One
of the things I really like to do is get the maximum use out of all my
art materials. This means that I like to hack them for a secondary use.
AC Moore recently had a 55% off coupon. SCORE! I headed in and bought
yet another brush pen. At 50% off I spent $4.30 for a Niji brush pen.
Sweet price.
When
I get one of these the first thing I do is take an exacto to the body
and separate the restrictor that forces you to fill the pen via
squeezing it. I stuff that into the brush part. (Video on this later.)
This lets me fill the reservoir with water in my prefered method- small
squishy bottle. Or in the case of this particular pen, a bottle of ink
and a blunt syringe.
I placed 4ml of ink into the body of the pen, greased the threads with silicone grease and screwed the whole thing up.
I now have a brush pen full of ink.
I
can fill this brush pen with any ink. Pigmented ink, acrylic ink,
fountain pen ink. Obviously it works best with ink that is watery in
thickness than super thick ink, but even super thick ink will flow, just
not as well. If using permanent ink you’ll need to make sure you clean
the pens out well and not let them dry out with ink in them.
Why would you want ink in a waterbrush? Uh, awesomeness.
Personally,
I really like how the colors flow together and I get a really nice
amount of blending and feathering when 2 colors hit the page. I love the
loose brushiness that the brush pens force me into. I can’t spend time
worrying about anything, overthinking kills the look of the brush pen.
Worry is it’s enemy. It forces me to be free and to not overthink.
(I'm currently testing my yellow inks for lightfastness, or lack thereof. I don't expect much from these. I'm probably going to pick up a bottle of Liquitex or other brand of pigmented ink.)
