Fascinating video. I had thought my 9 different gray inks were verging on the excessive but now will have to buy more to try these marvellous techniques. Many thanks
Thank you for the inspiring content Mr Kompaneyets. I am now excited to try Lexington gray in my flex pen. I previously only used it diluted in a brush pen.
1. Informed opinions and great technique. 2. Back in my neanderthal/realist days, I periodically swore off true black in favor of Lexington Gray. More range, and you won't get pitch black unless you want it. 3. If you found De Atramentis "Urban Grey" not to your taste, note that they make several different grays. I like the "Fog Grey". But the "Grey" is black as far as I am concerned. 4. One specialty gray I use sometimes is Herbin Gris Nuage, which was the palest gray I could find at the time of purchase. Sometimes I just want a hint of tone to distingush one area from another of blank paper. 5. Off Topic: what do you think of using ink with a watercolor technique? Currently I prefer ink over watercolor paint, brushing (pouring, dripping) it onto watercolor paper. It seems simpler to handle and easier to handle. And you can get some good use out of those super pale Sailor inks like Haha.
1. Thank you, as always! 2. I used fountain pen ink with watercolor technique for a project. The results were wild. Fountain pen ink can be so poorly behaved in washes that it creates all kinds of unexpected effects.
This was a terrific video - thank you. I’m a fan of Diamine Earl Grey but I’d not taken the opportunity to fully consider the various properties nor the value as an art ink. If you’ve not tried Lennon Tool Bar’s Atmospheric line, I suspect you might find them of interest - I’ve been using Twilight quite a bit. Thank you again.
As always, a very helpful learning experience, thank you for sharing your knowledge! I am a De Atramentis ink aficionado, but I do find the black is too black for my scribblings and the urban grey is too dark for my liking. Water is not a satisfactory method of dilution in my experience, so I use De Atramentis thinner. I highly recommend it!
I love working with Sailor inks. They work very similar to Diamond Earl grey in that they are made of two components, water resistant and non, and some of them do have that multi chromatic effect. One color I really love using is from the Shikiori line called Rikyucha. It draws sort of olive green wet, and slowly changes to wilted leafy brown dry, hence its namesake. In heavier blended areas there is a bluish undertone as well. Kobe (made by Sailor), Robert Oster, Pennonia , Teranishi and Taccia inks are all worth trying too.
Thank you for another great video, Marc! I hope that someday you write a book about drawing with fountain pens! I still have little experience with inks, but I love my De Atramentis Document Black. Have you ever tried the R&K SketchINK line? I think they are a little more wet than DA, but very waterproof too.
Thank you! Perhaps when I'm out the having very small kids stage I can dedicate some time to writing, but at the moment these short videos are the most I can manage. I have a number of R & K inks, and they're great.
This is fantastic. Hope to see more ink videos in the future. I think I will give a try with Pilot and Diamine Eal Grey. I have already got Lexington after watching your early videos in the past. Thank you.
I love all these inks, but I really prefer the Fuyu Syogun. It really is a nice cool blue grey that I think shades better than its warmer, redder "Kiri-sa-me" brother, also made by Pilot in the Iroshizuku line. Despite being water resistant, instead of waterproof, these inks work GREAT IN water brushes, with the shading effect making it play nicer in my opinion so long as you wait for the layers to dry. P.S The ink is pronounced "fuyu SHOgun". I don't know why Pilot used a different Romanization for that word specifically. (sho vs syo, Shi vs si). Maybe cause it's an acceptable input when they type.
Thanks for the pronunciation tip. I hadn’t considered placing the Fuyu Syogun into a water brush. Given how well it works in fude pens, I’m sure it will be great.
I have found an ink and pen combination that for my writing style that is great for my tending to be slow on the start but increasing the longer I write, flowing slowly at first but the more I write increases with time. It can unfortunately turn the XF line into a medium to broad line which requires me to correct words at time due to smearing or spread. A custom tuned XF jinhao x159 with Noodler's Polar Black.
@@mkompan I adjusted the flow some on my XF nib but it does still start slow. The medium and stub I made I increased the flow a lot so near a long writing session it can be quite....messy. Have to make my letters massive to keep from spread making them illegible.
Maybe it was a bad bottle, but I've had some blue feathering with the lexington gray. I thought maybe the paper quality was the problem, but it's been solid with other inks. I know Noodlers can sometimes be inconsistent. I should give it another try.
The blue component can separate out slightly, and the washes can be grainy, but to me that’s part of the charm of the ink. For evenness and color consistency go for DeAtramentis Urban grey.
Marc, out of curiosity, have you tried Rohrer & Klinger sketch inks? I have found them to be really well behaved waterproof inks that are affordable. Their "Thea" color seems comparable to Lexington gray in how it behaves, but is more grayish brown.
@@jacobmach3740 I have a few bottles of R&K ink and they are very good. They seem to be more popular in Europe than here in the US. I probably don't need any more grey inks for the next few decades, but will have to try this "Thea" ink. Thanks for the recommendation!
Hi again Mark. Jim from Madrid, Spain (a fellow artist and a New Yorker expat living abroad). Sorry I don't post often but, as you know, I always watch your videos. Great video on "50 Shadows of Grey"... 😁👍 I like the first 2 (Diamine) as water soluable greys... For non soluable inks (to use with watercolor) I use SketchInk because it's the best in quality/price ratio here in Spain. But I'm having trouble finding a "semi-soluble" Black ink at an affordable price to be able to do the "60 shades if grey" (if you know what I mean). Money is always a scarce resource in the Art world (considering everything else - family, mortgage, cars, insurance costs, taxes, etc.) and I need to be able to spend "smart" between all if my Art supplies (mainly - watercolor paper, sketchbooks, paint, brushes, inks, fountain pens, graphite, etc.) due to a limited budget. I don't know if you may be able to help me but... what do you think is a good "soluble" black ink to achieve neutral grey tones when water us applied? I bought Parker Quink Black but it's more if a Sepia black and, even though it's beautiful too, it's not the neutral deep black and grey I'm looking for after applying water (not a grey ink). If you could help me out it would be great, because I know your always very busy and I don't want to bother you. In any case... I really like your channel (as you know) and I watch all if your videos, from which I learn a lot (not too long ago I bought 3 Conte à Paris pencils with which I started to learn the 3 coloured technique after watching your videos). As I said... thank you for sharing your knowledge (at least part of it) and I will continue to watch your channel. Cheers from Sunny Spain!! 😁👍😎✌
Sorry for the misspelling, specially on the "ifs" instead of "offs"... my "sausage fingers" get in the way with such a small keyboard in my tiny "dumbphone"... 😁😁👍
Good to hear from you, Jim! For semi-soluble black ink, Noodler's x-feather, and Heart of Darkness work very well. These are inexpensive here in the States, but might be difficult to obtain "across the pond." Sigh, the prices for everything are out of control here too (at least in California). Fortunately the channel helps subsidize the art-materials (and justifies the occasional pen purchase). Saludos desde Los Angeles!
@@mkompan Thanks for taking time to answer... I'll try to see if I can find both Noodler's inks you specify but I already know that Noodler Inks are very expensive here and very difficult to find but I'll try. Cheers!
Thank you for a very informative video! I have Earl Grey but have never used it for drawing. Will be inking it in a fine nib today. Question: do you have favorite blue inks that separate out into purples and pinks when water is added? Thanks again for a great video - your work is very inspiring!
You’re very welcome! I don’t use blue inks for drawing that much and only have a few of them. Pilot Iroshizuku Asa Gao has purple and pink dyes in it, but these only separate out in a chromatography strip.
Great video on these grey inks. I have been sleeping on Earl Grey, time to order a bottle. What paper or sketchbook do you use when you sketch and use these light washes?
Hi Mark I too love fountain pens and inks and as an Artist my two favorite inks are Platinum Carbon ink and Lexington gray. I have done ny own lightfastness tests and have found that Diamine Grey performed better than I anticipated. Do you do any lightfastness tests as well? Or how do you preserve your artwork?
Platinum Carbon and Lexington grey are some of my commonly used inks. I have not done light-fastness tests for my ink, but I'm not surprised that Diamine grey with it's single grey pigment did well. I imagine that Diamine Earl Grey would not fare nearly as well. Light-fastness in drawings is a tricky thing, since paper itself is sensitive to light. There's a reason why drawings in museums are always displayed for short periods of time, and then in darkened rooms. I keep my drawings in drawers and boxes, and recommend that people rotate their displayed works often.
It looks to me that you filled your pen up for each ink to test. When you were swapping inks, do you put the ink from the pen back in the bottle it came from? I'd like to fill my pens but I like trying different inks in my pens and I don't know what to do with the "extra" and don't want to waste it.
In this case, since each ink was used only briefly (and the pen was cleaned thoroughly) I poured the inks back into the bottles. You can buy little plastic sample vials if you don’t want to do this.
Thanks@@mkompan ! I'm ok putting it back in the same bottle in theory, but the internet has horror stories about it ruining the ink (due to paper fibers and other issues of the nib being exposed to "the world" etc..) As a new fountain pen user I've been hesitant. I'd rather not have to track vials and ink bottles if I can keep it simple 🙂 I'm good about cleaning out the pen between colors - sounds like it's worth the risk to put the remaining ink back in it's original bottle rather than put it down the drain. Just realized, if I was refilling a pen with the same ink, the same nib would touch the ink in the bottle when I refilled it, no? Maybe it's not as much of a risk as I thought. Which is good - because I have some Super 5 Australia Red I'm itching to try out. 😀
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Fascinating video. I had thought my 9 different gray inks were verging on the excessive but now will have to buy more to try these marvellous techniques. Many thanks
Thank you. These techniques can be done with a number of different inks, but you can never have enough inks, right?
@@mkompan True. I'm tempted to mix a dark from some of the water soluble blues and browns I've accidentally accumulated and see what happens first.
@@atelierthhun1165 I was thinking of doing the same. I would love to come up with a few semi-water resistant inks with different colored components.
Now I know why Diamine Earl Grey is my favourite ink Marc....thank u for explaining why....oh and its my favorite Tea too. Love Alli XXX
You’re very welcome!
Hooray, new video. Mark, thank you very much. As always, it's informative. Greetings from Kharkiv.
Thanks for watching! Greetings from Los Angeles.
Thank you - another great video packed with technical info and inspiration!
My pleasure!
Thanks. Now I will have to add Diamine gray to my collection. Thank you & I love your videos. ❤😊👌💯
You are so welcome!
Thank you for the inspiring content Mr Kompaneyets. I am now excited to try Lexington gray in my flex pen. I previously only used it diluted in a brush pen.
You’re welcome, sir!
1. Informed opinions and great technique.
2. Back in my neanderthal/realist days, I periodically swore off true black in favor of Lexington Gray. More range, and you won't get pitch black unless you want it.
3. If you found De Atramentis "Urban Grey" not to your taste, note that they make several different grays. I like the "Fog Grey". But the "Grey" is black as far as I am concerned.
4. One specialty gray I use sometimes is Herbin Gris Nuage, which was the palest gray I could find at the time of purchase. Sometimes I just want a hint of tone to distingush one area from another of blank paper.
5. Off Topic: what do you think of using ink with a watercolor technique? Currently I prefer ink over watercolor paint, brushing (pouring, dripping) it onto watercolor paper. It seems simpler to handle and easier to handle. And you can get some good use out of those super pale Sailor inks like Haha.
1. Thank you, as always!
2. I used fountain pen ink with watercolor technique for a project. The results were wild. Fountain pen ink can be so poorly behaved in washes that it creates all kinds of unexpected effects.
This was a terrific video - thank you. I’m a fan of Diamine Earl Grey but I’d not taken the opportunity to fully consider the various properties nor the value as an art ink.
If you’ve not tried Lennon Tool Bar’s Atmospheric line, I suspect you might find them of interest - I’ve been using Twilight quite a bit.
Thank you again.
Thank you! It makes me curious what other inks behave the same way. I’ll look into Lennon Tool Bar.
As always, a very helpful learning experience, thank you for sharing your knowledge! I am a De Atramentis ink aficionado, but I do find the black is too black for my scribblings and the urban grey is too dark for my liking. Water is not a satisfactory method of dilution in my experience, so I use De Atramentis thinner. I highly recommend it!
You're welcome. I find the value of these transparent greys is dependent on the pen. They appear very light in certain pens, and quite dark in others.
Thanks for doing this review of grey inks. I purchased Earl Grey and it works great for shading in my drawings.
You're very welcome! I love that Earl Grey ink, and will also be using frequently.
How about doing a review of brown ink for drawing? @@mkompan
Just signed up for the crosshatching fundamentals workshop, really looking forward to it!
Thank you!
This was interesting! I have been looking at grey inks and now I think I know which will be the firsts for me. Thank you! 😇🩵🙏🙌🇸🇪
Thank you!
I love working with Sailor inks. They work very similar to Diamond Earl grey in that they are made of two components, water resistant and non, and some of them do have that multi chromatic effect. One color I really love using is from the Shikiori line called Rikyucha. It draws sort of olive green wet, and slowly changes to wilted leafy brown dry, hence its namesake. In heavier blended areas there is a bluish undertone as well.
Kobe (made by Sailor), Robert Oster, Pennonia , Teranishi and Taccia inks are all worth trying too.
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ve never used Sailor inks, and will now have to try them.
Thank you for another great video, Marc! I hope that someday you write a book about drawing with fountain pens!
I still have little experience with inks, but I love my De Atramentis Document Black. Have you ever tried the R&K SketchINK line? I think they are a little more wet than DA, but very waterproof too.
Thank you! Perhaps when I'm out the having very small kids stage I can dedicate some time to writing, but at the moment these short videos are the most I can manage. I have a number of R & K inks, and they're great.
This is fantastic. Hope to see more ink videos in the future. I think I will give a try with Pilot and Diamine Eal Grey. I have already got Lexington after watching your early videos in the past. Thank you.
Thanks! I will be doing more of these. Brown inks are next.
@@mkompan Truely I can't wait 😀
Lexington is a great ink, but that earl gray looks fantastic as a wash.
It’s a fun ink, but not for those that like control.
I love all these inks, but I really prefer the Fuyu Syogun. It really is a nice cool blue grey that I think shades better than its warmer, redder "Kiri-sa-me" brother, also made by Pilot in the Iroshizuku line.
Despite being water resistant, instead of waterproof, these inks work GREAT IN water brushes, with the shading effect making it play nicer in my opinion so long as you wait for the layers to dry.
P.S The ink is pronounced "fuyu SHOgun". I don't know why Pilot used a different Romanization for that word specifically. (sho vs syo, Shi vs si). Maybe cause it's an acceptable input when they type.
Thanks for the pronunciation tip. I hadn’t considered placing the Fuyu Syogun into a water brush. Given how well it works in fude pens, I’m sure it will be great.
Very informative thank you😊
You’re welcome!
I have found an ink and pen combination that for my writing style that is great for my tending to be slow on the start but increasing the longer I write, flowing slowly at first but the more I write increases with time. It can unfortunately turn the XF line into a medium to broad line which requires me to correct words at time due to smearing or spread.
A custom tuned XF jinhao x159 with Noodler's Polar Black.
The x159 is such a dry writer than any ink that makes it flow better is welcome.
@@mkompan I adjusted the flow some on my XF nib but it does still start slow. The medium and stub I made I increased the flow a lot so near a long writing session it can be quite....messy. Have to make my letters massive to keep from spread making them illegible.
very helpful review and applied techniques.
Thank you!
Maybe it was a bad bottle, but I've had some blue feathering with the lexington gray. I thought maybe the paper quality was the problem, but it's been solid with other inks. I know Noodlers can sometimes be inconsistent. I should give it another try.
The blue component can separate out slightly, and the washes can be grainy, but to me that’s part of the charm of the ink. For evenness and color consistency go for DeAtramentis Urban grey.
Marc, out of curiosity, have you tried Rohrer & Klinger sketch inks? I have found them to be really well behaved waterproof inks that are affordable. Their "Thea" color seems comparable to Lexington gray in how it behaves, but is more grayish brown.
@@jacobmach3740 I have a few bottles of R&K ink and they are very good. They seem to be more popular in Europe than here in the US. I probably don't need any more grey inks for the next few decades, but will have to try this "Thea" ink. Thanks for the recommendation!
Sry Marc, What fountain pen are you using? thanks so much.
You're welcome! This is an Opus 88 demonstrator with a 14K gold nib with a semi-flex customization from FPnibs.com
Hi again Mark. Jim from Madrid, Spain (a fellow artist and a New Yorker expat living abroad).
Sorry I don't post often but, as you know, I always watch your videos.
Great video on "50 Shadows of Grey"... 😁👍
I like the first 2 (Diamine) as water soluable greys... For non soluable inks (to use with watercolor) I use SketchInk because it's the best in quality/price ratio here in Spain.
But I'm having trouble finding a "semi-soluble" Black ink at an affordable price to be able to do the "60 shades if grey" (if you know what I mean).
Money is always a scarce resource in the Art world (considering everything else - family, mortgage, cars, insurance costs, taxes, etc.) and I need to be able to spend "smart" between all if my Art supplies (mainly - watercolor paper, sketchbooks, paint, brushes, inks, fountain pens, graphite, etc.) due to a limited budget.
I don't know if you may be able to help me but... what do you think is a good "soluble" black ink to achieve neutral grey tones when water us applied?
I bought Parker Quink Black but it's more if a Sepia black and, even though it's beautiful too, it's not the neutral deep black and grey I'm looking for after applying water (not a grey ink).
If you could help me out it would be great, because I know your always very busy and I don't want to bother you.
In any case... I really like your channel (as you know) and I watch all if your videos, from which I learn a lot (not too long ago I bought 3 Conte à Paris pencils with which I started to learn the 3 coloured technique after watching your videos).
As I said... thank you for sharing your knowledge (at least part of it) and I will continue to watch your channel.
Cheers from Sunny Spain!!
😁👍😎✌
Sorry for the misspelling, specially on the "ifs" instead of "offs"... my "sausage fingers" get in the way with such a small keyboard in my tiny "dumbphone"...
😁😁👍
Good to hear from you, Jim! For semi-soluble black ink, Noodler's x-feather, and Heart of Darkness work very well. These are inexpensive here in the States, but might be difficult to obtain "across the pond." Sigh, the prices for everything are out of control here too (at least in California). Fortunately the channel helps subsidize the art-materials (and justifies the occasional pen purchase). Saludos desde Los Angeles!
@@mkompan Thanks for taking time to answer... I'll try to see if I can find both Noodler's inks you specify but I already know that Noodler Inks are very expensive here and very difficult to find but I'll try. Cheers!
Thank you for a very informative video! I have Earl Grey but have never used it for drawing. Will be inking it in a fine nib today. Question: do you have favorite blue inks that separate out into purples and pinks when water is added? Thanks again for a great video - your work is very inspiring!
You’re very welcome! I don’t use blue inks for drawing that much and only have a few of them. Pilot Iroshizuku Asa Gao has purple and pink dyes in it, but these only separate out in a chromatography strip.
Great video on these grey inks. I have been sleeping on Earl Grey, time to order a bottle. What paper or sketchbook do you use when you sketch and use these light washes?
Thank you! I love my Talens Art Creations sketchbook, though the washes in it don't lay down very evenly in it.
Hi Mark I too love fountain pens and inks and as an Artist my two favorite inks are Platinum Carbon ink and Lexington gray. I have done ny own lightfastness tests and have found that Diamine Grey performed better than I anticipated. Do you do any lightfastness tests as well? Or how do you preserve your artwork?
Platinum Carbon and Lexington grey are some of my commonly used inks. I have not done light-fastness tests for my ink, but I'm not surprised that Diamine grey with it's single grey pigment did well. I imagine that Diamine Earl Grey would not fare nearly as well. Light-fastness in drawings is a tricky thing, since paper itself is sensitive to light. There's a reason why drawings in museums are always displayed for short periods of time, and then in darkened rooms. I keep my drawings in drawers and boxes, and recommend that people rotate their displayed works often.
@@mkompanThanks for the reply Mark as well as the good advice.
It looks to me that you filled your pen up for each ink to test. When you were swapping inks, do you put the ink from the pen back in the bottle it came from?
I'd like to fill my pens but I like trying different inks in my pens and I don't know what to do with the "extra" and don't want to waste it.
In this case, since each ink was used only briefly (and the pen was cleaned thoroughly) I poured the inks back into the bottles. You can buy little plastic sample vials if you don’t want to do this.
Thanks@@mkompan !
I'm ok putting it back in the same bottle in theory, but the internet has horror stories about it ruining the ink (due to paper fibers and other issues of the nib being exposed to "the world" etc..)
As a new fountain pen user I've been hesitant.
I'd rather not have to track vials and ink bottles if I can keep it simple 🙂
I'm good about cleaning out the pen between colors - sounds like it's worth the risk to put the remaining ink back in it's original bottle rather than put it down the drain.
Just realized, if I was refilling a pen with the same ink, the same nib would touch the ink in the bottle when I refilled it, no? Maybe it's not as much of a risk as I thought.
Which is good - because I have some Super 5 Australia Red I'm itching to try out. 😀
oh... and if you're looking to try out another grey... Super5 Frankfurt Gray is lovely
I found Opus 88 feed doesn’t keep up with a flex. I had to use an ebonite feed to prevent railroading
They usually don’t, but this flex nib came in a housing unit with a feed altered for extra flow.
@@mkompan good to know