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  Sketch CarbonationDec 27, 2013 12:40 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Whoops, I just noticed I probably drew this guy way too similarly to the guy on the beach. Uh. His pecs are totally different. Also his chin and hair, kinda. Yeah. He looked unmistakeably different at first, but it was different in a badly drawn mutant sort of way, so I redrew his head and it came out um more like every other head I draw, neat.
 
Sketches! More agonizing over whether or not to go crawling back to pen--but I can't really see black ink working well on these, I think it would really break up the whole lighting effect you get with watercolors. Anyway I pulled out my old Carbon Pen that I got back when I was in the midst of my big pen obsession uh a year or more ago now, probably. It's got a metal nib point, a tiny "extra fine" one, but it doesn't gouge into paper like most metal nibs I've tried, and it also takes ink cartridges, so you don't have to dip it in ink and risk spattering and dripping and all that. Hadn't used it in ages but it started up just fine (whereas my School G that lots of people seem to swear by, which I used much more recently, is totally clogged now, pfft), and it draws a heck of a nicer line than those fiber-tipped Tikky Graphic pens I'd been using for sketches and stuff. Like, ridiculously nicer; it basically fixes the things that were bugging me with the Tikkys: lines breaking up, and pooling at corners, primarily. And it glides and writes much nicer on hard paper, like the Bristol I've been using for watercolors. (The sketchbook here is softer paper though.) Its specially formulated ink has great flow, but isn't the darkest black ink in existence; it is nicely waterproof, at least, which is highly unusual for fountain pens.
 
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But then I went and tried inking with it over some pencil sketches, and although it moves multidirectionally much more easily than most metal nibs I've tried, it still doesn't *quite* move any which way with equal freedom, and I wasn't able to match the flow of the pencil lines. And then I did this little pencil sketch
 
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and realized there was no way I was gonna be able to ink that effectively with anything. : P Go go pencil power!
 
I may try some more sketchbook sketching with the Carbon Pen, though. And as far as inking in the actual A* pages goes, lately I've been semi-inking some of the lines with watercolor, which I'm finding nice to use--it's so thin it flows into fine lines effortlessly, whereas the very black ink I use is a bit on the thick side, and can be tough to get down in thin lines; I could water it down, of course, but I can't really bring myself to do that and lose the inky blackness. : P
 
EDIT: Oh yeah and my 8408 brush came, which is basically a skinnier version of the 8404 I've been using; intended for fine linework, the tip really does go down to a single hair tip. But when I tried it with watercolor, I guess it just didn't hold enough fluid to push color through that narrow tip, because I couldn't get consistent fine lines with it. I've yet to try it with ink but I kinda think it'll have even more trouble there.
 
 
 
 
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