Alex Heizer

I’m always on the lookout for the best materials to help me create my artistic visions closest to how I see them in my head. These aren’t always the most expensive papers, or a hand-crafted guitar, or a top-of-the-line computer with the latest version of all the software. What’s most important is how it works.

One of the things I’ve always had trouble with is inking. Many people don’t pay too much attention to a piece of art’s ink job, but if you look more closely you can start to see the difference between something that is well-inked and something that only looks “okay”. Back in the day, before ball-point and technical pens, you had to choose between fountain pens and brushes. Today, pens like Sakura Micron and Staedtler Pigment Liners make it easy for anyone to ink their own artwork, but to get really good results the best artists tend to use a brush with a bottle of ink, at least in the US. However, a lot of great artists still use a fountain pen. You’ll find them in art stores as calligraphy pens and they come with a variety of nibs, or points, which fit into a holder that you can switch out quickly. They also sell the very pen-like fountain pens with a fixed nib and refillable ink reservoir, but you can always use a crow-quill if you really want to rock your drawings like it’s 1799, John Hancock-style. Beware that neither are as flexible to use for an artist as the calligraphy pen style.

So after being dissatisfied with using technical pens, markers, brushes and even after settling back to a pencil, scanned and colored in Photoshop, I got inspired to try the fountain pens based on a new manga I was reading at the time. I’d used them to try calligraphy back in elementary school but hadn’t used them since I realised I didn’t want to be a calligrapher when I grew up. The manga follows the story of a student who decides to become a manga artist like his uncle was before he died. The uncle, and now the main character, used fountain pens. So after all these years, I decided to try it  again and immediately noticed my inking coming out how I envisioned in my head, or, at least, more like what I had envisioned in my head.

The standard Speedball set comes with a variety of “B” and “C” type nibs, but none of them were exactly what I was looking for. Reading further into the manga, I learned that there is also a “G” type nib and this is what manga artists still use. It allows you to create more dynamic lines than the similar 513 nib from the Speedball set. The local art store hadn’t heard of the G nib but I found them online and within a few days I was finally starting to love inking my work again!

Here are a few examples of my inking with the G nib. I have noticed that some surfaces can’t handle the fountain pen as well as others, so the quality and fill-in coverage varies depending on the materials. The first example was done on Letramax 4000 illustration board. This illo board has a smooth surface and takes ink very well. It has a thick board backing, so it can handle larger areas of fill-in. The second and third drawings were done on Copic marker paper, which also has a smooth surface, but is designed to be stronger so that markers do not bleed through. While I was able to achieve solid lines on the Copic, it wasn’t as strong when it came to large fill-in areas. The last two examples were done on 20# bond (copier) paper, which wasn’t good at all. It basically shredded as I worked, even with just basic lines (see the jawline and hair in the first example). The last example shows as much fill-in as I could do, paired with a final version, filled-in with Photoshop.