Green Heron - different pens

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Just a quick post to show you the beautiful pair of green heron that have come to my pond. They are not nearly as shy as their larger cousin the great blue and I'm able to watch them through the binoculars and enjoy their beautiful plumage colors.

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You can see the difference in result between the first sketch which is done with a brush pen and the second done with a fountain pen.

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Here are the green heron done with yet a different pen, a calligraphy marker. I love switching it up with pens. Each type of pen gives a different line and quality of line, Line, even more so than color gives expression and personality to your sketches, so pen choice is very important. 

So these are my current fav choices for pens....Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen, and Y&C 2.0 Calligraphy pen.  Be forewarned though I have an order from JetPens.com on it's way and September is typically the month I like to switch to using brown ink. I don't know why, just a seasonal ritual I suppose.

Review of Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen

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These sketches were done with a Tradio Stylo pen which has heavier ink that is not waterproof. Compare these sketches with the look of the other sketches on the page done with a Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen, and read the review at the bottom.

 Keeping an illustrated journal, aka a sketchbook or visual journal/diary is a way to stay in touch with your life and yourself.  Life has its ups and downs, its trials and its joys and when we are actively and calmly present to each day and moment I believe we live life more fully. Sketching helps us do that.  Any dog lover knows that our dogs are special, and very loved members of our family, so even a minor surgery (neutering) brings out the puppy parent in you.  

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 I spent five days gated in one room in our house in an effort to keep Quinn quiet after his surgery so they his incision could heal without any chance of him tearing the stitches. That gave me a lot of time to sketch him, and Molly too, who patiently waited outside in the hall way and played with him through the baby gate. 

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 One really interesting thing came from sketching Quinn so much. I usually can't resist adding color to my sketches, as much as I love the look of simple black and white pen sketches.  Quinn, however is black and white and that gave me the perfect opportunity and subject to exercise some restraint and work in just pen and ink.

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Turns out once I got past the initial urge to pull out the watercolors I found that I really enjoyed cross hatching and working with the pen alone. It also helps that I think I've finally found the fountain pen for me. It's a Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen which costs about $10 and it uses its own Platinum carbon Ink.  

Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen Review 

Here's why I love the pen: it makes clean, elegant strokes and marks with just the right amount of drag, not too fluid, not too scratchy.  It makes marks of varying widths depending on the amount of pressure you use. It's not a "flex" nib but it has a good amount of play in the nib for a variety of line widths. You can also rotate the pen and draw with the underneath part of the nib facing up to get extremely fine lines. It writes without skipping, and you can use ink cartridges or buy a converter so that you can fill the pen from a bottle of ink, which is what I do because it's more economical. It's a long pen, tapered at the end which at first I thought I wouldn't like. But I do like it, for an inexpensive pen it has good balance, it's light and doesn't fatigue your hand while drawing, and it's longer body allows you to hold the pen further back for a looser more expressive sketching style. The only downside to this pen is that the cap doesn't post on the end of the pen because as I mentioned it's tapered so I  have to be careful not to lose the cap. Some people actually cut the pen down so it's not as long and so the cap will post on the end. I won't do that because I like the longer tapered shape of the pen, and I do tend to hold it further back and enjoy the looseness I can get that way.

I also like the ink. It's jet black, dries quickly and is absolutely waterproof. It's the most waterproof of any ink I've used to date.

So, there you have it an inexpensive, long, sleek tapered fountain pen with an elegant look that makes a variety of line widths, doesn't clog or skip, gives you an expressive mark and uses an ink developed especially for it that dries quickly and is absolutely waterproof. The only negative is a cap that doesn't post on the pen.