Pentel Arts Color Brush Set with Aquash water brush

Product photo Pentel Arts Color Brush Set in box

I tossed this into my last Blick order on a whim. I had meant to try the Pentel Aquash water brush and see how it stands up to Niji, Sakura and other favorites. It's included in this sketch pens set - so I thought, well, let's see how convenience works. A black, sepia and gray sketch brush prefilled would be handy for sketching.

Wow. I didn't realize how good the Pentel Arts brush would be or how great a point it'd have. The color pens come with cartridges, when they're used up you can get black refills. The gray and sepia only come in sets. Still the set was moderately priced at under $18 at Blick, so it's not that bad for a water brush and three pens. Comparable to other water brushes, certainly.

The color pens unscrew clockwise and screw back on counter-clockwise. This was the case with some water brushes I've had in the past. The Aquash works in the other direction. Get used to it, these things aren't going to be standard in screwing and unscrewing. It's fairly easy to tell if you get it wrong. They come with a little plastic protective collar to keep the cartridge from fully engaging till you unpack it and remove that, which probably keeps the points from getting gunked up before you even use it. I liked that.

The brushes on the color pens are actual brushes with hairs, like a proper water brush. They aren't fiber tip brush tips like the Pitt Pen Big Brush or the Tombow Dual Tip brush tips. They hold a lovely fine point. I got wonderful expressive details with them and did a little lettering on another practice sheet that came out well. 

But their real joy came in the painting!

Painting done with product: shaggy dark goat on a hollow log in a dramatic pose as if it just knocked another goat down.

I had a good photo reference and thought, let's see how these do for illustration. Wow wow wow. Beautiful points. Beautiful expressive strokes. They are very juicy. Before I added the black strokes I had some interesting effects when the gray puddled and lightened in some areas. It handles like watercolor or thin ink, and the pens are good and juicy. I got dry-brush effects sometimes though.

When the brush starts giving dry brush effects, a squeeze on the handle will give more ink. They handle a lot like other water brushes that way. Except that three of these are loaded with color and it's good color. The gray is light enough to stand a second layer to deepen it for another tone, without going to black. So light-dark effects either wet in wet or wet over dry are easy once I got the feel for it.

A black cat painting shows how I got the gray to handle values:

Graveyard Watch, black cat on light tombstone against dark forest

The highlight on the cat's belly was achieved with a second layer on the cat's body, wet over damp. It wasn't completely dry so came up slightly soft edged, while I got deeper darks next to the stark blacks that I put in with the Pentel Pocket Brush pen. The combination of waterproof Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and Pentel Arts Color Brush watersoluble brushes gave me great flexibility in this piece. I got the deepest darks in first and washed over them confidently without breaking any crisp edges, then toned with the gray Pentel Arts Color Brush.

It's very delicate and the ink dries semi-washable. It's not fully dissolved when I run water over it - when it's dried, as the lines were in the brown part of the sawn hollow log, running water over them created only a very light wash. This can be really handy for sketching. Do loose strokes very close together and it will start acting like a wash, color flowing in the direction the paper's slanted. 

They are extremely expressive. How they feel in the hand is a delight. They invite expressive strokes and experimental techniques. I rate these pens five star. They don't have the flat effect that the Tombow ones do, because the color does run lighter or darker depending on moisture. This makes them much more like sumi-e painting (Japanese ink painting) and allows for some gorgeous effects. 

I loosened up using them, but still got as much detail as I wanted in tight areas like the animal's eye or the contour of the ear. 

The brush on the Aquash water brush is excellent, with good flow and a lovely point. I'm sure this will become one of my favorites. Slightly sharper point than the Niji and I like the way the ginger-jar handle shape keeps it from rolling off the desk. It's compact and handy. The one included is a size Medium but they also come in large, small and I think there's also a flat one. Similar to other water brush products in pricing, the handle doesn't have the flow regulator in it so filling is very fast and easy - the regulator's up in the tip.

Urban sketchers should really love these. Throw them into your kit and see what comes out in your journal!

Conklin "Merlot" Fountain Pen and Monteverde Ink

Today's review is a little different, because I bought these products at Goulet Pens online. I subscribed to their newsletter ages ago because I used to own a beautiful Mont Blanc fountain pen with a gold nib in the 1980s. A very large person sat on it and broke it, I think I still have the pieces somewher. I loved that pen. I actually used it for sketching and drawing. To my delight, so do many of my friends who are urban sketchers or pen and ink artists.

They carry a fun range of products for calligraphy, drawing and writing. Colored inks, many different brands of fountain pens in price ranges from (sometimes) under $10 on sale on up through over $1,000. It's pot luck what gets featured in the newsletter. This time their holiday sale item coincided with my holiday budget and was just too great a bargain - a $65 pen for $35 with a free bottle of ink on top of that! So after getting the kids' presents and grownups' presents, I treated myself to the first time an affordable pen came up in one of my favorite colors. Usually the less expensive ones are clear or pink or lime green or something, not really my style of Old Male Author style, tweed jacket and all. (Yes, my daughter got me a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. I'll model it sometime. Like next time I publish a novel.)

But this was irresistible. "Merlot" is a beautiful cool red, very purplish, a lot like Quinacridone Red or Violet. It shimmers with little iridescent flakes of lighter and darker reflection. It has a sober black cap and silver trim. Good and fat in my hand, it feels like the old Mont Blanc one did (it was black with gold trim). Definitely a "turn back the clock" type of pen suitable for writing, drawing or signing autographs on published books.

Edit: This is the Conklin Duragraph "Merlot" color. It was limited edition and has sold out but I think they have other Conklin Duragraph pens in other colors. Just checked and they do, including forest green and purple nights, amber, cracked ice - lots of good colors. Merlot is sold out but there are other great colors.

To my happy surprise the free bottle of Monteverde ink wasn't a tiny litlte couple of milliliter sample bottle at all, but a big solid old fashioned glass ink bottle suitable for use as an old fashioned inkwell long after I've used it up. Wide at the base, so cats don't flip it over easily. It takes effort for a cat to spill this ink, none of them have succeeded yet. Otherwise I'd have photos of little blue footprints to add to this review. The ink is waterproof, a lovely shade of blue closer to Ultramarine than Pthalo Green Shade but a little closer to center spectrum blue than French Ultramarine. That doesn't always come through in the photos but in person it's a gorgeous blue. Perfect for monochrome drawing. I've always loved blue monochrome sketches and ink-wash painting.

They were out of the Fine point and I didn't want to wait to have them back order it, so I got a Medium point. I've been used to broader nib pens for some time anyway and thought Medium was good enough, it'd make me sketch a little larger and looser. Much to my happy surprise, the Medium nib was pretty fine - more comparable to an 05 Pigma Micron than to a bullet nib or something. Memories of broad-nib pens were distorted. I do also have some Sheaffer chisel nib cartridge pens, cheap and serviceable calligraphy tools that I used much more before I got dip pens for that.

It came in a beautiful presentation box with a blue cartridge, a black cartridge and a piston fill converter that let me use the free bottled ink. Great gift package. Sat there nestled in white satin like a sort of artistic vampire, tempting me to let out my inner creativity in notes and sketches and novel ideas scribbled on illustrations that gave me starting points... so of course I tested it by drawing!

Sissy the Fluff Girl cat drawn in blue ink with Conklin Merlot fountain pen

The long hair color point cat is laying slightly curled on her side looking to the left.

She has some text around her including title, date and materials used.

The nib was a little more stiff than the $150 in 1980s Mont Blanc pen, but that's only to be expected. I got used to it pretty fast. It skipped a little at first till I got the feel of it. Fiber tip pens are a little more responsive to pressure, fountain pen nibs vary a bit and over time will adapt to your hand pressure and usual motions. It's subtle but they do that, it's why the 14kt gold nibs are so useful because they adapt a little more than steel ones. But those run to three figures and up. For a modestly priced pen, this is pretty darn good! 

I continued to sketch with it for days.

Tree sketch from life on vertical paper, with some text in block letters.

My first sketch was in a Moleskine Watercolor journal that I love and usually have with me when I'm out. My second one is in a small plain-paper notebook that I got as a freebie for entering an arts competition - the most thoughtful freebie I'd ever seen for that, it inspired sketching! So I started keeping that notebook and the pen in my pocket. I don't know the brand on the notebook or I'd review that too, it's rather nice. Has a small imprint of a tree in the center of a kraft paper cover and no text printed, so if anyone recognizes that, tell me!

Letting it rest for days at a time, it did not dry out. It was capped and rested in my pocket, but still, I've had some pens choke after even one day without use. This is a problem with using waterproof inks, if the point clogs then it takes pen cleaner solution and repeated cleanings to restore it to function. I usually preferred watersoluble inks for that reason, cleaning in the sink is easier. But so far this is going really well and as long as I keep it handy, I might be able to keep it from clogging. It bodes well that it actually sat still for almost a week while I was sick and didn't get used, but didn't dry out and clog.

That tells me the cap is well fitted and designed. It is a quality thing. The only pen I had that I could let rest for days and keep using was the old Mont Blanc super fancy one. It'd probably be about $400 or $500 today if I still had it and well worth repairing if I could find the parts and replace the missing piece. Technical pens like Rapidographs do not stand up to that treatment, so I use Pigma Microns when I want that sort of waterproof line.

Fountain pen lines have their own style though. It's a little more expressive than using a fine line Pigma Micron or technical pen. Press on it and the line faintly widens. Lighten your hand or tilt it and you get a very slight narrowing. It will pick up nuances of your handwriting and your sketch style. Blue isn't bad as a line art base for doing watercolors either.

Blue pen sketch of a pale short hair cat on a stone fence in front of trees.

I haven't used a watercolor wash with my pen sketches yet, but since the ink is waterproof that should work the same as my other pen-watercolor sketches. I just like the blue monochrome look so much that I haven't bothered. 

Overall, this is a marvelous pen. It is available in other colors and many other fountain pens as well. Friends speak well of the Lamy Safari for sturdiness and ease of use. This is its own specialty, it's too easy to start collecting fountain pens - but keeping them loaded with several handy ink colors may make that feasible as long as I keep them handy!

When not using it for some time, clean out the pen thoroughly and store it empty. That saves the tips from clogging, sometimes irreparably. Mechanisms vary between different brands and how it's made can make a difference, the really high end ones have more than the bit of precious stone at the tip of the base or something like that. But even moderately priced fountain pens can be a lot of fun. The Conklin "Merlot" is definitely now a part of my permanent sketch kit!

Soon to come - FineTec Pearlescent Watercolors and more!

Lyra Opaque Watercolors

I bought these at Dick Blick recently. I've wondered for a while whether they were as good as my Pelikan Opaque Watercolors. They looked like a very similar product - to the point that I wasn't sure which brand it was I first got at a Blick store in person decades ago, when the replacement pans were available in bins right next to the sets.

Well, I'm very happy to report that they're a very similar product at a lower price! Just as strong, the same kind of large removable (rearrangeable) pans, inside a slightly more convenient box. While I love my Pelikans, the box is a little inconvenient for stacking because it has this curved top so I can't put it in the middle of a stack with other sets of mediums. Just a small point of irritation that the Lyra set solved. It's also a little easier taking the top tray out - the top tray is entirely internal and nests. The Pelikan set has a lever button that needs to be pressed, a mechanism that can break under repeated wear and sometimes gets annoying.

This box has a pretty similar lid with fewer mixing pans in it, but still the same function. The brush they included is a 1/4" stiff bristle brush. I had never used a bristle brush with pan gouache, I'm used to round soft sables or synthetic sables for water mediums. So it was a little odd painting with it and I'm sad to say, like many bristle brushes the dang thing splayed out halfway through the painting. The hairs swelled and stuck out sideways, eliminating any sharp-edge flat brush tricks or tip created lines. This is annoying but it's a pretty cheap thing and the other brands didn't come with a brush, so big deal. I may or may not continue using it, the small bristle brush is good for its own effects. It'd be great for spattering or other rough techniques, it's just not a precision brush.

Also included, just like the Pelikan set, a little tube of white Deckweil. It didn't say "Chinese white" or watercolor, just Deckweil - Opaque White and repeats that in a couple of other languages. Good strong mixing white. I used a little of it in my example painting to lighten some color and it worked lovely. I've always wondered why they didn't just include a white pan with these sets, what I really would have liked would be two white pans so there's enough for mixing and lightening, maybe the second one a warm white like titanium buff sort of color. But the little tube of white is replaceable when used up. It will get used up faster than the pans themselves, I say this from long usage.

So here's the art I did with it, in my large Moleskine Watercolor journal:

Two pears, one yellow and one red, painted in Lyra opaque watercolor

The paint was easy to pick up enough for thick, opaque, creamy application. The white mixed well in the little mixing pans and the colors blended beautifully. The set includes Payne's Gray as well as black, so I've got my Cool Mixer. Fleischfarbe, the peach color that gets represented as flesh tone for German kids, is on the top tray rather than the bottom - the top tray is set up to function separately if you want a simple palette. Paynes Grau is on the top tray too, so your convenience colors are there without lifting trays if you're painting in a small area. Peach color portrait highlight is actually a useful color for all sorts of things, especially as a mixer if you want to warm the mix or highlights on browns and reddish colors.

The price break between the sets is quite a lot - $22 for the Pelikan set, $14 and change for the Lyra. That was surprising to me since the quality seems so similar. I don't know if there are differences in lightfastness, though gouache is one of those illustrator mediums where they don't always worry about lightfastness even in professional or artist grade products. But other than that, these are comparable in every way. 

Hm. The Pelikan pans may be just slightly larger, but it's a pretty minor difference. Nope, checked, same size of pans unless the Pelikan ones are a bit deeper by a grain. The box on the Pelikan set is much more involved, with the release tabs and the artistic curved domed lid, the strip of sticky lamination to cover writing your name on the box. I think the biggest difference is the fancy, art deco looking Pelikan box. There's also a little more space in the Pelikan box if you want to squeeze in dabs of silver and gold gouache for detailing in the second layer, under the tray that has the little tube of white.

The paints are very opaque and pigment rich. They mix well and blend easily. They handle a lot like pan gouache. They dissolve fast and are easy to pick up with any brush. The color range is very similar and the colors are marked with their names in German. Very familiar, reminded me of the set I had in my youth. Overall I'd recommend this set just as I'd recommend the Pelikan set - the most convenient form of gouache that I've ever used.

I recommend either of these over tube gouache and for convenience, like the Lyra box a little better. Which box you like is going to be a matter of personal taste. I prefer being able to stack it to having the extra space inside.

Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle Water Brush Set

Sorry for the long two year hiatus. After moving from San Francisco to Arkansas, I got tied up in a lot of offline activity and also had to adapt to a new climate. Happily though, I'm back to getting new art supplies and testing them, so let's see what the newest water brushes I got are like!

Caran d’Ache Piston Fill Water Brush

I’ve been using various water brushes for years. Niji and Sakura Koi are my two favorites, with an old Derwent a close third.

I’ve also enjoyed many other Caran d’Ache products. They tend to be pricy but worth the money, very high quality and good lasting intensity. Crayons and pencils and paints are all pigment rich, consistent, good texture and easy to use. So I thought, this ought to be interesting. Unlike many other products from this manufacturer, the price is similar to the other brands. So if you like these, it’s really just a matter of taste.

The main difference is in how they fill and that one of three point options is a fiber tip, along with a large round and medium round. They didn’t have a small round.

The ones I’m used to fill by squeezing and release water by squeezing. These new ones work by a piston fill system. The brush head comes off just like a regular one, but then you dip the barrel into a glass or dish of water and turn the knob on the end to draw up the water into the compartment.

I had trouble with it at first, the knob was stuck on the fiber tip one so I couldn’t get it to move at all. I tried again with the medium brush head and found on the first go that I’d only managed to pick up about 1/4” of water. In several tries I managed to more or less fill that, then tried the fiber tip one again. Same thing, it took several passes to get it full the first time. The large one was easier because I had a bit of practice with the other two.

Compared to the ease of filling a Niji water brush by holding the barrel under the tap and squeezing, it was slower and a bit more cumbersome. Also the piston sticks out of the end of the brush afterward, making it a bit harder to store in a pencil box or bag unless it’s long enough. So there’s two points of minor inconvenience. Still, the real test with this is whether because of the piston system, the water flow is more controllable.

One of the things that’s unique in this three-brush Museum Aquarelle set is that there’s a large round, a medium round and a fiber tip water brush. Artists who prefer using brush tip markers or bullet tip markers may really enjoy having a water brush that’s got a resilient fiber tip. The texture is markers, the color is as unlimited as your watercolor mixing skill.

The only comparable product is the clear blender in the Tombow dual tip brush pen sets. Those are clear water and have the same fiber tip brush tip as the colored ones, used for blending out the watersoluble inks of the Tombows. So you could use that with a pocket watercolor set for convenience, or with watersoluble pencils colored or graphite. Still, the Tombows aren’t easily refillable or made to be refillable and the Caran d’Ache product is. We’ll have to see how it holds up under heavy use, to really know how strong the fiber point is. But I’ll give it a go anyway in testing it.

A refillable fiber tip pen could be worth a little inconvenience in itself. It has its own texture and of course could also be used to modify and spread watersoluble markers like the Winsor & Newton Watercolor Markers that I’ve come to love.

So, let’s try that fiber tip brush.

Well, that was a pleasant surprise. Using Sennelier pan watercolors, I worked from a challenge photo and created a pair of cats, more sketched than painted. The fiber tip water brush behaved a lot more like a bullet tip marker than a brush pen.

Marks fade naturally at the usual pace of a water brush and unlike most markers, leave enough moisture on the paper to blend completely into a wash when scribbled. The cats were more drawn than painted, it was quick and easy.

Marker artists will enjoy that fiber tip brush. Water flow is very similar to the Niji water brush and I didn’t have to fiddle with the plunger often, only once when cleaning the tip to get the last of the black out. Color stayed in at a light hue for a long time, which became mildly frustrating when changing colors. But that was inexperience, now I know to really rinse the tip it’s not going to be a major problem.

The line is clean and reasonably broad, maybe 1 1/2 millimeters. The feel is solid and the hue even throughout the line. I can get it to a thinner line with very light use but not to the fine point that brush tips with hairs get. Overall the feel of the tip is more like a medium or broad nib Sharpie - solid, wide line, smooth laydown.

The water went through at a fast clip, but that was something I expected from the way the reservoir filled. It’d be good if using this in the field to keep a water cup handy as well as these brushes, though in the studio that fiber tip has its own strengths.

Some artists load water brushes with ink or liquefied watercolor. That eliminates the fade as the water comes through the head and can allow for a good number of interesting effects, like using several values in several brushes. Unlike most Caran d’Ache products, the price is comparable to the Niji waterbrush and other similar products.

The reservoir is much smaller than the Niji or the Sakura, more like the reservoir of a fountain pen. But still, that tip is excellent and the piston mechanism is manageable with a little practice. I’d just be sure to have a good source of water available if using it for travel sketching, or use several of them.

So now let's have a look at the others. I picked out a different challenge photograph, sketched it with a set of 12 Derwent Inktense that I keep around for travel sketching and washed it with the Medium Museum Aquarelle brush.

This may not be my greatest wildlife sketch, but it's not that bad either and the water brush performed beautifully. It came to a good fine point. The water flow was just right, not too much or too little. I could pump more through to change colors by twisting the piston, or let it be and let it flow naturally. It flows a little heavier than the Niji, but just right when it comes to a sketch and wash.

I wanted to leave some distinct lines in it, so didn't scrub down or wash it so thoroughly that they'd dissolve. My shading wasn't very even, but the brush smoothed that out lovely while still being able to get into tiny details without disturbing them.

All in all, I'd say try the Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle water brushes. Even with a little inconvenience learning to fill them, they're good quality. If you don't get any others, try a Fiber Tip one for variety of tip - but the brush ones are excellent and stand up with my best. Of course in the long run, I'll have to go back in a couple of years and see how long they last. But I trust they will likely be long wearing, considering the quality of Caran d'Ache goods. Their pricing seems mostly to reflect how much pigment goes into things like pencils, paint and crayons - they are always very pigment rich. This time it's just a well made tool that has its own unique place in my kit now!