Using Liquid Acrylic Paint, Bruisings, & Rapido-Graph Pens On Watercolour

[lynn p.]

What an interesting thread.  Dennis that is stunning. Tony, am learning a lot from you.  I have always wanted to do the Psalms this way and actually have an out of print book of psalms in calligraphy and illuminated letters. Have also been attracted by the art in the Book of Kells.  Love for you to give us some lessons.

[Tony (ASM)]

I have the Rapidographs which I bought with one of Claudia Nice's as I was doing quite a bit of pen and wash botanical. First I found that the liquid acrylic ink does not work in them. I had to buy Koh-I-nor colored inks. I still have difficulty getting it to start flowing through the finest pens, and I bought the bulb cleaning system and cleaner.  Phhhbbbttt!!!! I think I need lessons.  There are some good YouTube videos by the company on handling the product, but I think I'll just use the inks with nib pens. I went back to just watercolor for now. Good luck!!!!! I'll be watching for your successes and videos!
Dennis, your piece is beautiful.

Thank you for sharing your experiences Sarah! It's very useful information and interesting to hear how you got on and concluded. This will save me wasting time and money on a system that has problems. I'll stick to my Rotring Tikky Graphic pens and Faber-Castel archival black Pitt pens. I'll have a go at your suggestion of using nibs dipped in ink when I need.
Thanks for sharing that  [size=78%] [/size]

[Tony (ASM)]

What an interesting thread.  Dennis that is stunning. Tony, am learning a lot from you.  I have always wanted to do the Psalms this way and actually have an out of print book of psalms in calligraphy and illuminated letters. Have also been attracted by the art in the Book of Kells.  Love for you to give us some lessons.

Thank you Lynn Yeah, Dennis did a great job of that calligraphy art work. I'm afraid it wasn't mine! I'm still learning!
Of course I'd share some lessons, if you can wait a few years!     

[SunRai]

Dennis -   your Psalm 117 is lovely!   You are quite multi-talented!! 

[Peter.]

I used those roting-rapidograph in my tecnhical drawing classes when I was a student. They only need a good cleaning discipline!

Also for the ones interested in calligraphy, you can search on google for "pilot parallel pen".   

[ncwren]

I never got the nibs smaller than the .30 to flow with the radiograph set I bought. 

[Tony (ASM)]

Update:
I bought the Rotring Isograph pens. They are refillable and, I can choose to use coloured ink in them too. I've already used the smallest one 0.25 and it's very impressive. Tiny dots produced and no splodges. I used it to add texture to my 'Tower Bridge' pen drawing but, found doing that technique to be extremely tedious and boring. I prefer the 'Out-Line & Wash' with watercolour or, pencil drawing.

[Sarah (arch)]

But the dot method can be so impressive!

[crazybones888]

I have been using the Rapidograph pens for a while for pen and ink drawings. I just use the Bombay bottled ink, and recently bottled acrylic "ink". As much as I love these pens, I have had nothing but problems with them. Mostly it is the nibs. The parts are so small and very hard to clean, and break easily. I usually wait until I have a dozen or so nib parts broken in some fashion, and send them to Chartpak. They "replace" them for $5 each. And yet I cannot find a better pen.
I attached a couple of drawings (not so good camera) that are done with a combination of Rapidograph pens with ink and acrylic and calligraghy pens.