Preview by Tina Koyama
Although I’m not following any prompts or even using group hashtags this year, I decided to participate in Inktober by continuing my ongoing series of daily hand drawings in ink. (I started the series in March in response to the pandemic; you can read about it here. Sketches are posted daily on Instagram.) In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be reviewing several inky products that I’ve been using, but I thought I’d give you a preview now while Inktober is still young, in case you want to give them a try!
Dip pens have never been my forte, and the last time I used one to draw was when I took a pen and ink class several years ago. So it was with some trepidation that I dipped the first Tokyo Slider Nikko Comic nib into a bottle of ink. I’m used to juicy, broad nib fountain pens and soft, forgiving pencils – the fine nibs in this set woke me up!
Regular readers of this blog may recall that I have a penchant (AKA obsession) for brush pens of all kinds. I found one I still hadn’t tried – the Pentel Pigment Ink Brush Pen with an extra-fine tip – so of course, I had to.
Boku-Undo E-Sumi watercolor inks look and act like watercolor paints, but they are actually tinted sumi inks. These are fun! The lovely, muted “shadow black” tones don’t show up well on the colored sketchbook pages I have been using for my hand drawings, but I’ll show you the colors on white paper in the full review. I’m using them with a Pentel Design Fude Menso brush with a very fine tip.
Stay tuned for the full reviews. What are you using for Inktober?
Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.
