Materials used:
_Majohn wancai mini [F-nib], filled with Octopus Fluids Document ink orange, looks a bit more pale/less intense irl.
_Pilot prera [M-nib], filled with Pilot iroshuzuku Momiji, one of the wettest inks I have.
_Life noble note B5 size
_Metal clip
_DIY isometric grid printed at home
Now that I have multiple muted pink/red shades, I wanted to pick colors matching my make-up. So I swatched all my lip stains/tints for comparison. The colors are really different though, I didn't expect the pink stain to be so light colored on paper or the mauve pen to be quite so brown & grey.
Other than the inks and lip colors listed on the sheet, I used these materials:
_Fabriano Eco 200g paper.
_Glass dip pen, blunt end.
_Watercolor brush.
_Sailor Hocoro dip pen with a fude nib & M-nib.
_For labelling the lip colors, I used a Sailor Hocoro with a fude nib filled with Octopus Fluids Flamingo.
I sketched a rough outline with the pencil, then drew in layers, smudging the blue ink with the purple brush pen before the blue ink dried, to imitate a dual shading effect.
Materials used:
_Lyra Rembrandt pencil, 2B
_Ecoline Brush pen, color 579
_Sailor tuzu adjust, M-.nib, filled with sailor seiboku.
_1 yelling orange cat to pose for reference pics.
The packages contain sailor shikiori ink bottles and a sailor pro gear slim fountain pen.
My phone camera hated Brilliant Mint, I hope I have color corrected it ... correctly. It had looked very blue on my phone screen but more green irl. Smoky Navy had a little bit of red sheen.
The ink colors are not new, only the packaging & bottle sizes are.
There are 4 new Teranishi mini ink sets, each with 4 colors in 12ml. The set pictured is "Haikara Romanticism".
My conspiracy theory is that Taccia Azuki and Teranishi Classy Burgundy are the same color, but maybe all wine reds with blue dye in it just look similar to me.
For swatches, I used:
_Asvine V126 spare nib [F] in an e+m nib holder
_Sailor Hocoro [M]
_Deleter Nikko G flex nib in a boesner nib holder
_Bottom of a no-name glass dip pen
_Van gogh watercolor brush
_Tomoe River DIN A5 hardcover dotted notebook.
I played around a bit, creating a gradient by adding more and more water and trying out different dip pen nibs. The dual shading effect is not as strong as I hoped but the color is very peaceful to me.
Nibs used:
_Standardgraph monoline
_Deleter Nikko G (flexy)
_Sailor Hocoro, M-nib
_Asvine V126 F-nib (I put another nib into the V126, so now I'm using the nib in a nib holder)
This month I tracked all of my ink usage incl. topping off my printer ink.
I used a scale for jewelry to measure bottles before and after each refill, hence the ink is measured in g rather than ml.
Materials used for the spread itself:
_Sailor Tuzu Adjust [M nib] + Sailor Seiboku
_Sailor Hocoro [M nib] + Octopus Fluids Orange Bunny.
_Tomoe River hardcover notebook DIN A5, dotted.
(To be fair, the actual ink consumption may differ a lot, since I measured the weight of refills instead of pens, for example I filled 4 cartridges of Take-Sumi but only used up one.)
Yup the dual shading effect is that strong in a wet nib! You can see where I refilled the converter because the text suddenly turned more blue again. BUT the blue pigment smears a lot on smooth papers like Life noble note and Tomoe River.
Materials:
_Diplomat Esteem, B-nib
_Pennonia Stormy Magnolia ink
_Life Noble Note B5 notebook
_Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle pencil, 350 Purplish Red, in a KOH-I-NOOR Versatil 5356 lead holder
_Derwent Inktense pencil, 1000 Bright Blue
_boesner Kolintik brush
_Printed grid that was included in some writing pad
_Herma round labels
_Mars plastic eraser (I don't like it, I'm just trying to use it up)
I drew the map and building sketch at Stuttgart Schlossgarten, after getting off the train. Then most of the page was drawn during a workshop I led while the participants were doing their exercise. At home I finished the page with the frame celebrating the lunch my husband packed.
I miss the old square taccia bottles with the old color name stickers D:
they were easy to grip too.
Most of the pages were written with a Sailor Hocoro [M-nib]. Other materials used:
_van gogh watercolor brush
_Asvine spare nib [F] in a boesner pen holder
_Standardgraph: monoline nib & pen holder
_deleter: nikko G flex nib & pen holder
Most of my pens have M-nibs right now because some pens just weren't available with wider nibs. The top half consists of Asian brands, the bottom half are European ones.
Some pens weren't inked, only dipped, I wanted to use grey to mark those (Ecoline 717 liquid watercolor) but the Asvine V126 spare nib still had some blue in it.
The other pens were inked with:
_Platinum Preppy: Platinum Carbon Ink Black
_Pilot Prera: Pilot Momiji
_Sailor Tuzu adjust: Octopus Fluids Blue Koi
_Diplomat Esteem: Pennonia Stormy Meadow
_Diplomat Traveller: Barock Erika
_Faber Castell Poly Pen: Leftovers from Octopus Fluids Unicorn + new cartridge with Koh-I-Noor Document ink black
Materials used:
_majohn wancai mini (lunar new year edition?) [F-nib] fountain pen filled with Octopus Fluids document ink orange.
_Ecoline brush pen, color 236.
_Pilot V7 hi tecpoint cartridge system [0.7mm tip], original blue cartridge.
_Pilot color eno mechanical pencil & lead, pink.
_Schmincke Horadam gouache, white + boesner Kolintik brush.
_Life noble note B5 blank notebook.
Materials used:
_majohn wancai mini (lunar new year edition?) [F-nib] + Octopus Fluids document ink orange.
_Ecoline brush pen, color 236.
_Pilot V7 hi tecpoint cartridge system [0.7mm tip], original blue cartridge.
_Pilot color eno pencil & lead, pink.
_Schmincke Horadam gouache white + boesner Kolintik brush.
_Life noble note B5 blank notebook.
Pens/tools used for swatching:
_Title: Standardgraph monoline nib + dip pen holder
_Tea spoon
_Brush
_Diplomat Esteem [B-nib] on the left
_Sailor Hocoro [M-nib] on the left
_Asvine V200 nib [F] + dip pen holder
_deleter Nikko G nib + dip pen holder
_Diplomat Esteem, chrome [M-nib] on the right
_Swatch cards cut off at the bottom were DIYed with Fabriano start drawing paper.
Our local garden center (in Germany) has a changing selection of herbs & crops, I think they had 20+ different types of chili plants alone! I was also tempted to buy Sichuan pepper, a mango tree and vietnamese cilantro.
You can tell from the repetitive notes how angry I got at the hard starts/skipping lol...
Shoutout to this post from u/maidenmandalore which made me buy the pen: https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/1r8t0ss/comment/o68vp1f/?context=3
I found the idea genius to carry around ink refills in these little pens instead of vials! According to Jetpens the capacity is 2.2ml. I usually need 2-4 colors for graphic recording, so I'll probably get 2 more wancai minis.
Ink used here: Octopus Fluids Document Ink Orange.
These are just my first impressions:
_The Majohn flex nib's housing is very different from the Asvine one. I swapped the nib by pulling the Asvine nib from its housing and sticking the Majohn nib in, then screwing it back into the pen. That nib change should be simple enough for a beginner.
_The Majohn flex nib is less flexy/soft than my other flex nibs (Pilot 912 FA, Nikko G dip pen, Brause pumpkin dip pen).
_It is relatively smooth for a flex nib and could be used as a normal F-nib.
_There was lots of skipping/railroading with the dry ink I started with, that was almost completely fixed by switching to a normal/wet ink, although it is not even a superwet one.
_I paid 4,69€ for the nib with housing and 3,19€ for just the nib. Cheaper than most of my fountain pen nibs and pricier than all of my flexy dip pen nibs.
Each day my husband picked a plant of the day to document, and I picked the ink.
This was drawn on watercolor paper and will be framed so even the walls are not safe from his insane collection. Yes there are plenty more that I didn't draw, but these are apparently his favorites.
Tools:
_Nikko G dip pen flex nib
_watercolor brush (van gogh size 6 and boesner kolintik size 4)
_rotring 600 mechanical pencil for the rough sketch
_Sailor Hocoro, M-nib dip pen
Paper:
Fabriano Disegno 5 hot pressed watercolor paper 50x70cm
My favorites for painting, as seen in the closeups:
_Octopus Fluids Cerberus: Looks dark blue, but dilutes to a range of different greens, depending on the yellow part of the dye I guess.
_Diamine Robert: Reacts to ink eradicator, super strong sheen.
_Octopus Fluids Unicorn: Strong sheen, dilutes to a clean cyan.