If you want to use a fountain pen and paint watercolour washes over the top you have to purchase special ink for your pen as standard fountain pen is water-soluble. The good news is there are a number of water based permanent inks that are suitable for use in fountain pens and that become permanent once dried so that you can paint over the top.
Note: DO NOT put other permanent inks (such as indian inks) in your fountain pen as they will ruin them. Only ink that says it is for fountain pen (or google it first!) and even then, putting any pigmented ink into your fountain pen is a risk – make sure you use and clean you pen regularly!
– I use De Atramentis Archive Ink or Document Ink (I can not really tell the difference between the twobut haven’t done extensive testing to see if there is a difference). I LOVE this ink so much. It flows beautifully. Please note that it is not as ‘solid’ a black as the noodlers – depending on the pen you are using (ie. the width of your line) you might find some translucency in the ink.
– I also love Super5 ink. Read my first review here
– For many years I have used Noodlers Bulletproof black ink and rarely had any issues. I used my pen daily so the ink was always flowing and don’t ink over graphite pencil lines. I would never leave this ink sitting in a pen that isn’t used regularly and have known of numerous people that had pens that have clogged as a result of Noodlers.
– Another ink that people use is Platinum Carbon Ink. I haven’t tried it but it sounds like another ink that you need to keep moving and regularly clean your pens.
– De Atramentis has brought out a range of coloured Document Inks(permanent) and I am using multiple coloured ink lines a lot in my sketches since November 2014. Here is a link to some of my work on the blog or if easier a set on Flickr.
If you are interested in mixing these coloured inks make sure you check out Jane Blundell’s DeA ink mixing charts.
Problems with your Lamy pen?
The first thing I always do is to clean the pen – check out this great video from Goulet… and get totally distracted watching Brain Goulet’s other Ink Nouveau videos! Also this amazing page over at Goulet has video answers to many many questions. He knows much much more than I ever will! Check it out here.
I have found that De Atramentis works best in my pens. I have had a number of pens that were not flowing smoothly with Noodlers ink but as soon as I switched to DeA they started to work like a dream.
