What's a good ink for watercolour drawing?

[dragondazd]

In addition to sketching in waterproof ink, I like using fountain pens like a watercolor pencil and brushing over the lines. I generally use stub or pilot parallels on textured paper because it is easy to lose contact and not have much of a line.

 

Consider combining with a dip pen or brush pen.

 

Personally I wouldn't buy additional inks unless I needed a certain waterproof one, but I happen to have a lot of inks and can pick from a wide palette.

[InkyKitten]

5 hours ago, dragondazd said:

In addition to sketching in waterproof ink, I like using fountain pens like a watercolor pencil and brushing over the lines. I generally use stub or pilot parallels on textured paper because it is easy to lose contact and not have much of a line.

 

Consider combining with a dip pen or brush pen.

 

Personally I wouldn't buy additional inks unless I needed a certain waterproof one, but I happen to have a lot of inks and can pick from a wide palette.

I like the drawing!

Do you mean you use the fountain pen to sketch while the surface is still wet to get the diffused lines?

[dragondazd]

5 hours ago, InkyKitten said:

I like the drawing!

Do you mean you use the fountain pen to sketch while the surface is still wet to get the diffused lines?

Thanks.

 

I draw when dry then go over it with a brush. In this pic I drew the outlines then took a wet brush to make the swishes.

[InkyKitten]

19 hours ago, dragondazd said:

Thanks.

 

I draw when dry then go over it with a brush. In this pic I drew the outlines then took a wet brush to make the swishes.

Nice! Going to give this a try.

[Armo]

Huge range of colours and favoured by many professionals especially airbrush artists.

[mizgeorge]

2 hours ago, Armo said:

Huge range of colours and favoured by many professionals especially airbrush artists.

Great product - but never be tempted to use in a fountain pen!

[amberleadavis]

4 hours ago, Armo said:

Huge range of colours and favoured by many professionals especially airbrush artists.

 

They do make a fountain pen ink that is very bright.

 

[OldTravelingShoe]

@InkyKitten, I'm just repeating what others said, but sometimes it helps to know others also agree:

1. For deep waterproof blacks, I use Platinum Carbon Black, but it takes a while to settle and dry. 
2. For waterproof colors with high intensity, I use De Atramentis Document Ink and Rohrer & Klingner SketchInk. 
3. I use Diamine and Noodler's inks for their high intensity (vibrant colors) whenever I want to use dry brush.
4. I use Akkerman water-soluble inks for sketching and cross-hatching in various browns. They have a lovely selection; you may find some similarities in Diamine's extensive color palette. 
5. Ink also has special properties over watercolor, such as shine, sheen, and sparkle (shimmer); or maybe I just know too little about watercolor. KWZ has several amazingly saturated, shiny, and sheeny inks. Robert Oster and to some extent Diamine has several amazingly sheeny and sparkling inks. Inks, combined with bleach lead to unique flows. Nick Stewart has ink drawings based on these properties, which I believe are difficult to achieve in any other medium. 
6. In my view, inks shade differently from watercolor and are closer in this to pencil. Sailor has several amazing shading inks, even dichromatic (dual-color) inks such as HaHa and Nekonayagi (@Chi recommended this to me, and now I'm paying it forward). 

 

You may want to further check what painters and urban sketchers recommend. In short, I think it's this list, combined with (many) other instruments and with recommendations about paper and other media. You could specifically check Daniel Camapanario's collection The Art of Urban Sketching - - there, each item also describes the instruments and paper used to create it (and how long it took). I also like very much Liz Steel's website; it's what got me to check fountain pens and to find FPN. 

 

Off-topic: welcome to FPN, @InkyKitten. Very nice avatar. 

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by OldTravelingShoe
Added mention of Nick Stewart.

[OldTravelingShoe]

On 3/20/2022 at 5:43 AM, dragondazd said:

In addition to sketching in waterproof ink, I like using fountain pens like a watercolor pencil and brushing over the lines. I generally use stub or pilot parallels on textured paper because it is easy to lose contact and not have much of a line.

 

Consider combining with a dip pen or brush pen.

 

Personally I wouldn't buy additional inks unless I needed a certain waterproof one, but I happen to have a lot of inks and can pick from a wide palette.

Lovely painting, @dragondazd. I like to do the same: ink, drybrush, waterflow to give direction to the color. I enjoy the dynamic result from what starts as much more rigid contours. 

[Chi]

I enjoy both watercolor and inks.

In terms of technique, I usually just experiment with what I have. I don’t particularly use waterproof inks but that’s mostly because I use watercolor as background more.

I just bought a bottle of calligraphy ink. When I have time I would like to try using it as the base outlining ink and see how it plays out with watercolor and other FP inks.

 

in the pictures, the overlay white ink is de atramantis document ink - white. I really like it. It is thick enough to show up on watercolor but also absorbing whatever color you layering on top of it. Also if you have access to Sailor STORiA series, they are Warner proof and vibrant. The only downside for me is that they don’t blend well when other FP inks layering on top.

 

this picture are FP inks only. Forget how many layer there was. I just wait till one layer dried and put on another layer.

 

[Chi]

This is the effect of other inks layering on top of the document white.

[dragondazd]

1 hour ago, Chi said:

This is the effect of other inks layering on top of the document white.

These are lovely! Thanks for sharing. Guess I need to buy document white!

[InkyColors]

8 hours ago, Chi said:

I enjoy both watercolor and inks.

In terms of technique, I usually just experiment with what I have. I don’t particularly use waterproof inks but that’s mostly because I use watercolor as background more.

I just bought a bottle of calligraphy ink. When I have time I would like to try using it as the base outlining ink and see how it plays out with watercolor and other FP inks.

 

in the pictures, the overlay white ink is de atramantis document ink - white. I really like it. It is thick enough to show up on watercolor but also absorbing whatever color you layering on top of it. Also if you have access to Sailor STORiA series, they are Warner proof and vibrant. The only downside for me is that they don’t blend well when other FP inks layering on top.

 

this picture are FP inks only. Forget how many layer there was. I just wait till one layer dried and put on another layer.

 

Thanks for sharing your beautiful work and the information about Document White ink.

[txomsy]

This thread escaped me originally. I find it most useful and intresting.

 

To add something:

 

In general, and to paint over them (without smearing) I have found Registrar's inks (a.k.a. Document) ink lines to work well. Just look for the ISO certification. I have also tried with Montblanc Permanent Blue and KIN Document black, and blue.

 

Noodler's Eternal or Bulletproof inks seem to also work so far, I specially like X-Feather black, but it's not the only one to use

 

Permanent ink does not necessarily mean it will behave under watercolor. This seems to be specially a case with IG inks: IG inks may have a non-water-resistant non-lightfast component to add the color, being it expected that the color will fade in time and the IG component will remain. That is certainly the case with R&K Salix and Scabiosa.

 

The next are quick sketches (typically 15' including drying times) on an A6 140gsm Royal Talens Art Creation cream paper pocket notebook with a no.6 acrylic brush.

 

As you can see, Montblanc Permanent Blue does not smear.

 

 

But below, the black ink (I don't remember which one it was) did. So much that lines got blurred and what should have been graceful gradation at the flowers bases became too dark because of ink contamination (the ink spread over the wash spoiling the gradation).

 

 

And here, I used R&K Salix and Scabiosa to draw the lines. In many places it is clearly noticeable that the overall ink spread as feathering or fading.

 

 

For a quick very small sketch, it doesn't matter too much (although it still spoils the joy), but if you want to do anything serious with mixed techniques, you should a) be aware and careful or b) try it first in a quick sketch to see how it behaves.

 

OTOH

 

As for using FP ink to do washes, any non-permanent ink should do, as already explained. Just draw and then wash over. Or wash and draw. Or, even better yet, experiment by yourself (a small pocket sketchbook as the Royal Talens Art Creation can be enough to experiment to your heart's content).