On Friday a very exciting parcel arrived from Super5 Germany! Six bottles of ink, one fountain pen and a box of very cool sketchbooks.

Like everyone else at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Brazil last August, I received a Super5 fountain pen which was filled with ink. The pen, which contains a fine calligraphy nib producing variable line is a little too heavy for me to use (I have a sensitive hand!)  so I didn’t really get to test the ink that was in the pen. Now, I can really test the inks in the pens that work best for me. These are permanent inks suitable for fountain pens and have a lovely range of colours.

This sketch was done using Frankfurt in a hero fountain pen for the linework and then a paintbrush for the coloured ink labels.

The colour that interested me the most initially was Frankfurt – a BEAUTIFUL  warm grey! Wow!!! Love love love it! But Delhi was jumping up and down for my attention.

I had dinner with a friend on Friday night and this was a good test to try the drying time of the ink in a thick line with paint immediately splashed on. Very impressed!

These sketches were done very quickly… not sure if you can guess what the dishes were – BTW it was Thai!

On Saturday I loaded up a pen with Australia. It is a red-brown rather than the more orange-brown of the de Atramentis Document Brown. In terms of colour I much prefer the later (being a ‘brown-girl’ I have very strong preferences as to what is a nice brown), however when actually using the ink on the page, I found it was a lot nicer to use than I expected!

Just because I am scanning every page I have done in the last few days and so you can see what Australia looks like in text… I will admit that I bought a new paint colour. I felt like a new crazy DS colour would be a good way to celebrate the end of my SketchingNow Foundations online class but haven’t been sure what would be appropriate. During the week I came across a colour that fit the bill. But I am not going to spill the beans just yet!

A little playing with 3 of the Super5 inks – Australia, Delhi and Frankfurt

And then some more… I am rather taken with the Delhi ink (even though I couldn’t spell it or draw a symmetrical facade this afternoon … I have a good reason for both of these but I won’t bore you with it!)

In terms of the sketchbooks that I was given… Super5 have this very nice range of sketchbooks with various cities on the cover. Please excuse me for putting Sydney on the top of the pile. They contain 140gsm white paper which is very nice to write/ draw on and seems to take watercolour ok. But full review coming later… along with more about the ink….but I can tell you that I am very impressed and excited by the first tests.

I have a few deadlines in the next week or so, but then after that, I might be able to start working through my ‘stay tuned’ lists. I have the feeling that I have made a lot of promises in the last few months!