New Faves For 2016

This past year I made some new friends. Links are to sources for the products.

• Pilot Metropolitan – medium – Acquired two. Both have very good nibs with excellent flow.
• Platinum Plaisir – medium – Larger form than the Metro, but with a Slip & Seal cap. Same nib as the Preppy.
• Pilot Kaküno – medium – Very lightweight and comes in a variety of cheerful colors. Winking nib is a nice touch.
• Noodler’s Civilization’s Blue (discontinued) and Upper Ganges Blue inks – Civ Blue hit all the right notes, but Upper Ganges is a close second.
• Noodler’s 1820 Essex with Dostoyevsky ink – This pen and ink were made for each other.
• Super5 Dublin ink – My first Super5 ink. Good performance and a very appealing color.
• Robert Oster Red Orange ink – A very happy color.
• Platinum Carbon Ink Black – Very smooth, saturated black ink. No performance issues whatsoever with a Plaisir.
• Diamine Marine Ink – For a teal/turquoise fan, this one brings lots of joy.
• Quo Vadis Plan & Note – The 2017 edition will be my daily journal. Love the layout and paper quality.
• Stillman & Birn soft flexible sketchbooks – Lightweight form and great paper make a superior journal.
• Staples Arc System – Used sporadically in the past, but worked well for several projects this year.
• Shotshell box for storing ink samples – Easily my best paraphernalia find of the year.

Art Supplies

• Silver Brush Black Velvet watercolor brushes – Acquired several this year. Supple, retain shape very well and hold lots of fluid.
• Daniel Smith Prussian Blue and Transparent Red Oxide watercolors – Good additions to my transparent palette.
• Aureolin by Winsor & Newton or Daniel Smith – Excellent yellow combined with Permanent Rose or Quinacridone Rose and Cobalt Blue for mixing a full range of colors. This has become my “Less Is More” triad and a staple for my mini kit. (h/t Pat Weaver)
• Pentel Touch Brush Tip Felt Pen – Good at line variation whether for writing or drawing.
• Uniball Air marker – More durable than a felt marker and glides effortlessly across the page. Makes my hand happy.
• Buddha board – Great tool for practicing strokes without wasting ink, paint or paper.

Pentel Touch Pen Meets A Midori Traveler’s Notebook

The Pentel Touch Sign Pen (SES 15C) with a flexible nib is amazingly smooth on Tomoe River paper. That means the Midori Traveler’s Notebook (013) is a good mate. Note there is ghosting as happens with most pens on such thin paper. Bleed-through only occurs when I overwrite to darken the color. Otherwise, there is none.

My review from a few weeks ago was on Moleskine, but I wanted to show how well the Touch Pen and Tomoe get along.

The full set of pens is still on my list, but for now, the black, sky blue and yellow ochre make a nice trio. At least one of them will work on every paper in my stationery collection. That makes my three pens practical as well as a lot of fun.

Pentel Touch Brush Tip Felt Pen

Pentel has a real winner for calligraphers with the Touch line of felt tipped pens. That is something I already knew from YouTube and Instagram videos before I got my hands on one. What was a genuine surprise is how little effort it takes to make a mark with a Touch. Just skim the paper with the pen and bold lines result. Banish hand fatigue though writing large is the best I could do.

The two on my desk came from a local art store and are not equal. They were in an open display and one tip has suffered mild abuse making delicate lines elusive. The other pen has a dream tip that glides effortlessly. It is an absolute delight to use for lettering though I have no hand for true calligraphy. You should see the colorful notes all around my desk. They draw my attention to what must be accomplished today and that is a good thing.

Worthy of note is that the Touch pen did not feather and produced only a few tiny dots of bleed-through in my new squared Moleskine journal. Ghosting was its only flaw, no surprise on Moleskine. That brings up the Moleskine caveat: Their journals are possessed by fickle paper so your results may not be comparable to mine. Even printer paper suffered zero bleed-through and less ghosting than the Moleskine. My other journals handled the Touch without complaint.

The Pentel Touch is a fun-to-write-with pen that comes in a variety of colors. There are two versions so look for the brush tip if you want the one reviewed here. Amazon offers individual black and blue pens among other colors as well as a twelve color set. Local stores did not stock this pen except for the one, distant art store where I purchased my first two. The full set is on my wishlist because the Touch is so much fun to use. Plus it has all those colors and I am always a sucker for color. The notes around my desk will never look the same.