Four different fine liner pens
Testing Water Soluble Fineliner Pens
OK, this is post is a little geeky. Today I’m looking at my black fineliner pens to see how much bleed they create, and to discover how using various drying times can help me achieve different tonal values for shading. It was interesting to discover that although all of the pens had black ink in them, when I added water to the ink lines I ended up with three different tonal shades: 2 cool greys, a warm grey, and a blue grey.
Waterproof vs. Non-Waterproof Ink
I’m an avid fan of using fountain pens with waterproof ink, it’s my go-to sketching weapon of choice. But I do love experimenting with different tools and techniques to keep my creative spirit intrigued.
This week I’ve had a fascination with using water soluble fineliner pens and adding water with a brush to get the ink to bleed and create tonal shading. The fine liner I played with this week in the speed sketching sessions and when I was sketching people at the café, was a mid-brown colour. But as I prefer sketching with black ink, I searched through my stash of finer liners, and found four that seemed to bleed quite well.
Paper for the Water Soluble Bleed Test
For my test, I used the Claire Fontaine aqua pad, which is a cold press, 300 GSM, fine texture watercolour paper. But I discovered that I can expect the results to vary based on the type of paper used. This down-and-dirty experiment provided enough information to get familiar with the level and type of bleed these fineliners create, but for more accurate results it’s going to be necessary to test each of the pens on different brands of paper.
Timing used for the Water Soluble Bleed Test
For each pen, I tested how fluid the bleed was, if water was added:
- straight after sketching
- after five seconds
- after 10 seconds, and
- after 20 seconds
I used a water brush to add water to my ink lines.
Water Soluble Pens I Tested
Here’s an overview of the four black pens in my collection that created enough bleed to use for tonal shading.
Pilot V7 Pure Liquid Ink Pen 0.7
This pen uses water-based liquid ink and isn’t considered waterproof, but once the ink has dried it becomes waterproof.
Tonal Shade Created: Cool Grey (light)
This has a pretty mellow bleed on the Claire Fontaine paper, but I used this pen on my Hahnemühle sketchbook and it bled quite a lot more than on the CF paper. In this cafe sketch I had to leave the ink lines to dry in order to get a subtler bleed.
Staedtler triplus fineliner 334 0.3
Tonal Shade Created: Blue-Grey
This is a water soluble pen, which creates a gorgeous slate coloured grey. Out of all the pens it seems to be the most soluble, which allows for some of the ink line to get ebbed away with water.
Pilot G-1 Gel Ink Pen 0.5
Tonal Shade Created: Cool Grey (dark)
This gel pen contains water and is described as being water-resistant rather than waterproof. Even after it’s dried for a while you can still tease out some subtle bleed from the ink lines.
Uni-ball Air broad
Tonal Shade Created: Warm Grey
This pen is waterproof, but the ink takes a long time to dry and acts more like a water soluble pen. If you leave it long enough, it does become waterproof. This fineliner created the most, and darkest level of bleed and has a sepia tinge to it. I was also surprised that you can vary the line weight by adjusting the pressure you use.
I’ve only been out sketching with one of these pens, but I’m going to give each one of them a trip out to sketch people, and see if I prefer one over the other – and maybe that pen will make the trip to Toulouse with me in my urban sketching kit.
