My urban sketching bag, a Trespass Mini Belt Bag, just right for an A6 landscape Seawhite travel journal, a small box of Winsor & Newton watercolours and Pentel Aquash water brush, a Pentel brush pen and Lamy fountain pens filled with black De Atramentis ink, except the yellow Lamy Safari which has a regular Lamy ink cartridge.
Sadly the pen that didn’t make it into the final selection was my Lamy Vista with an extra fine nib. After several refills and flushings out the ink still isn’t flowing into the nib.
Why so many Lamy pens? Well I’ve got fine, extra fine and bold nibbed pens filled with sepia brown De Atramentis ink for natural history and another set filled with black for general sketching and for comics. Plus two for lettering and one with a non-waterproof black cartridge.
The Lamy ink in the cartridge just a bit more freely than the De Atramentis, so I use that for quick sketches when I’m not going to go add a watercolour wash, such as yesterday evening at the Wakefield Naturalists’ Society.
At one time I always carried some kind of of fibre tip pen with me, such as a Pilot Drawing Pen, but these days it’s just my three Lamy fountain pens – an AL-Star, a Safari and a Vista – with fine, extra fine and broad nibs. Fibre tips offer a degree of precision and convenience, until they start to dry up, but I find that a fountain pen feels more natural.
Vista
Extra fine nib
For natural history drawing, I usually go for my Lamy Vista with an extra fine nib which I keep filled with Noodler’s brown ink. Noodler’s becomes waterproof on contact with the cellulose in paper so I can add a watercolour wash. This gives a similar effect to a dip pen and Indian ink plus watercolour but a fountain pen is easier to work with as there’s no bottle of ink to either hold on to or to risk knocking over.
Lamy Vista
The Vista is a transparent version of the Safari so it’s even easier to check that the filler in the pen has enough ink in it when I set off to draw. At the moment this pen is filled with a mixture of Noodler’s black and El Lawrence brown (a kind of khaki, desert brown, named in honour of Lawrence of Arabia), because I had two half empty bottles and it’s easier to fill the pen from a full bottle. The black/brown mix reminds me of Pelikan Special Brown indian ink which I used for many years.
AL-Star
I keep the AL-Star, the aluminium version of the Safari, filled with black Noodler’s ink. This pen is fitted with a fine nib.
Safari
Lamy Safari with Z24 converter and broad nib, filled with Noodler’s Black ink.
For bolder drawing I’ve got a bright yellow Safari (difficult to lose) with a broad nib. This is the freest flowing of the three pens and the larger, rounded tip, as seen in my photograph taken with a microscope, enables it to glide across the paper.
I’M STILL getting used to my new pen, the Lamy Safari fountain pen. It’s great for writing because it flows so smoothly and the slightly italic nib gives a consistent broad downstroke and fine sidestroke but this presents a bit of a problem when drawing because it keeps wanting to go with its natural flow. For drawing I’m used to a pen which will happily go off in any direction, like the ArtPen with its sketch nib or a fibre tipped drawing pen. But I think that the Safari has possibilities either for a simpler and bolder approach, aiming at the sort of ‘clear line’ Hergé used in the Tintin comic strips (yes, wouldn’t it be great if a pen could help me draw like that! I guess you have to apply a certain amount of intellectual rigour as well as change your pen) or alternatively go the other way and try for a lighter, more diffident line.
For the moment I’ll have to make do with plain awkward.
