Rattlebrained

Once, in the mid 90’s (?) while traveling, I bought a felt tipped “brush pen” and was really disappointed with it; probably because I had big expectations of what an item like that should be like. A few years later I stumbled on a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and was both enchanted and somewhat disappointed. If I remember right it had a few ink flow issues, or at least I thought it did, and it wasn’t that great on some of the watercolor papers I was carrying around at the time.

That said, a quick glance at some old sketch books shows that in the early 2000’s I went from mostly sketching with a pencil, to mostly sketching with a brush pen. So I gather that my disappointment was short lived and that I found papers better suited for the medium.
In any case three things that I found attractive with them were:

• My pencil sketches always ended up smeared by being rubbed against the facing page, not so with the brush pen sketches.
• The challenge of not being able to erase anything.
• The Black.

I was, and am, entirely pleased with the Pentel Pocket Brush pen, although I often think that the same, but with a longer brush, would be cool. I have tried the larger brush pens they make but the one I bought leaks and always gets ink everywhere. Plus the bigger size doesn’t fit in my pocket so I never used it much; at home I can use a variety of brush sizes and whatever ink I want.

A few years ago after being on vacation in the UK, I wondered if there was anything new to be found brush pen wise, found a few articles about those made by Kuretake, and promptly ordered a No.50. In that article I wrote “…so it’s not like it changes my style in any way…”. But I was wrong.
Unlike the pigmented and waterproof Pentel ink, the Kuretake ink in the No.50 brush pen seems to be a dye and more important is the fact that it is water soluble!

That Fall I bought a small sized Pentel water brush to try out, and presto: “pocket” washes!

So yes, the Kuretake’s sable brush is IMO somewhat nicer, but it is shorter and a lot more expensive and in the long run what really makes me chose one from the other is the ink and what I’m working on.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could put the Kuretake ink into the Pentel, or vice-versa?

Suddenly certain similarities appear between these two inks:

• They both give a good quality matte Black with minimum sheen.
• They are both very satisfying inks to use.
• Both have cartridges that contain approximately 1.1ml of ink.
• Both inks are only sold in cartriges and so add unnecessary plastic to the trash!

I measured the amount these contain this morning and based on that and the price of cartridge packs at JetPen, to fill a 30ml bottle one would need to spend over $15.00 for the Kuretake ink and over $34.00! for the Pentel Ink. And since a growing number of blogs discuss suitable alternatives to either ink I’m guessing that I’m not alone in feeling a certain frustration here.

The Kuretake Brush Pens accept Platinum converters, the Pental Pocket accepts none. Initially I would not find this a big deal, you can put whatever ink you want in an empty cartridge. However I have noticed that when the cartridge is half empty in the Kuretake, more ink flows through the pen making very fine lines more difficult to obtain. It seems that this has something to do with air pressure, which I have no reason to doubt. It was because of this issue that I started searching to find out more. And having filled a converter with the ink from a half-filled cartridge, I can say that that has seemingly solved the issue; however not without annoyances.

As things stand I would be happy if I could buy both inks in a bottle; I like them, they are fine for what I do. However, I am getting plastic fatigue and am tired of companies that force you to buy small quantities at a maximum price and for that reason will be looking into other inks. Starting with water soluble inks I am waiting for bottles of Diamine Ink Jet Black, Diamine Onyx Black, and Kaweco Pearl Black…