Salmonella's Art Blog

Hello! 

While it was true in the past, modern fountain pen nibs are made with stainless steel, so the chances of them wearing down (and attuning to the user’s writing style) is very slim. It might still be true with gold nibs since they are softer, but other wise, your nibs still probably last you a life time. The danger of loaning out pens is actually the other person. 

Ballpoint pens are made in a way that requires the user to press harder to dispense ink on the paper, thus, overtime, conditioned writers to press harder and harder on their pens. Fountain pens uses liquid ink, thus requiring no pressure to dispense ink onto the page. Pressing too hard actually springs the nib tines and damages it, creating ink flow issues. If the writer is aware of this and uses the pen properly, you can rest assured that no wear-and-tear will come to your nib!

Hello Anon! 

Fish is glad to hear that you are interested in fountain pens! Fountain pen inks are dye-based instead of pigment-base, so they won’t clog the pen. There are many brands of fountain pen inks (Noodler’s, Diamine, J Herbin, De Atramentis, etc etc), and each brand offers tens to hundreds of different colors. Fish doesn’t know if you will be able to get free shipping, or what you will find available locally, but as long as it’s explicitly labeled as a fountain pen ink, it should be okay OUO

Hello!

You can flush the pen by drawing clean water into the converter as you would ink and keep repeating the process until the water runs clear. You can also disassemble some pens entirely and flush each part separately (check online to see if your particular pen can be safely disassemble). You can also soak the section in water overnight and flush it in the morning.

Please check this excellent playlist for step-by-step instructions!

No do not do that!!!Ecoline is liquid watercolor, meaning that it is a pigment dissolved in liquid solvent. The pigment will clog up your fountain pen feed and stop ink flow to the nib. Cleaning is also difficult, since you will have to disassemble the section to thoroughly brush out the feed, because regular flushing is not enough to clear the feed of the pigment particles.Have you ever wondered why there are no true white inks for fountain pens? The closest is a couple from Noodler’s and De Atramentis’s white Document Ink. The reason for this is that fountain pen inks are actually dyes rather than pigments. Dyes do not clog the feed, and can be clear with water. Some may stain, but they, used and cleaned properly, do not leave residue in the feed that will impede ink flow.

On that note, also please do not clean your pens with rubbing alcohol.

Hope this clears up your question, anon! Thanks for dropping by and have a lovely day!

Okay, fish hopes you do not mind fish publishing this, but this is something that fish gets asked v often.

There is no workaround for anatomy, you guys. Remember in grade school when you had to memorize the multiplication table? Well, anatomy is the artist’s multiplication table.

Memorize the visible muscles and their volumes until you mumble them in your sleep. In a life drawing class, we didn’t start with the model until almost 4 weeks in, because the goal is to know the body’s shapes well enough that the model is just there so you won’t have to think of poses.Anatomy is something that every artist struggle with, especially self-taught artists. However, it is also one of those things that you cannot work around. Search up anatomy guides on the internet and copy them. Learn the body’s volumes like how you learned the multiplication table. Repeat until you can see how the muscles flow together and create a pulling force in a person.It might be slow going, or you might take to it like a fish to water, but you will definitely see improvement along the way.

Oooooooooooh, okayHere’s the deal: If you paint wet, ya gotta wait for it to dry completely. Any moisture left will help the ink feather. Use as fine a nib as you can, and some wc paper with v pronounced fibrous surface will feathers ink as well, simply because the ink will grab on to those fibers via capillary action.

so in short, before you do anything, test your paper first!!

Fish uses Diamine Grey (not too often lately), Noodler’s Midnight Blue (for most of these bc they’re usually blue tinted to start with), and Diamine Peach Haze (usually for eyes). These are fountain pen inks, and are not water resistant, so fish lines everything after the colors are completely dried.

If your black ink looks too harsh, consider diluting it with water to make a gray - that helps soften your lines so they aren’t so overwhelming.

If you are considering colored inks, pick the color based on the overall temperature or tint of the piece. For example, in the piece with the blue flower boy, the color base fish went with was blue-gray, so the entire piece tints blue - thus the lines are done with Noodler’s MB. On the piece for the improvement meme, the base was a red-orange-burnt sienna mix, so the lines are Diamine’s PH. Gray inks don’t change the temperature, but the darker the gray, the darker the overall look of your piece will be!

Hope this helped you a little, and good luck with your art, Anon! OuO)/)Have a lovely day!

Hi Anon! Thank you v much! Fish is v happy to hear that you enjoy fish’s work!

Fish starts with wet-in-wet first, then as the wash naturally dries, fish goes back in for any hard-edged shadows!

Hope this answered your questions, and have a lovely day! ouo)/)

Hi Anon! Fish is v glad that you ended up liking fountain pens!

The pens in fish’s rec lists are all cartridge/converters i.e. they can be used with both cartridges and bottled inks. However, please be aware that most of the pens in the list use proprietary cartridges (cartridges released by the same brand and can only be used with pens of said brand). The only one that uses international cartridges is the Kaweco Sports (it uses an international short cartridge or a Kaweco squeeze converter).

As for medium nib, most of the pens in the rec list also comes with EF, F, M, and B nib choices; some also have Italic and Stub nib options. However, because fish’s hands and handwriting are both v tiny and fish uses the pens for drawing as well, all the pens fish owns are EF, so fish doesn’t have any personal experience with other nib sizes. That said, the brands fish recc’d are all v well-known and dependable, so their nibs generally do perform well across the board!

Hope this helped you out, Anon, and don’t hesitate to ask any other question you might have!

Thanks for dropping by, and have a lovely day!! >u

Hi Anon!

Thank you very much! Fish is v happy to hear that you enjoyed fish’s work!! >u

Just teh other day, fish got to try the Jetpens Chibi 2 from Jetpens and it’s p darn nice??? The feed is clear in this one, so that’s a nice bonues! However, fish 100% rec the pens from the list fish has posted. Every single one of them are wonderful starter pen, and fish has personally tried all of them!

Hope this helped you a little, Anon!

Thanks for dropping by, and have a lovely day!!