new drawing pens and pencils

Having found the best pens to use on this handmade paper ___the Uni-ball Signo UM-151 gel ink pens___ I ordered a couple more colors of them. They are waterproof when used with watercolor, and come in .28, .38, and .5 nibs.

At Jet Pens, I also found these two pencils. The long 2-pointed Auto Point Turnpoint Mechanical Pencil has a .7 graphite lead at one end and a .9 red lead at the other. I thought I would replace the red lead with a softer 2B graphite for wider, darker pencil lines. The Ohto Wooden  Mechanical Pencil Mini is very tiny! Fits easily inside my favorite watercolor palettes for on-the-go sketching.

New Video up on YouTube

I did this one to go in Lesson One in my upcoming Ink and Watercolor Mini-class--thought you might like a sneak peek!

Playing with ballpoint and watercolor...who says you have to have a fancy pen? I picked these up at my local discount store.

Watercolor Paper and Ball Point Pen

Re-posting form my blog:


My last couple of sketchbooks were a little odd - craft paper or thin dry media paper (though I gave it quite a lot of watercolor and gouache coverings:) And I longed for a good old white sturdy watercolor surface to work with. When the time came quick review of the "reserve" box showed that I have this watercolor "Pen and Ink" horizontal book stored - COOL! I splashed some color right on the first spread!
However most of the pens in my "usual rotation" were bleeding, scratching, and overall misbehaving. While running some tests I picked up bic ball point and... what can I say - 1/3 of the book is filled now and most of it is black and white, done with the same bic ballpoint... see below :)

Journaling on 'Whitelines' Paper

We picked a great day to go to the beach on Hilton Head Island, SC.  Instead of a mid-week visit, we chose Saturday.... the day of check out/check in for vacationers. While everyone else was stuck in traffic on Route 278, we and a decent amount of people were enjoying a beautiful day at the beach :)

On the technical side...
I made this journal entry in a new journal by WHITELINES. This is a Swedish company that makes a toned paper using white for lines. They also offer paper with grids (squared), isometric lined notepads and perspective lined notepads. There are many choices of binding: hard covered spiral, soft covered flexible and glued pads.

The paper has a nice feel. I estimate it to be about 24# in weight. I've been using Pentel energel and Signo uniball ballpoint pens on it and have experienced no smudging. The ink in these pens is water soluble. Micron pens remain waterproof on it's surface.

I used watercolor pencils on the page above with minimal water using a Niji waterbrush. The paper did buckle but, that was no surprise. I think colored pencils would really work well on this surface, perhaps even pan pastels. When you turn the page over you can see a little bleed through, but not nearly as much as you do with Moleskine's regular journal paper.

WHITELINES claims that when pages are copied or scanned the white lines and toned background will disappear.

Click to enlarge

As you can see above, that was not the case when I scanned the page at my scanners normal settings. I had to lighten the overall exposure of the original scan, lost some subtle tones, but the page on the right is a lot cleaner looking.

I do like how the ink really stands out on the paper. And the toned surface is easier on your eyes versus looking at dark lines on a white surface. I liked working on a paper with grids. My type lines remained square to the page :)

Overall, I like the paper for the written word. Perhaps next time I choose to add an illustration I'll test colored pencils...