Of Inks

Regularly, I alternate between different inks depending on the coloring medium, paper, or where I’m drawing.

Recently, I got a hold of these:



Faber Castell PITTs. India-based ink, comes in a large assortment of sizes. In the 8 pack, I don’t like the soft brush or soft chistle as I have no control over my strokes with them. The other large size I only use to write signs, but it’s good for filling in black spaces, I guess.

India ink is water proof, but not 100% alcohol proof. On many paper types you need to let the inks dry for a few hours before grinding your markers on it like I do. If you just color flats or do light blending, the ink holds off pretty well! On mixed media paper, the inks still smeared from my markers a day after inking.

Faber Castells are my go-to markers for moleskine paper and watercoloring.



This is the smaller pack of the pens. Has three nib sizes plus the classic brush which is awesome for thickening some of the lineart. The bigger pack has an Extra Small (XS) nib which I find nice for fixing some jagged lines.



More india ink, Speedball wasn’t fucking kidding when they put “Super black” on the label. It’s gorgeously black. I use this at home when I’m drawing larger things (like a character portrait on 9x12 bristolboard) or on textured paper like watercolor pads. I can’t get regular pen strokes to stay consistent when I draw large or on bumpy surfaces, so this does the job and so nicely.

But wow does this ink suck with alcohol markers! I inked a commission with this, colored it almost two weeks later and the lines STILL smeared. I think the same thing happened with mixed media paper. Watercolors won’t budge it, though.

I found Acrylic ink to be better with markers but you have to shake the bottle regularly because whatever dry bits come up will mix in and you’ll be inking with little black specks.



Pigma Dengars. You will find yourself replacing these a lot, but they are cheap and are totally marker proof. They’re even completely marker proof in more paper types than copic pens and stroke over textured surfaces better than other pens. Do not diss the pigmas. The brush pen… I don’t like it too much. I just manually vary line widths by juggling the other pen sizes.

Most of mine are dead right now, so I’m currently using the Faber Castells for my marker work. Carefully.



Copic Multiliners. They come plastic disposable and metal refillable.It lasts a bit longer, the ink is a little blacker than microns, and if I remember correctly, a copic representative said that their 0.05 pen is the smallest nib in the whole technical pen market. It is of course Marker proof.

I bought three of these about three years ago, I think. a 0.05, a 0.3, and a brush. the brush dried out quickly with the brush itself getting too busted to be useful for details anyway, and the 0.05’s nib also broke so I couldn’t use that one anymore. I kept the 0.05 in a drawer, and when my 0.3 ran out of ink, I swapped the cartridges.

Owning the metal copic multiliners is like owning a set of Samsung electronics. As good as they are, If you’re a clumsyfuck, you’re going to break them.

For a while, my technical pen set was basically a Micron 005, Copic 0.3, and microns 05 and 08.



I also have the Rotring art pen you gave me a while back, but its last ink cartridges have dried up. I have the pen itself stashed as a keepsake.

New Markers

I ordered some Letraset ProMarkers a few weeks ago, but shipment was delayed since a bunch of them were out of stock at the time I ordered. Even after the delay, the order was split into two shipments. Today I received six markers. The other fourteen are coming on Monday (i think i said 26 in a tweet earlier forgetting I bought a 12-set and not a 24 one)

Katzii was telling me about these markers for a while and sent me the original comic drawing of the Banjo-Kazooie/Chocolate Pudding 4am crossover (I can’t take it out now, I have it secured between skechbooks in one of my bins until I get my own bedroom to hang it up). The colors were so nice and smooth, like flat digital coloring. I wanted to try them myself!

If you follow us both on twitter, you’ll see WE’RE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT MARKERS :D

I was going to go with the flex markers originally, which have brush tips, but the promarkers had more colors and were cheaper atwww.dickblick.com, so i was able to get more colors for the $50 I had budgeted for them.

They feel a little lightweight compared to prismacolors and copics, have the fine tips like prismacolors and chisel tips like copics, and do not emit obnoxious smells when you color with them (unlike Chartpak, though I last used those nine years ago). I don’t think I can properly describe how the ink flows out of the pen. It’s like kind of heavy and consistent to where you can lay down flat color pretty quickly and not see any streaks, and if you miss a spot and fill it, you’ll barely notice. If you shade through layering the same color, it will take a few layers and that’s after you let the first layer dry. If you shade with assorted colors, these markers blend really well on absorbant paper like the other brands, but probably better because the tips are really wet.

The 12-set comes with an added colorless blender, but since that didn’t arrive yet, I blended the greys on Azu-Maya with a copic blender and it worked out really well!

I’m gonna try more paper types over time, so far I’ve only scribbled on Mixed Media paper and computer paper. It took a little getting used to but I am really loving the results! I can’t wait for the others to come in, but it’s also fun seeing what color schemes I can whip up with the six I have now.

More info on the Letrasets including colors and different marker types can be found on their website. Blick has the markers for $2.61 per single.

And enjoy the most recent snapshot of my workstation.