analogue ink

I know that the analogy of anlogue and digital dont really work when it comes to the difference between old fashioned ink nibs dipped in ink and the brilliance of fine liners but I have just spent the afternoon playing with a bunch of nibs that came with the printing equipment I recently bought.

Oh Joy and Wonder!

Now I love fine liners and I have them everywhere in all my handbags, pencil cases, mobile art kits etc and I would never use a biro if a fineliner is to hand.

I assumed, (wrongly! oh how wrongly!) that old fashioned ink nibs would be messy and you'd have to keep dipping it in the ink every couple of strokes which would be annoying and that they would scratch the paper and that it would not be worth the bother at all. Wrong.

Its amazing how far one dip in the ink will take a line. I thought I'd experiment and see how much I could sketch with one dip. Half a dip really as I am very low on ink. I was amazed to be able to work for around 10 minutes sketching from a photo of Portland Bill. The ink goes on forever. Its like magic.

Another thing which I hadnt considered before I started the sketch was how silky and velvety the feel of a real nib is. Its not scratchy or stabby at all. You can make the line thicker or thinner depending on how much pressure you apply and by turning the nib on its side you can achieve a line finer by far than anything I've ever got with a fineliner (that didnt break up somewhere along the line).

I am totally converted.

Yes it might be a pain having to get ink out and fix the nib and take a little more time setting up but i will use a real nib for sketching from now on and my lovely fineliners will be relegated to shopping lists and post it notes.

I wanted to add a picture of the sketch to this to show you how much can be done. Its not a good sketch but it does show what I mean. But...I can only put one image into the blog for some reason. So I will post it on FB and then add a link to it (here).