each line had a halo of ink that had migrated away from the original lines. With the BSB The migration to the reverse of the page is intense and amazing. The original drawing or writing can be viewed (or read) in detail. I can see a slight haloing on the fron to fhte page. If I had filled both sides of the page with BSB it would no longer be legible.

Can anyone else report this effect?

I realize that I’ve been writing about the BanditApple Carnet notebooks for a year or more and I haven’t reviewed them. It’s time to fix that.

The BanditApple Carnet notebooks are available in 3 sizes: Handy (MTN size 8.5×4.33inches), PeeWee (3.5×5.5 inches), pocket book (4x6inches). They also offer a planner in the peewee size. The covers are available in red, green, tan and black. Inside you can get plain, lined, or gridded paper. This review is on the peewee plain, but they use the same paper inside all their notebooks. Some of the books have rounded corners and some do not. My most recent plain notebook with a tan cover had square corners. My previous black PeeWee had rounded corners.

They feature a machine stitched binding using heavy weight cotton thread. I’ve been using the PeeWee size for a couple of years now and can say that the binding doesn’t look worn on any of my notebooks. It doesn’t matter if I’ve carried them in a cover or naked in my back pocket. The notebooks are very sturdy and stand up to abuse. The covers have a lovely texture and the color is sold  throughout. The cover is plain, featuring no adornments, not even a company logo, rather that info is on the clear plastic sleeve that makes up the notebook’s package.

Inside the notebook are 64 pages of 80gsm “heritage” paper that is off white in color. I don’t know what heritage means other than “awesome.” The paper handles everything I throw at it from fountain pens to brush pens to light watercolor washes, and has the additional benefit of being lovely with pencil. This paper is amazing sketching paper for the price. I rarely get any bleed through. I’ve got one Japanese calligraphy brush pen that soaks through, but it soaks through every paper I own. It is also rare that I’m able to see through to what I’ve drawn or written on the other side.  The paper isn’t super smooth but gives just enough feedback with a pen to be nice. With a brush pen the pages don’t wrinkle, but with light watercolor washes they wrinkle a small amount. Not enough that i’m bothered by it, but I mention it because I know some people are bothered by wrinkles.

The big drawback to these notebooks is that they are only carried by a few online vendors and I’m not able to find them in person at all. Goulet Pens carries them as does Zeller writing company. But, it looks like Zeller has them on clearance. You can order a sample directly from the company in Seoul here. Turnaround time is roughly 3 to 6 weeks, I had mine in 4. For $3 you can’t go wrong.

The price for the 64 page PeeWee notebook is $3.50USD, roughly the same price as a Field Notes or Moleskine Cahier but with significantly better paper and more pages.

If you are outside of the US you can find a vendor on this list.

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I love click erasers. I enjoy their plastic housing that holds a cylinder of wobbly eraser safe while I use the knock to ease out just a small amount of eraser. Inside the plastic housing the eraser stays clean, ready to clean up my drawings. Mostly, these click erasers work really well but are not all that easy to use to clean up detail areas. That is, until I picked up the Tombow Mono Zero rectangular ultra fine click eraser. This thing has a tiny slip of eraser, it’s 2.5×0.5mm in size (3/8×1/8 inches). In other words tiny.

The housing is also small. It’s black with a small tip of metal at the business end. The knock pushes out 0.7 mm of eraser per click. The eraser is Tombow elastomer eraser. It’s white plastic and the “crumbs” stick to one another and ever so slightly, the page, eliminating a lot of eraser mess. The crumbs can then be swept away with a soft brush or the side of a hand, depending on your preference. (A perfect use for those useless fan brushes IMO.) (This eraser also comes in a stainless steel or shiny metal looking body.)

This isn’t going to be the eraser you use to clean up large areas of page, rather this is going to be the eraser you use to clean the whites of the eyes in portraits, or reflections on glass. This is the eraser you’ll use to take care of the details. It might also be the eraser you use as an everyday carry with your pocket journal. This has been my use for this diminutive eraser. Because it is incredibly small and light weight I’ve been clipping it to the cover of my pocket journal and using it combined with a 2B mechanical pencil for sketching. The little eraser has been quite a workhorse for me. Cleanly removing pencil from the pages of my Field Notes and BanditApple Carnet. For small pocket sketching it’s been top notch.

As for cleanliness of the erasing, it does well on smooth paper. In Field Notes and BanditApple carnet minimal ghosting was apparent. However on rougher paper, like the Staples sticky note, which is quite rough, ghosting is apparent. Is it bad enough to not get one of these erasers? I don’t know. If you work on rough paper with graphite you might want to go with a rougher eraser, like the Papermate Tough Stuff  Eraser Stick.

While we’re at it, let’s talk price. I was able to pick up my eraser at Artist & Craftman for $5. I also bought a pack of refills for a few bucks, bringing my total to about $7. That’s pretty pricey, but I had been eyeing this eraser for a few months and in 2 weeks of frequent use I’ve used a very small amount of the eraser, about 2mm. The eraser is also available from JetPens for about $6 and Amazon for the same. Refills range in price from $2 at A&C to $5 on Amazon. Any way you look at it, it’s not a huge value, but it does a damn good job for what it is. In this case the function of this eraser makes it a worthwhile investment.

Over all, the minute form factor of this eraser is what really makes it worth the cash. Most other click erasers are encased in so much plastic that they are ten times thicker than the eraser encased inside. If you are putting together a pocket sketching and journaling kit, size matters.

A few months ago I won a Retro 51 Hex-o-Matic retractable pen. The pen is perfect for sketching while I’m on the T. With all the lurching and sudden stops of the T, I’m afraid I’ll jam a fountain pen and break the nib, so rollerball pens work best. I managed to burn through the refill in a short amount of time. After looking around online I realized I needed to look at the refills to figure out what would fit the pen. Basically, I learned it takes standard Parker type refills which are available just about anywhere. I headed into Bob Slate Stationers in Cambridge, Mass to look at their rack of refills and figure out what I liked.

I ended up buying a package of Parker Quink gel refills and a package of Quink Flow roller ball refills. I’ve not yet tested the Quink Flow refills but the initial testing of the Gel Ink has been quite favorable.

First the ink is very black. The tip lays down a very even line of ink. There is very little skipping. The only skipping I found was when I was writing at an extreme angle and over areas where there were fingerprints on certain paper. It wrote flawlessly in my Field Notes, Staples composition notebooks, and on scrap paper. The only paper it skipped on was my BanditApple Carnet and that only occurred in areas where I’d held the paper in place while drawing, so over my fingerprints. There was some light skipping over pencil line, and only the softer pencil. It wrote well over H and even HB pencil but not well over 2B or 4B.

Once on paper, the ink is relatively waterproof. I was able to lift a small amount with a waterbrush to get some light shading. Which is really cool but it also means that watercolor washes will lift and be “dirtied” by the ink. I have to say that the ink is neutral black and won’t dirty watercolor that much. I really like the idea of adding a thin waterbrush to my on-the-go kit.

If you are looking for an ink refill that is a sheer joy to write with, this is a go to refill. I’ve been using it for note taking in my graduate classes. It’s smoothness glides over the paper without skipping or slowing me down. If the Zebra Sarasa is my go to gel ink pen, this is one step behind it. (I’ve recently found Zebra Sarasa refills on Amazon, so I’m now stuffing those into every pen body I own. Sadly, they don’t fit into my hex-o-matic.) I’ve found myself reaching for my hex-o-matic over my fountain pens for the last few weeks, that should tell you how great this ink is for writing.

Anyway, these refills are quite nice, very affordable, and available just about anywhere.

Now you just need to pick a  decent pen to put them in, they will fit into a great number of pens. The classic Parker Jotter, the Retro 51 Hex-o-Matic, and a great number of other pens. I could go on and on about how wonderful it is to have a refillable pen and how much better it is for the environment.

I reviewed Scribal's Siren Blue ink a few months back. I used this ink almost exclusively in my recent grad school class. Except when my pen wouldn't write because it had dried out.

This is a perfectly colored ink, PERFECT. I would buy this ink in a quart size if only it's flow and lubrication were better. This ink makes my normally smooth pens feel scratchy and like I'm wearing off the tipping. It also makes my wet pens feel like they flow erratically and slowly, making them dry writers. It also makes every pen I've had it in a hard starter, even the pens with air tight caps. Pens that I've never had starting issues with, start hard, and often need water added to the nib to get them going. Frustrating.

Here are a few thigns I've tried:
5ml ink + 10 drops water (poor)
5ml ink + 2 drops dish soap (poor)
Decant 5ml of ink into a small container, add .5ml distilled water and 2 drops dish soap.(winner) This last option makes the ink flow much better but has worse performance on bad paper- more feathering and bleed. But it starts better, though not well or perfectly.

I am considering adding 1ml Camlin turq to 5ml Siren or 1 ml blue quink to 5ml Siren to see what I get. As is, nothing can flow as bad as the Siren on it's own.

I love this ink's color and qualities but damn if I can't keep my pens writing in grad school I'm screwed!

***UPDATE***
Immediately after writing this I mixed 1ml camlin turq + 1ml Quink blue + 5ml Siren. The color is indistinguishable from the original and the flow is better, dry out is gone, and my pens no longer feel like they are being sandpapered. Winner. I immediately mixed up 30ml of this blend. It iwll be my go to ink for school. Now I need another bottle of Siren.