Pilot Iroshizuku Autumn Inks

The latest three Iroshizuku inks, Fuyu-Gaki, Tsukushi, and Yama-Guri, plus a couple of comparisons to show which way the ink colour shifts.

Click to enlarge!

Enjoy!

Forgotten Art Supplies : Nostalgia (or not!)

Thanks to some informative tweets from Graham McArthur about content on Drawger.com, I recently found the "The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies".

It made me smile to see rapidographs, elipsographs, Letraset, film erasers, stencils and scribes... I trained as a Cartographer, and was amongst the last to be taught traditional drafting in addition to CAD. Also, my mother used to work as a Geological Draughtsperson, so between us, we own about three-quarters of the supplies shown in the above-mentioned Museum.

The thing is though, I still *use* about half of those supplies today. I have a deep love and appreciation for them! After all, I was a child who was given sheets of Letratone and a burnisher/stylus to play with, not scrap paper and crayons. I didn't use pencils to colour illustrations or diagrams for my school assignments; I used self-adhesive Pantone Letrafilm in a rainbow of PMS colours.

Last year I wanted a new set of French Curves and some small triangles. I looked high and low for a set of decent quality cut and weighted plastic curves, but all I readily found were cheap and poorly finished sets with seams - they were almost disposable! (For someone who always buys the best hand-tools she can afford, and who considers an all-brass rolling parallel ruler as one of her most treasured possessions, this experience was a tiny bit heartbreaking.)

Quality over quantity... those were the days. ;)

July Update

It's been a quiet few months in pendom for me of late. Work, art and friends have been taking up more and more of my time. But, there are some small tidbits of (old) news to share...

• Pilot Iroshizuku Autumn Inks
  Three gorgeous new inks came out several weeks ago, and I must say that the Autumn edition is my favourite Iroshizuku release so far. With the gorgeous red-orange fuyu-gaki, burgundy-brown tsukushi, and subdued brown tones of yama-guri (which is a match for Penman Mocha, by the way), Pilot couldn't really miss this time around.
  However, I expect others will be less pleased with the Autumn range than I am, because in pendom, blue ink *still* reigns supreme, and I am in a distinct minority because I don't care for blue ink - at all. ;)


• OMAS Princess Scarlet Red
  A second Scarlet Red Princess will join my collection this month, taking my Princess total to six. Scarlet Red is my favourite OMAS celluloid after the beautiful Saft Green.


• Nakaya Piccolo IV
  By now, I should have already ordered my fourth Nakaya Piccolo, but I just can't decide on a design. I have several designs of my own creation short-listed, but love them all equally, so I keep dithering between them and never choosing.
  In the meantime, I have decided to order a Aka-tame Desk Pen. No design motifs, just that classic lacquer with a rose gold SEF nib.