Colorful Obsessions

Making inky brush pens.

Note to those who read these via email. Sorry, I made this too long so if you want to read the whole thing you have to click through to the Substack website which should be a prompt somewhere in this email (most likely at the bottom?) but also, I am putting it right here for you.

This week I was going to do a post about doing this substack/newsletter/blog (whatever it actually is) for a whole year, but I am behind on some deadlines so I need to be working and not playing today. Womp womp.

So instead I will share my current obsession with you. It’s not really a new obsession, my obsessions tend to be cyclical. I’ll be really into something for awhile and then completely abandon it for some other shiny thing. So this is one of those obsessions that’s come back around.

And that obsession is: Refillable Brush pens.

There are two kinds (well probably more than two but I am going to lump them into two categories)

Water brushes repurposed to hold ink:

Any kind is fine, but I like the simple pentel (or sakura) ones best. The Derwent ones are more expensive, and honestly, not that much better. The generic ones generally suck and are way messier but they are the cheapest if you’re on a budget.

And brush pens filled with ink that is not the ink it came with:

Pentel and Kuretake makes the ones I know best, but there are others out there too.

In the past I’ve mostly used water brushes with ink in them but they tend to be messy and hard to control. They dump out massive quantities of ink when I really don’t want them to – which, can be fun if you want chaos, but can also be messy and annoying when you don’t want it.

Brush pens filled with different inks are less messy, although they too can put down lots of ink, they are just easier to control.

I usually just put grey ink in these and use them to add some tone to line drawings.

Like these from back in April when I was drawing on a cold and windy beach.

But recently I’ve been adding colors. Individually, you can use them like markers. Fun and easy to add color while sitting on the couch.

These were indeed doodles while sitting on the couch watching TV.

BUT! The magic comes when you layer them all together. The colors you mix have a fun depth to them that you can’t get with just flat colors. Bits of each color peek out, the mixes aren’t perfect, there’s a subtle texture to it all that just makes everything more interesting.

Testing colors, trying to find a red, yellow, blue combo I like.

I was also testing different dip & fountain pen nibs while playing with colors.

Could I just use markers and get this same effect? Probably, but I like these better because I can use up my hoard of fountain pen ink and there are so many pretty colors. I’ve only experimented a bit with the inks I have, but so far my favorite combo of inks is:

I like having a red, yellow, and blue for layering. And sometimes I use the green as my yellow for different color mixes.

I think lighter colors tend to work better for getting the layering effect. When I want to get them darker I just keep layering til I get it as dark as I want…although at some point you are limited by the lightness of the colors.

The darkest crow is also the one I think is the least interesting because you don’t get the fun texture like the other crows. I used a darker blue for the darker crow.

If you want to make your own and have water brushes laying around, just fill them up with some ink. You can dilute it with water, which can sometimes help them not be as messy and sometimes make them more messy, your mileage may vary.

Dip pen inks and acrylic inks tend to impossibly clog and ruin the pens after awhile. Liquid watercolor could also work, I’ve used Ecoline ones before.

Another annoying thing is that sometimes water brushes leak from the threads. You can solve this with a little silicone grease on the threads before you close the pen up.

If yours is leaking, you want to put silicone grease on the threads where it is leaking. You can buy silicone grease at most places you can buy fountain pen-related stuff (And also, probably, the hardware store)

But, I like brush pens (like the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen) much better. They come with black cartridges but after you use up the cartridge (or if you are too impatient and just want to put in another color right away) you can rinse them out and refill them with whatever ink you want using a blunt syringe. Easy peasy.

Kuretake also make brush pens which are lovely, the brush is slightly smaller than the Pentel Pocket Brushes and a bit easier to control. Plus it will take a platinum converter which makes them easier to refill. But, they are also twice (if not more) as expensive as the Pentel Pocket Brushes, so, as you can see, I have way more of the Pentel ones. You can also get piston-filled brush pens (you dip the pen in the ink and use the piston to pull it up into the body of the pen) but the one I have is horrible, I don’t recommend it. I think I got them in a pack of 5 for super cheap a few years ago and they just don’t work as well as the Pentel or Kuretake ones.

My collection of ink-filled brushes of various types.

Ok, now that I have made this post more complicated than I needed to and spent way more time on it than I meant to, I will get back to work. (Ok, this is not true, somewhat responsible Zara is writing this on Thursday night so that she can spend all of Friday working. So what I really mean is now I will go to bed.)

If you make some inky brush pens, I’d love to see what you do with them! And if you go back to a few weeks ago, you’ll see that I did the comic from when I was in Minneapolis with my brother with these pens. Messy and fun.

Also, no, I don’t know why I am obsessed with drawing birds and cats right now. I just am. Which is funny, because I don’t really like birds OR cats. I mean, I like birds from afar, where they can’t swoop at me or poop on me and cats where they can’t swipe at me, or touch me. I like to watch both of these creatures, I like to draw both of these creatures, but I do not want either of these creatures in my house.

(Yes, I do have trauma related to things that fly, why do you ask?)

Anyway, I’m getting loopy, so, see you next week!