Pens tested:

• Sharpie Brush Pens- Green, Purple, Blue
• Copic Cad Yellow Brush Pen
• Zig Clean Color Brush Pen: Bright Yellow, Prussian Blue, Green
• Uniball Signo DX .28 Bright Blue, Black .18, .28, .38
• Several Create-a-color 5.5mm Leads

Method:
I drew lines, scribbles, and a block of color on acid free archival
paper. The page was cut in half. the loose page was placed in a south
facing window that gets full sun for the majority of the day.I placed
the sheet in the window on August 30th, 2012. I took it down on
September 13th, 2012.

Let’s
start with the good. There was no color shift in any of the
Create-a-color leads. No worries there. The Uni-ball pens also had no
color shift, not even the bright blue color. The gris Nuage ink by J
Herbin also showed no signs of color shifting. This is a second test for
this ink. I like to affirm my previous tests, just in case.

The
bad. Let’s start with the Sharpies. Sharpie makes no lightfastness
claims. They don’t even bother with claiming their markers are archival.
No claims, no surprises. The green had major color loss. The purple was
mostly magenta after 2 weeks. The blue showed off some major color loss
and change. This was all expected. These are not lightfast. Do not
consider it archival and do not use it in finished art.

The
next on my list of bad is the Copic Cad Yellow marker. In the art world
Cad Yellow is not considered a fugitive color. In fact if you find a
painting with cad yellow in it from 200 years ago, that color is likely
to be still true to the day it was placed, depending on where it was
stored yada yada yada. The copic yellow marker had a major color shift
in 2 weeks and lost much of it brightness. What was left was a pale
yellow ghost. In some areas, where I’d had a light touch the color was
completely gone. The layered areas also showed color change and loss.
The Copic marker is not lightfast. Do not consider it archival, do not
use it in finished art.

The
next series of markers that are in the bad category were the Zig Clean
Color Brush markers. Zig makes a great deal of archival markers for the
scrapping market. I had to test them. In 2 weeks the color of the bright
yellow was completely gone. As in a shadow remained, as in you couldn’t
 tell a color had been there, unless you already knew. The Prussian
blue and the green showed a great deal of color shift and loss. The
black, perhaps the most disappointing of all, turned purple and was well
on it’s way to disappearing. Zig does not advertise the Clean Color
markers as archival, light fast or even acid free; simply watebased. As
such I’m sure I can say with confidence that you shouldn’t consider them
any of the above either. Again, don’t use these in finished art pieces.

What
does this all mean? You can go ahead and use these in your art journal
and sketchbook- any place that will be kept out of sunlight, but be
aware that these could shift color if exposed to any strong sunlight,
really for any period of time. Let’s face it, even in the summer
Massachusetts  sun is not considered all that tough and tougher pigments
and dyes often outlast it. I’d also caution you to be aware of buying
art from people who use Copics in their finished pieces, they were
initially made for the marketing world, where finished art is often
tossed after it’s been photographed. The markers did not need to be
lightfast. Now that people are using them for other art, Copic should
really consider making their markers lightfast.

In college I took a figure drawing summer course. The professor came up from the Savannah School of art to enjoy the Maine summer and teach 3 classes: figure drawing and 2 sections of monotype. In the figure drawing class he carried a simple china marker. He would, after asking permission draw on top of our sketches with his china marker. Je liked them because they wrote over everything, leaving behind a bold line. It also helped that they were dirt cheap. I don't remember what brand he used but he carried a variety of colors, red, blue and black.

A few weeks back I was in Artist and Craftman and found a cup full of them in a variety of colors, around 70 cents each. I  picked up a white and a yellow. The yellow is lightfast and I'd assume the white to be as well.

I've been using these on toned pages to add some delicate colors back into my ink drawings. They  look a lot like chalk but aren't dusty or smudgey.These are a great way for art journalers to add white to a page when they don't want the look of a ultra fine line pen.

I found multicolor 12 packs on amazon for less than $10.

I
like Kuretake waterbrushes so I thought these might be neat. I order 4
colors: yellow, green, blue and black from Jetpens. Pricing was $3.30
per pen. I do not know if these are available anywhere else. They come
in single colors from Jetpens as well as a larger package that has an
attractive hard translucent case.

I
got a mix of styles of these pens, some new and some old style. The new
style has a clear cap and a matching color section on the pen itself.
While the old style has a grey section and a color cap to match the
color of the pen. I have to say I like the clear caps better, they
simply look sharper. Not all of my pens came shrink wrapped. I think
this is a just a matter of new and old stock being mixed in the same bin
and it was no big deal.

The
brushes aren’t as springy as say my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen or even my
Kuretake waterbrushes but they provided a nice fine to broadline. The
ink is watersoluble and when adding water to it you can get some really
nice watercolor like effects. My favorite part of these were how well
they responded to water.

The
colors on their own are deep and bold. They don’t layer well, though
they are mostly transparent. They just don’t mix well, which is sad, because
they have so much potential to be a really cool sketching tool. If I
could layer the blue and yellow and green to get various shades of color
it would add another layer of depth. I did mix them with water and
found that each color did mix to give a sort of primary school like
color blend. A search found that there are 95 differnt colors available, many shades of the colors of I purchased. With a few more colors I'm pretty sure these would make for an expesive but complete sketching option.

Instead
of using these like watercolors I decided to approach them like alcohol
markers, layering them in bright bold colors, much like I did with the
sharpie brush markers. The effect is much like with any brush marker,
bright and bold, lots of great line weight and essentially looking
pretty good. In another instance I worked them like watercolors and was pleased with the results. The ink really moves around on the page well.

These
had a lot of variation in the amount of ink applied, when moving really
fast I was able to get some nice texture from the paper.

I
do not know if these are lightfast or not. I’ve got a card up in a
window so I’ll know in a month or 2. I expect major color shifting
across the week. In a month I expect major color loss as well. I do not
expect these to be lightfast, though I know that other ZIG markers are
lightfast. These are not made for the American market so it could be
that they simply do not label them as such.

I
like these, but like any brush marker they are for sketching only, at
least until I know they are lightfast. I do really enjoy sketching with
them. You get clean consistent color without fading like when you mix
your own watercolors. If you get it on your hands it washes right off.
The way the ink applies is great for landscapes and figure drawing. The
pen is not refillable.

All
that being said I find I’m being pulled in by these big bold colors.
I’ve been working black and white or with lots of crazy color lately,
these pens will add fuel to the crazy color fire  I’ve been burning.

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I picked up a bottle of Platinum Carbon Black ink from a new vendor, Gumwater, more on them at the end of the review. When the ink arrived on my doorstep I immediately cleaned out my fine nibbed TWSBI 540 fountain pen and loaded it up. I found the ink to be black, very very black. It’s relatively well behaved on all my sketchbook papers with some minor soak and show through on my Field Notes, but that is to be expected with Field Notes. I didn’t notice feathering on any of paper that I’ve tested it on so far.

I did notice some lift when I was putting a watercolor wash over the top of it. I suspect this is because it hadn’t dried fully. What little did lift was a neutral gray color and thus didn’t turn the color of the watercolor off.

The ink lubricated the pen well. I never felt like I was writing on sandpaper but I didn’t feel like I was writing on glass either. That might change if I was loading it into a different pen.

If I were to rate the darkness of the black inks I have in my possession I’d rate them as follows:

1. Platinum Carbon Black
2. Noodler’s Black
3. Noodler’s Heart of Darkness
4. Pelikan Fount India
5. Chelpark Permanent Black
6. Pelikan Black in International Long Cartridges

Platinum Carbon Black is a carbon basesd ink, which means it's pigmented with microscopic particle of carbon, which gives it the deep black color. Pigmented inks are a little more high maintenance in fountain pens. If you put a pigmented ink in your pen you'll need to clean the pen a little more often and watch to be sure it's not getting mucked up. Honestly though, I've been using Pelikan's Fount India regularly for 6 months now and I can say I've noticed no long term ill effects from using a pigmented ink in my pens, and I don't clean my pens regularly, nor do I use them everyday. I take all dire fountain pen warnings with a grain of salt.

The price of Platinum Carbon is, well, not cheap. I pulled the trigger on it because Gumwater was having a sale on it in their “Daily Drop.” Their daily drop puts one item in their inventory on deep discount for a day. The ink itself was $16.50 for 60ml, minus my Fountain Pen Network discount of 5% for a total of $15.68. Which if you look at a few places on the ‘net you’ll find that is anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 the regular price of Carbon Black. Shipping was reasonable as well $4.41 for priority mail shipping. So I got a very expensive ink for $20. If you order over $50 Gumwater does shipping for free. If I’d known I was going to like the ink as much as I do I’d have ordered 3 bottles to get it over the $50 mark.

The ink was packaged very well. The small ink bottle was nestled in it’s own box and swaddled in bubble wrap then put inside a small sturdy box. The box arrived in good shape and quickly. I ordered on June 6th and received it on June 11th.* It was fast shipping. Overall I was pretty happy with Gumwater’s service. Their prices are reasonable, they packaged the items well and they arrived to me fast. One thing that I didn’t like was that every interaction with them was peppered with bible quotes. I’m not against religion but I’m against it being shoved in my face at every turn. I find religion to be a very personal thing so to have it on an invoice and packing slip feels a little strange to me. I mean why risk offending a customer with a differing religion?

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This winter I decided to test the lightfastness of many of my inks and a few pencils. I thought I’d lost the test sheet but it turns out I had stuck it to a different window when I had checked it. The results are interesting.

Not lightfast, showing large color shifting or significant fading:

• Chelpark Turquoise
• Camlin Royal blue
• Pilot G2 blue
• Sharpie Ultra Fine Point Blue

Color shifting but line seems the same:

• Loew Cornell Fine Point Marker
• Sharpie Ultra Fine Point Black
• Flying Colors Focus 0.5mm
• Corner Office Black

No change:

• Pentel Hybrid Technica
• Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (pentel ink)
• Permapague black fine point
• Faber Castell Pitt Pen Sepia
• Staples Gel mini- black
• Sharpie China Marker
• Derwent Graphitone
• Derwent Pastel Pencil
• Pelikan Fount India

The handbook paper which is acid free and a bright white color is now slightly  yellowed.

I just got my hands on a Uni-ball Kuru Toga mechanical pencil from Jetpens, a great place to buy Japanese office supplies. This is a pencil that rotates its lead for you, so you don’t need to rotate the pencil to keep an even thickness. This is more of an issue, if like me, you write with your mechanical pencils at an angle. I will admit to being skeptical to the necessity of this mechanism, having tried it, I see a huge difference in the evenness of my writing.

It’s a sharp looking (see what I did there) pencil. The point area is shiny chrome with an inset o-ring in the same color as the colored part of the body. Moving up the grip area is matte aluminum with some wave like indents. I was skeptical that this would feel good, but I was proved wrong, after an hour of sketching and writing I found that the wave like grooves were quite comfortable. At the lower part of the grip is a window to an orange piece. I couldn’t figure out what this was until I started to USE the pencil, there is a little icon that every 20 strokes of the pencil circles through the window, showing you that the lead is in fact rotating. Pretty cool stuff. Without this I’d be hard pressed to even notice that the lead was moving.

The body of the pen is a shimmery pink. This pen is perfect for people who like shimmer mists spray ink, it looks like a solid version of glimmer mists. It shimmers in the light. You know how I feel about shimmery stuff… For a pencil I can allow it, I might even like it.

The clip is shiny silver and sturdy, it has held the pencil to my MTNKO and in my bag without issue. The “knock” or clicker thingie is plastic affixed to a tube of metal that when removed reveals a mini eraser. Uni’s mini erasers are actually quite effective at removing pencil lines, but since mini eraser is mini, it gets used up fast. I always keep a click eraser nearby when using mechanical pencils. The click or knock itself is a satisfying clicky noise that pushes out roughly .5mm with a click.

I really like this pencil, I really like how my writing stays even when using it. It’s not the best for sketching that utilizes a lot of subtle shading as shading and a soft touch defeat the rotation mechanism. To rotate the pencil needs to be lifted from the page, the pressure of your writing or sketching is what causes the rotation. If you write in cursive you are not going to activate the rotation. This pencil is great for printing and works best when doing so. However for my abysmal printing cursive (in which I connect a lot of my letters and print many too) it works great. It also works well for cross hatching and general sketching. Being able to defeat the rotation mechanism and shade softly is a nice touch while sketching.

Uni offers several different versions of this pencil at a variety of price points, you really need to click over to the Jetpens page and scroll to the diagram section where there are several cartoons of frustrated students using other pencils that don’t rotate. Worth the laugh. For those of you who like flowers they offer this pencil with flowers on a shimmery barrel. You can thank me later.

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Basics:

• 9×12 inches, 60 Warm White sheets to a Coil bound pad
• $8.99 at AC Moore
• 70ld/114gsm
• Perfed pages
• Acid free blah blah blah

It seems Canson has a “true to size” sheet thing on almost all of it’s pads now. So if it’s marked 9×12 inches on the cover the sheet you tear off is actually 9×12 inches. This is a really really great thing. I always have hated that many pads would lose a ½ to full inch to the perf. I really like that.

The paper responds well to ink, nibs are true to size and there is no spread or feathering nor soak through on these pages. The paper is not glassy smooth but has enough tooth to accept pencil and charcoal well. It accepted watercolor well, but did show some cockling that did not even out completely when dry. Though it did flatten quite a lot, so that it’s just slightly wavy.

I really enjoyed how this paper accepted ink and watercolor. The watercolors really look great on it’s warm white color and ink melds with the paper in such a way to just look like it’s been there awhile.

 
I’ve been testing several new pens on it and I really  like that the nibs stay true to size and don’t spread all over the place when testing them. Even when my Noodler’s flex pens were flexed to their widest and bleeding ink onto the pages, there was no soak through or bleed through. I can’t stress that enough. It was pretty amazing to find an easily available pad that accepts ink as well as this and for a relatively inexpensive price compared to other fountain pen friendly paper.

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