Tag Archives: paint pens

Overlay

12″x12″ 3 layers in green

Experiments with the new markers continue. The drawings here were done with the “transformer marker” which has an interchangeable head for nibs of different size. These were made with the 15mm nib. The ink is Liquitex Acrylic Ink, which I have been using not so much because I like it but because it is available at a local store. The ink is not bad, but it does not have some of the qualities I like in other inks. Drying speed is not something that I had thought would be important but I have found that the faster drying inks have a more even color. Anything that lets moisture sit on the paper tends to cause more severe buckling and leaves light or dark spots in the ink. The Liquitex ink is good but it does not compare to the Molotow ink on drying speed or opacity. Transparency is not bad though, and these drawings are based on that aspect of the ink. I am using multiple layers of the pen to get new and interesting shapes out of the overlay. The ink goes on very smooth through the chunky 15mm nib. Each successive layer goes on sharp as long as the drawing is allowed to sit between coats for the ink to fully dry.

12″x12″ Purple and Grey

With each layer I added a few more drops of brown ink to the pen

12″x12″

18″x24″

11″x14″

Here are a few in a smaller 8×10 format:

Some large drawings

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I have been having some fun with the Masterpiece 60mm marker. I quickly exhausted the speedflow black ink it came with. This ink has the best effect through a new nib. I was unable to get this quality of streaking with any of the other inks. All of the following drawings are 18″x24″ in size.

Seriously though, look at these streaks:

Then I experimented with the purple One4All ink. Straight out of the bottle it is a little too thick to flow easily in this pen. I thinned with water and got some good effects although it became too fluid when the nib was fully saturated. My favorite effects were when the nib was still mostly dry.

I added black paint in an attempt to get a thicker effect.

Finally I used a bottle of india ink for fountain pens. This produced a good color and and flowed very well through the nib.

New Pens!

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I just got a box of new pens!

New pens and extra nibs

I had been filling the Molotow pens with Liquitex acrylic ink but I wanted to try the Molotow One4All ink. Let me just say that there is no comparison. The Liquitex inks are transparent water based ink with good color. The One4All inks are smooth, fast drying, matte and very opaque. They are UV resistant and very permanent as well. Which is good, a lot of paint pens do not have archival quality ink. In fact I have had very bad luck with a few brands completely fading in moderate sunlight. I also have a long time gripe about Micron and similar pens not coming filled with enough ink or having crappy nibs that do not write easily. Then I found these and became very excited:

Where have you been my whole life?

These are replacement nibs for the Molotow One4All paint markers with PEN TIPS. It’s the same awesome permanent ink with a 1mm nib. In a refillable pen! Which means I can mix colors in the pen. Seriously, where has this been my whole life? And the pen tip writes VERY smooth. Very low drag, which is an issue that I feel is not addressed with other art pens. I require a pen to write very fast and it seems that archival pens are usually marketed with emphasis on nib size rather than smoothness. Only writing pens are designed to be low drag and fast on paper and these are usually filled with ink designed for speed, not for color fastness.

Look at it!

And FYI it could not be easier to switch out these nibs, you just pull out the original nib and insert the pen tip. Pump the pen a few times and the ink begins to flow. I will post more on my experiments with the pens later. The star out of this package is the Masterpiece 60mm marker. Look at this beast:

I guess this marker is designed for lettering/graffiti purposes, but I used it to make these:

UPDATE: Several people have asked, the pens came from ArtPrimo.com.

Small Ink drawings

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These are some more paint pen ink drawings. I used Molotow empty markers 111EM and 211EM filled with the Liquitex acrylic ink. These are smaller than the other ink drawings I made with these pens. These are 2.5″ x 3.5″ inches each. I worked on this set on September 28th, 2012 around 5:50 am. I was working fast and they are un-numbered so they are probably out of order. These are 18 of my favorites from that morning.

131 color ink drawings in 1:05

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I put some of my recent tri-color ink drawings in sequence. Flipping through them rapidly really shows the similarities and differences between each of the figures.

Tricolor drawings

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I just uploaded a whole bunch of new work to the drawings page. I am calling these tricolor because I filled a pen (empty Molotow 227) with a bright orange acrylic ink, then dipped the tip in a dark green ink. The effect is that the line starts our dark, mixes with the orange and then becomes orange. It allows me to use different colors without breaking the line or using multiple lines. Some of the drawings from 8/5/12 are multi-line but everything from 8/10/12 is single line with the colors mixing on the pen nib. Prior to now I had just been diluting my normal paints with water for use in the pens. It worked really well with some of the mop pens but I had not had a whole lot of success with the Molotows, which otherwise I liked because they have very even flow with not much drip. The watered down paint was just not bright enough. These “acrylic inks” are pretty bright though and the color is very even. These were all done on two days, August 5th and August 10th of 2012. Here are some of my favorites from the set (click on any of the images to go into the set or click here for the drawings page):

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The situation in the studio right now

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Still experimenting with the paint pens. My favorite so far is the On the Run 7mm. I am working on a set of prints that are 11″x14″ which is smaller than the prints I have been making. I did some sketches to get a better feel for that size. These are done with a very lightly water-thinned Phthalo blue:

: 02-25-12_2-30pm

: 02-25-12_2-33pm

: 02-25-12_2-42pm

: 02-25-12_2-53pm

: 02-25-12_3-05pm

: 02-25-12_3-05pm

: 02-25-12_3-13pm

: 02-25-12_untimed – this is done on 22×30 inch paper. The 7mm line is good at this scale.

The situation in the studio right now

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So I got some new toys:

The filled one is an On The Run 7mm. The replacement nips are next to it. The ArtPrimo mops are still in the bags in back.

I have been telling myself to check out refillable paint pens for awhile. I have had not so great luck with the regular kind filled with enamel paint with the pump action nib. I was never happy with the line quality and I found a lot of the colors would bleach out in the sun. But a lot of companies are now making refillable ones that you can fill with whatever you want. I checked out a bunch of different places online and ended up placing an order from ArtPrimo.com who have a great selection of empty markers. About $20 later I had an assortment of pens in 2 different sizes coming to my house. I started by just pouring the regular golden fluid acrylic in the markers. It works enough, but the line quality improved with a few drops of water.

So this happened:

After each layer I added one drop of black to the pen

This pen was the most fun to use. It was an 11mm nib with a super squeezy bottle. Big thick line.

One of the more successful multi color variations.

The light blue is more opaque because of the titanium added. The darker blue looks almost black where it overlaps the red.

So I am definitely still playing with these. They are capable of a very long stroke, far longer than a brush. I am not totally in love with the line quality but that may get fixed when I get the optimal water to paint ratio figured out. Still playing with it. I think the next will use lighter colors. These are all about 20″ x 30″ done on a heavy paper, 90lb cotton the same as I have been using for the prints. Here is a close up:

I may eventually get used to this line.