Hi Folks

Humour me with my intro blurb... :-)

My wife's friend is a very successful illustrator of children's books who primarily works in watercolours...

a part of her technique is to mix the watercolours and then draw rough outlines etc with a dip pen of the mixed watercolour and fill in with brush...

the other day when she was working with my wife on a new childrens's book she learned of my passion (read: obsession!!!) with fountain pens and fell in love with some of the marbled vintage pens I had... she felt that they would make her work easier as she is constantly having to 'fill" the dip pens with a loaded brush of watercolour whereas the FP would hold so much more...

now for my question...

would it be possible to use watercolours in FPs... without totally stuffing them up... and being a constant pain for her to maintain???

she is mainly interested in the flex and semi-flex nibs because of the linework possible with them

cheers and thanks in advance
Trevor

Don't even think about it if you want to ever write with your pens again...
NUFF SAID

My advice in a word NO

The solids in watercolours will clog a feed in no time.

However, get your friend to take a look at the range of ink colours and maybe that is the way forward.

Jim

Dear Trevor:

I have been using ECOLINE liquid watercolour in a cheap piston pen for the last 6-8 months with no problems. I was looking for a nice purple and mixed Quink red and blue together but still was not getting the purple that i wanted when a cousin (artist) handed me a small bottle of this and told me that it was safe for FPs. Naturally I did not believe her and laughed it off, but she insisted and I decided to use it in one of my cheapo pens. (We have these locally made Pelican m200 copies which are really really cheap (under US$1.00) and very good for "disposable use").

And to my surprise it works really well. I even let the pen sit for a day without to the cap to see what would happen but there has not been any sedimentation and with a bit of moisture it started writing perfectly. The pen has had several refills todate and I have flushed it a couple of times to see if all is ok.

Having said all this, I still have not found the courage to fill one of my more expensive pens with this Liquid Watercolour. The Quink Red/Blue mix is reasonably good and safe for the expensive pens.

regards

Farooq

How about using a dip pen? Water colors are fine with them