Left: 8.5 x 11 inch sketch, Stonehenge cream paper, Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy Pen and outlining after the fact with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. Click on the image to view an enlargement.
The Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy Pen is just so under utilized as far as I'm concerned. I talk about it to people all the time and they look at me as if I'm from another planet.
It's the same great India ink that is in the rest of the Faber-Castell Pitt pen line. That means it's waterproof like the other pens and almost immediately after you put down your lines dries so quickly you can paint on it.
And because the pen tip is a chisel shape for calligraphy writing you can tilt the pen tip on an edge and sketch a thin line, or ride the tip down the page flat for a wider line.
I find that when they start to run out of ink they get a lovely almost "graphite" shading tone to them. (I have other images like that I'll show you on another day.)
On this particular day I decided to go back in with dark outlines using the PPBP. I think my head was still swimming from my visit to the Mucha Exhibit in December. (You can see examples of Mucha's work in the excellent books I list here.)
Don't give up on those fiber pens, even when they seem to be running out. I typically have 5 older pens sitting next to my chair, or in my non-drawing hand. I find that I can draw with one for a few minutes and then it sort of dries out, then I start drawing with another old pen, until it does the same, and so on. If you start sketching with an older pen it also makes lighter lines to begin with and that might be less intimidating to you when you are putting your first marks down on the paper if you have a heavy hand and your marks are otherwise very dark.
(And of course to get to that stage of the pen's life you'll have to put a lot of drawing practice in, so it's all good!)
There will come a time when you'll only get a few strokes out of an older pen, and then it is sadly, time to say good bye. Until then there are a lot of marks to make.
