I love art supplies and am constantly looking for omphalos, the center of the universe, in this wonderful area. I am digging working with ink, as I have mentioned before. I guess its a throwback to ink stained hands in high school and college with my studies in calligraphy with Arnold Bank. But, now its the same idea...but new! I get to draw what I want to, versus copying forms and putting them together so as to be able to replicate what people without printing presses had time to do. Seems somehow anachronistic with our technology transcending movable type ten fold. I mean, we can output, scan, put things together "on the fly", we have electronic delivery, we have the internet. Where does calligraphy (ink on paper) belong? If you view calligraphy as the study of the "art of beautiful letters"--it is then a different story. But to my mentor, it begins and ends on a blank sheet of paper...
Calligraphy is the autographics of alphabetics. . . . Calligraphy is simply the art of writing,or of sketching and drawing transferred to the use of letter design, on the beautiful blank of a fine sheet of paper. . . . Now in doing it, it has to be clear and it has to be beautiful."
Arnold Bank (1908-1986)
But, I transgress...
Back to ink. I have extolled ink and the possible new medium, Noodlers. I am now a proud parent of a wonderful Rotring pen and a Pentel Pocket Brush. The Rotring is nice...very smooth and semi flexible. It is nice in the hand and has a nice black ink that comes with it. The Pocket Brush was picked up at the british art supply store I mentioned last week on the fly...but I figured, 1. It was refillable/check; 2. It could run up against the fab Faber Castell Black Pitt Pen...and not need a slew of them at various levels of being dried out; 3. was affordable. I plugged in the cartridge today and wwooooooooowwwwwww! Black black, smooth, kind of wiggly brush so I can get points and flats, thins and a thick about 1/2 wide. Then I did a little look see on the web to see what others say:
To summarize: The Pentel Pocket Brush pen is one of the greatest sketching tools that has been discovered. Sadly, this pen is scarce in North America, and those lucky enough to have found it are revered as holy men. Read more (this guy nails it)>>
Buy them at Wet Paint>>