I am a lover of both fountain pens and the inks created to make a pen show to its best.  Now,  this is still a fairly new hobby, love,  obsession  for me because  I have only dabbled for a little over a year now.

My favourite thing is the pairing of inks and paper.  I never thought of myself as a paper aficionado and I’m still not,  but I notice the paper.  The difference in how an ink shows itself on bright white versus cream paper. The way an ink will flow using the same pen nib on 80gsm paper versus paper that is 140gsm.

Now,  there are many different types of inks with many different ink properties.  But for my purpose today,  I am focusing on a few inks with no shimmer or lubricant and a low water resistance.

I began to experiment with ink as a water colour simply because I had no water colour.  I love the intensity variation that occurs with water colour.  This is one of the properties that I like about inks.  The way an ink can initially look one colour,  but as it flows onto your paper you can see variations in shade and pigment.  I wanted to try it,  using ink as a water color. Now,  this is not a concept that I have developed, or even one that is fairly new.  It is an old technique,  but I think a really good one.

Using ink to achieve a water colour effect is also a good way to prepare a journal page. Sometimes I still find it difficult to begin writing.  This is especially true when I have a lot of ideas running around in my head and I want to write them all down,  simultaneously.

The use of ink as a water colour is a good way to discover the nuances of an ink, as a meditation exercise or to prepare a page for a journal entry.