Japanese Pens

Hi fellow sketchers,

I wanted to share a product with you, but first, need to make a confession. There’s little I like more than new coats, cute, good fitting shoes (that make my big feet look smaller than they actually are) …………..AND……………..new art supplies. Especially drawing/sketching pens. Well, I’ve been successful in the coat department, not so much so in the shoe realm, but I struck gold in the pen section at the store just the other day. Artist & Craftsman Supply store in downtown Tacoma has these wonderful pens I haven’t seen before and after using the testers, I just had to have several. 3 Bimoji Fude pens in x-fine, fine and medium found their way into my bag as did a Hikkei pen . I’ve taken a couple of photos to show you how the lines look and also brushed (rather lightly scrubbed) water on after the ink was completely dry, to see how waterproof the ink is. I am rather pleased with the results. There’s very little bleeding. The Tombow pen I included on the chart, bleeds just a bit more and the lines become slightly defused. The tips of the Japanese pens are somewhat firm and less brush-like than that of the Tombow, (which is perfect for my tendency to use less of a light hand when I draw,) though they do have a bit of flex. In short, I believe I’m going to add these to my list of favorites to carry around. Oh, and the prices were right as well. $3.47 each for the Bimoji Fude pens and $2.08 for the Hikkei pen. If you’re in the neighborhood of the Artist & Craftsman Supply store, stop in and give them a try…..you may just like ‘em!

Happy Sketching –

Pat

Sketching in Canada

Last weekend we returned from Nanoose Bay (Vancouver Island) in British Columbia, located between Nanaimo and Parksville.  Our week away was to honor my husband’s birthday…one of those  decade-ending  ‘big ones.’  Now, back home in the real world of our lives, we spent another week  ‘catching up.’

But forget reality, let me share the dream of 'island time': We had early morning coffees on the bluff behind our cottage, watching deer munching tender young greens for breakfast. We walked about cities, towns, villages, and shores. We had a lot of meals in area restaurants and we coffee shop ‘hopped’ as we drove the up the west and east coasts of the island.  It was a week of ‘total vegging’ and enjoying ourselves.

  

I always had my trusty little 4” x 6” Pentalic sketchbook,  a Micron pen, a pencil, a few colored pencils (regular and water soluble), a  waterbrush, and a Tombow Brush Pen  in my shoulder bag, so it was easy to find time, here and there, to sketch. Product Reviews: The sturdy little Pentalic sketchbook handled all the mediums extremely well. 

Here’s some important information for my sketcher and painter friends: 

There’s a great art supply store, independently owned, (a rare beast, in other words) in Nanaimo, BC called Iron Oxide Art Supplies at #5 Victoria Road....should you ever NEED it.  The supplies there are professional quality.  I didn’t really need anything…but, I bought a Tombow brush pen (black ink). I learned the shop owner ‘knew her stuff’ (and was probably an artist herself) when she first confessed to being an ‘art supply junkie’ (like all of us?) and suggested “another approach to brush drawing would be to put different values of india ink in waterbrushes.”  I’m going to try that one of these days…but meanwhile, my first Tombow sketch is below, along with second one done in the same location with Micron .01 pen and colored pencil. 

My other sketches from the week can be found on our Urban Sketchers-Tacoma Flickr site at:

www.flickr.com/groups/tacomasketchers/