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Hello! A couple years ago one of the first inks I bought was Organics Studio Potassium, but the bottle that arrived was a completely wrong color. After a brief pics exchange with the seller I got a refund and put the defective ink away (I'm a hoarder I physically cannot get rid of any ink but through writing). The recent activity from my fellow countryman Sansenri, together with my newly-rekindled interest in bluish and purplish hues prodded me to attempt to re-create the correct color of Potassium starting from my defective bottle. This is the color I was starting from As you can see it's totally off. It's got nothing of the charming purplish, delicately lavender hue it's supposed to have. I needed a pretty purple... Rohrer & Klingner Cassia to the rescue! I grabbed an eyedropper, a sample vial and some demineralized water, and started mixing away, noting the results on some scrap paper. In the end I was very satisfied with this result. One added bonus is that the mixed ink goes down a pretty purple, and dries towards the blue end of the gamut. I love that! Cassia is extremely saturated, and the mixture potassium + cassia was the right hue but way too saturated and would not shade as much as I'd hoped, that's why I added so much water. The mixture sat in the vial for a few days and it is stable so far.

Last week we learnt how to draw a waterfall and this week we will stay with water and learn how to quickly draw a river/stream. It is again quite easy to do once few simple techniques are understood. So grab a pen and paper and follow along and enjoy discovering your creative side. Step 1: Drawing River/Stream OutlineDraw a tapered shape of outline as shown below as it is visually interesting. Step 2: Drawing River Bank.Depending on the location of viewer, usually, one bank of river is visible. Draw it by using vertical parallel lines to define the depth of the river bank. Step 3: Drawing WaterWater can be indicated using few simple overlapping lines as shown below. Make the lines follow the contour of river's bank. Step 4; Drawing FoliageIt is visually interesting to have something by river's edge that is reflected in water. A simple foliage works very well. It can be drawn using a combination of scribble for foliage and tapered darks for trunks. Vol 5. of my pen and ink workbook discusses drawing foliage in details. Step 5: Drawing ReflectionProper reflection in water is very important to bring out the feel of water. It can be drawn using horizontal lines as shown below. Draw reflection of foliage in water using the above technique. Step 6: Finishing with Other ElementsTo bring a finished feel, other elements like ground cover, distant tree line, stones, sky etc. can be added. This finishes this tutorial. Hopefully it inspired you to try these simple pen and ink drawings and find how relaxing, enjoyable and easy these are to do. My tutorials provide more information on drawing other elements of nature used above. Drawing is always more fun as a social activity. To share this with others and on your social media, pl. click here. Happy Drawing, Rahul www.pendrawings.me/getstarted

JETSTREAM & easyFLOW In my pursuit for a perfect ballpoint refill I’ve came across with these 2 brands: JETSTREAM & easyFLOW. Why ballpoints? Because sometimes you need something else then a fountain pen to write on different surface: like napkins, fabric, wood, skin, you never know when or where. So I have narrow down my options for these hybrid ballpoint refills. Both write smooth, dark lines and both have water-proof and sun fade-proof characteristics. uni-ball JETSTREAM was developed in 2003, it’s an evolution of their gel refill “Signo 207”. Can be found in medium or fine strokes, also the main refills can be adapted to replace gel refills like Pilot G2 or European standard roller-ball refills. The blue refills are actually blue, quit dark lines, black is almost true black. SCHMIDT® easyFLOW 9000 was introduced later, in July 2007. Their main characteristic is based on Parker style refill (large capacity refill size G2 as per the standard DIN EN ISO 12757), making them ready available for many ballpoints producers, without any modification. The blue refill is more on the purple side, but still a vivid colour, black is a bit much darker then JETSTREAM. Also easyFLOW smudge a bit more than JETSTREAM. Somewhere back in 2014 I had to use a pen to write a polite note for a car parked illegally on our parking lot at work (a standard A4 printed polite note where you need to write registration number, date and time). And I used a Parker Big Red roller ball. Big mistake, with a bit of rain all my writing was washed out, completely! The car’s owner comes down to check what was with that note on his car and all my writing was gone. That was the point to search for a better ballpoint refill with water-proof characteristics, smooth writing, fast drying and vivid colours. After a lot of research I bought my first two hybrid ballpoint refills: easyFLOW 9000 in blue and black. After a while I have found JETSTREAM to be as good as easyFLOW 9000, but for different pen body, like roller-balls or Energel, other than Parker style. That being said I run a test to prove water-proof and sun exposure fading test of these two refill brands. For this test I have used some common refills along with my 2 favourites. I have used normal paper and glossy paper (from a magazine). One normal paper and one glossy paper it was washed through heavy water after 2 minutes of writing have dry. Everything was exposed in a closed shed with windows, where the sun can reach for about 3-4 hours daily, when not cloudy. Also there is high humidity on our little island, temperatures varying from 25˚ summer to 8˚ winter times. Refills in test: Schmidt easyFlow 9000 blue Schmidt easyFlow 9000 black Uni-ball Jetstream 1.0 blue Uni-ball Jetstream 1.0 black Uni-ball Jetstream sport blue Uni-ball Jetstream 0.7 black Pentel Energel 0.7 blue Pentel Energel 0.7 black Schneider Topball 0.5 black Inoxcrom gel M black Fisher Space M black Faber-Castell B black Parker M black Parker Quinkflow M blue Parker M blue Lamy M66 black Senator M blue Zebra F-series blue Pilot G2 0.5 black Pilot G2 0.7 black After this test I will stick with easyFLOW and Jetstream as my main refills for ballpoints. Also Inoxcrom gel refill and Lamy are really good, recommend them. A big surprise is Parker Quinkflow failing so hard. The test was run in my condition, feel free not to accept my observations. Also if you click on the pictures you can download them from Flickr and enlarge them to see some close ups. Except on single photo, the rest are scanned. Starting test June and July 2016 Normal Paper running water, June 2016 Normal paper, photo, not scan, July 2016 Glossy paper, July 2016 Ending test December 2016 Normal Paper running water Normal paper Glossy paper running water Glossy paper

Hi All, Since Noodler's Waterproof Burgundy is no longer around, is there any waterproof (or incredibly water-resistant) burgundy ink on the market?? I've got waterproof inks in every major color except burgundy and it's driving me crazy! I'm also dreading the thought of having to mix my own with De Atramentis Document inks. Thanks!

Hi, I recently discovered I have quite a lot if moisture inside barrel of my M400 (behind piston in the shaft area). I have this pen for about 2 months now and cleaned it ca 4-5 times - with nib unscrewed and pen body under water tap. Is the connection between filling knob and barrel supposed to be watertight or is this normal? Problem is on M400 the piston part cannot be easily removed, unlike simple unscrewing on M800 so I cannot simply wipe it with paper towel. Do you have any proven methods or suggestions how to get rid of it? Leave the pen with filling knob fully unscrewed for few days maybe?

I've seen a couple of videos on YouTube (The Pen Habit) where they only use the ink of the pen for lubrication when using micromesh, and videos (by SBREBrown) where he uses an eyedropper to put water on the micromesh before putting the nib to the micromesh. Which way is more correct/better?

Hi, Slightly off topic, and of no earthly use, but The Slo-Mo Guys have just released a nifty video of them squirting ink into a fish tank and filming the results at high speed. Very relaxing to watch! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzkB574jivA Thanks, Max

Hi, my first post to this great network Right now I'm searching for 4 inks for an long time travel. So I grabbed my Inks and did an quick test. Sorry for the bad pictures, the weather is quite cloudy so I hadn't had the best light. Album here : http://imgur.com/a/ULui4 Test Setup: http://i.imgur.com/bbb12aj.jpg The final Product: http://i.imgur.com/h9pfwjB.jpg And the paper under water: http://i.imgur.com/S9cnXul.jpg And after some dry time (bad image .. will try to snap a new one with better light): http://i.imgur.com/hLZaBYp.jpg

Hi, I have a ton of Noodler's bullet-proof inks, now I am looking for a ink, especially blue ink, that's at least water resistant. An ink I could address an envelope to be mailed by snail mail, and not worry if the envelope got rained on. And also not worry if the pen somehow leaked a little ink and got on my shirt. I could simply wash out the ink stain when doing my laundry.

Hello. I was looking into buying a Viconti Opera Elements Water Fountain Pen (M). I noticed that the ones they make now are significantly cheaper, but come in a steel nib. I am looking for one with a palladium or 14K gold nib that is on sale for a reasonable price. Here in Japan, I can find ones with the gold nib, but they are sold at retail. I would appreciate any information on where I could possibly find one. Thank you in advance.

Is it alright to use bottled water in order to flush a fountain pen? Or should I just use tap water? I don't have distilled at the moment