Portable Painter Watercolor Palette and Tikky Mechanical Pencil

Portable Painter Watercolor Palette

(colors shown are not included, they are Winsor & Newton half pans)

I read quite a few reviews on this palette before buying it. The idea looked simple enough and was interesting. But I didn't know that I really needed it until one reviewer mentioned it fits Winsor & Newton half pans perfectly. 

This tipped the balance. I had a 12 color Winsor & Newton Artists' Field Box that I loved to pieces - literally, the hinge broke on the poor thing and it's no longer so portable as it was. I needed to have something else to put those 12 lovely artist grade colors in, so I finally got the Portable Painter palette. By comparison, there's one thing this one doesn't have - the water bottle that was included in the Field Box, or any place to put the small sponge. 

However, the size 4 travel brush is generous sized compared to most of these pocket brushes and big enough for comfortable journaling, unlike the very tiny detail brush from the W/N Field Box. That made up for a lot. 

I also had some doubts about whether it'd fit over my leg. Was this designed only for slender people? Not to worry, despite overdeveloped legs due to skeletal crookedness, it fit comfortably over my thigh and it wasn't hard finding a good spot where it stayed balanced. The water dishes on the side are deep enough that it really doesn't tilt when it's on my lap like that. 

white cosmos painting 3" x 5"

watercolor and some iridescent watercolor glaze on the white petals

Painting with it became interesting. Keeping my leg steady was something I hadn't expected to need to worry about but there it was - I couldn't really move that leg or fidget as much as usual. This will take some work getting used to it. But that did leave both hands free, one to hold the journal and the other to hold the brush. The advantage is a good one, I just need to make sure I've got a chair that's at a good height for me. 

Like any change in habits, it also took a bit of a mental shift to get used to the water being down there on my leg instead of up near my work. Having two deep water cups was great though. I was able to reach in easily and rinse the brush thoroughly between colors.

Assembling it is easy. The cups slide on pegs at the sides and stay put once assembled, the whole thing doesn't rock and it is also stable if set on a table. It came with empty half pans in it that had fairly thin sides but would be good if I wanted to switch out these Winsor & Newtons for tube watercolors of any kind. I kept those aside in a box in case I do want to switch. 

I've heard that some brands' half pans don't fit well because manufacturers vary slightly in their dimensions and size, but Winsor & Newton ones do fit well. So save those once they're used up, they can always be refilled after they're completely empty.

The aluminum clip that holds the two water cups together as the case might be easy to mislay. Keep track of that or rubber band it to one of the water cups while it's in use. It does come with a big fat rubber band as well. 

Overall I like it. If I brought along a bottle of drinking water on an outing, that'd be enough to fill the water cups and they are big, there's no need to get frugal with how much water I use. Big washes are easy and so is keeping one of them as clean water to mix into pans instead of wash water. I'd recommend keeping it in a travel sketching kit, so the aluminum clip can go into the bag while you're working and a rag or paper napkin to wipe out the water cups after use is handy. 

It's a good product. Definitely does keep my hands free, the size is convenient and the brush included is good quality. I had no problem getting either fine details or fairly loose washes with that brush. 

Six Tikky mechanical pencils, violet, light blue, light green, yellow, orange, pink.

Tikky Mechanical Pencil

I bought this last fall, it was in Blick's Fall catalog and intrigued me. I'd been looking for a good mechanical pencil for undersketching. Not so much for serious pencil drawing, for that I prefer lead holders and broader leads. More for the type of under drawing that I'd either use a cheap mechanical pencil or a No. 2 pencil on it - something that would not need sharpening, would not run out of short leads as the disposable cheap ones do, and feel nice in my hand. 

This comes in six bright colors but the design doesn't look too "cute" or anything, just artistic. The black grips set off the fluorescent barrels well. I'm always a sucker for the spectrum, so recently I bought all the other colors of it too. My first was a light blue and I wound up carrying that thing with me everywhere. If I misplaced it I'd get annoyed and tear up all my stuff till I found it again. It has a good weight in the hand and synthetic HB leads that are very fine - and don't need sharpening. Exactly what I bought it for, replaceable very fine HB leads that felt good in the hand.

Everyone's hand is different. What pencil gives you the best results for what task may vary a lot. My granddaughter likes wooden No. 2 pencils and sharpens them with a knife because she does serious pencil drawing with them and likes to control the point shape with her knife. These Tikky pencils are a little heavy compared to the cheap mechanical pencils and that affects the angle I hold them, my hand fatigue - a big thing for anyone with fibromyalgia or carpal tunnel or any hand problems, everything. They are the best mechanical pencil for clean fine lines to paint over that I've used at all.

I have no examples of drawings with them because every time I use them, I go over it with pen or watercolor or both and erase the pencil lines. Happily these synthetic leads erase easily. That was another factor in itself. I bought it on impulse but kept using it so often that I stopped using any other HB pencils for underdrawing. 

Jaguar in Winsor & Newton Artist's Watercolor

painted with Portable Painter Palette over Tikky mechanical pencil underdrawing

I painted this jaguar for an art challenge at WetCanvas.com in the Animals & Wildlife forum using the Portable Painter Palette and one of my Tikky mechanical pencils for the underdrawing. It erased clean but I was able to get great detail with it, could just as easily have been for pen drawing or anything else. There is a difference between leads that's subtle - the Tikky smears a little less and erases clean, as opposed to scraping the paper or staining it with graphite. 

I recommend these wholeheartedly. Try one. If it gets as addictive as it did for me, get a bunch of them and make sure there's one in every pocket kit. That's eventually what I did, just to stop worrying about where I last left it! Price is five dollars and change at Blick.

Sennelier pan watercolors, 8 color pocket set

Sennelier mini 8 color watercolor set and small journal with painting of mossy bark.

I collect pocket watercolor sets. I enjoy them and I like having one on me whenever I leave the house, along with my beloved pocket Moleskine Watercolor journal or some other small journal or pad I can paint in. There comes a point where I felt as if I'd overdone it on these and didn't need another one, so I put off buying this one no matter how tempting its size and colors were.

After all, with a Winsor & Newton Artist's Field Box would I ever use a different artist grade pocket watercolor set? That one lived on me, just as its Cotman predecessor did for 30 years. Yet this was alluring, with its tiny pocket brush and intriguing palette. Plus that clear window to see the colors. I didn't stop to think "that means my mixing area is clear." That sort of presentation is tempting and makes me want to paint.

Which is not a bad thing to find in a pocket set. It encourages me to use it with that clear window. Sennelier is a great manufacturer, been around for a really long time, provided supplies to all sorts of famous artists for generations. So their watercolor has to be good, right?

Well, yes it is! It's artist grade watercolor, very pigment rich, dissolves easily, lovely texture and the pans are just as you could want them. The set is compact with only 8 colors - and the palette is the 8 colors I would have chosen. A good clean yellow, a bright red that can mix to get a decent violet, a light blue suitable for skies, a deep blue that goes near black, two greens, a warm dark and a cold dark. Best of all, the cold dark is Payne's Gray rather than black. I think that's what decided me. I can't count the number of times in 12 color sets where I've replaced black with Payne's Gray. 

Greens and a sky blue are convenience colors especially for outdoor painting. Those two dark neutrals can be mixed to do all sorts of on the go sketching and it's much easier to mix muted greens when starting from a bright one than from various yellows and blues. No matter how traditional or classical it is to use mixed secondaries, in outdoor sketching it's much easier to modify the hue you want to the exact hue you want. There are few bright orange or purple things in nature but lots and lots of greens, even in cities. There's lawns. There's trees. There's foliage in gardens. It all does work well and I did get very good mixed purples when I wanted them.

White Cosmos flower on dark multicolor blurred background

I painted this white Cosmos flower with the Sennelier pan watercolors 8 color set as an experiment. The flower's been glazed over with another product that I'll review soon, Finetec Pearlescent Colors, but I posted the example to show how dark I can get a loose multicolored background just using the eight colors in the pocket set. The soft violets in there involve French Vermilion red and the deep blue, French Ultramarine Blue. I used both Pthalo Green Light and Sap Green into the Payne's Grey as well, to get a lot of different combinations. 

The watercolors are pigment rich and strong. Deep colors go nearly to black very easily and the bright Primary Yellow went on very strong as well. I mixed a nice maroon for the tiny pollen spikes with French Vermilion, Burnt Umber and Payne's Grey as well, going over the FineTec colors.

French Vermilion was a bit of a surprise since I thought it would lean too much toward yellow to mix a clean violet, but it mixes beautifully with French Ultramarine about the way Daniel Smith Quinacridone Coral does. It's a good choice for a single red in a small set. 

I did a lot of blotting and lifting and deliberate backruns with this, while the paint performed as well as Winsor & Newton or Daniel Smith, any of my favorites. There's a reason this little 8 color set has become so handy and convenient. It's just right for most things I'd want to do on that scale, whether I'm indoors or off on an outing.

The little round brush they included works out well. It has a lovely point, which is the main thing I want in a round brush, especially a small round brush. This one is good enough that I could have repeated my calligraphy stunt, creating an 11" x 14" scroll with fancy lettering using only the pocket watercolor set and its brush. It is a good equivalent to the brushes in either of my Winsor Newton Field Box sets, a little larger than those actually. This makes it a good one for general use in a small journal.

Though I bought this on a whim, it keeps getting into my pocket more often than I expect to use it. Or sits around on my desk and inspires small sketches just because it looks inviting. Don't knock that in an art supply, if something about it makes you feel like going back again and again to paint, it may seriously improve your productivity. With that, up go your skills on more serious painting. Nothing improves so much as constant practice.

This fun, engaging little set is well worth the cost. If you haven't already picked up any pocket watercolor set for urban sketching, seriously consider it. The quality's excellent, the palette is perfect with its Payne's Grey inclusion and enough blues and greens for most outdoor subjects. Inevitably in outdoor painting, blues and greens get used up fast and reds and yellows last and last, probably due to how much space they take up on the page. But this proportion will wear down more evenly, I think. The insert is one piece but could easily be refilled with tube watercolors.

Overall, I like it and it became an unexpected favorite. Sennelier pan watercolors are great. Once again I've come to trust that brand.

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!