Introduction, Itoya Doubleheader CL-10 & Pilot Parallel Pen

Welcome to my Sunday Art Blog! I’ll make weekly posts on here explaining what I’m doing, showing any new works I can publish, showing you what materials I use, as well as what artists I admire. At the moment I’m in my last year of studying game design and development at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Currently I’m wrapping up a college project for Guerilla games I did artwork for. Hopefully I can publish some of that work here in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a post about one of my favourite drawing materials.

Calligraphy markers are usually cheap calligraphy alternatives designed for lettering purposes, but I love using them for lineart and solid blacks. Not having to mess around with a jar of ink is convenient too, making them ideal for work on the road.

Up until recently, I used this one, the Itoya Doubleheader CL-10. It has two chisel nibs on each end, one being 3,5mm and the other being 1,7mm. They come in six different colors.. Years ago I found the black version in a local Bruna, bought one, and tried it out. I was immediately hooked.

These markers look classy: The barrel is made from lightly textured plastic and provides excellent grip, while also allowing you to switch your grip without anything getting in the way. The barrel feels rock solid and the thick plastic clip is also very sturdy. I love creating broad strokes and sharp lines by simply rotating the barrel. Using the full nib on its length will result in sharp strokes of varying thickness. The ink is acid free, but not waterproof and not very black either. They're still great markers to start out with though, and I've made a lot of portraits and sketches with them.

Unfortunately, the sharp chisel nib you come to love in your first hours of use doesn’t last long. The tip starts becoming round and soft quickly, making it unable to create sharp strokes anymore. Soon after that the ink starts running out. While it’s still useable, you’ll find yourself having to replace your markers rather often to maintain a sharp stroke.

 

A while ago I was surfing cultpens.com, my usual supplier of drawing materials I'm unable to find in local stores. They were advertising a new drawing product by Pilot:

The Parallel Pen is a recent calligraphy pen made by Pilot. They come in four nib sizes: 1.5mm, 2.5mm, 3.8mm, and 6.0mm. All pens produce a 0.5mm line when the nibs are used sideways. You can buy them individually or buy a gift set containing three different sizes and a complimentary set of ink cartridges. Cult Pens carries a gift set containing all pens except the 6.0mm one, though I’ve seen other stores carrying gift sets with different contents. Even so, getting the gift set usually saves you a lot of money.

 Instead of having a marker nib, they use a construction consisting of two metal plates between which ink is forced and spread out evenly. Unlike markers, the nibs don’t wear out, and they have replaceable ink cartridges.

 While I loved the Itoya Doubleheaders’ design, The Pilot parallel pen is okay. The pens are quite long and just barely fit in my pen wallet. They have an extended hollow barrel shaped like a brush handle. 

The one thing that scares me to death every time I unscrewed these pens was the thin plastic bit that holds the pen in place.  One day I might easily screw the barrel on a bit too tight and shatter these things right down their length. The handles are the same for each nib size but can’t be bought separately, so be careful with them.

 

Each pen comes with a special nib cleaner in case you ever clog it up with paper fiber, and a special squeezable cartridge to flush the pen while holding the nib under water. Both individual pens and gift sets contain a manual including maintenance instructions, as well as tips and detailed calligraphy instructions.

The ink cartridges aren’t very expensive, but I don’t use any other color than black. When my 6,0mm pen runs out of ink I might put a spare red cartridge on there and see if I can use it for colouring. Too bad Pilot doesn't offer any shades of grey for ink. There is however a tiny little ball inside each ink cartridge, which prevents the ink from clogging up over time.. A neat bonus which even the newer Pentel brush pens don't have anymore.

Pilot commonly advertises a neat trick you can do with two parallel pens with differently colored cartridges inserted. You can hold their tips together to let ink bleed into another pen’s tip. When using this pen, the inserted color will gradually turn back into the pen’s regular color. I've never done this myself, so I can't judge this feat. Note that Pilot recommends not changing cartridges before they’ve run out of ink, and also not to re-insert cartridges that are still filled that you took out of a pen. If you want to work with lots of different colors at a time, you’ll have to purchase a lot of these pens.

It took some getting used to these metal nibs, as it doesn’t work under as many angles as a marker nib does. For broad strokes you need to keep the nib completely level. The ink also seems prone to some minor bleeding on certain types of papers so you need to find the right paper to use these on. The ink is again not waterproof, which is a shame.

Here's a comparison of both systems. While the Itoya produces smoother curves, the Pilot has darker ink and starts/ends way sharper. Their regular flow of ink is quite impressive. The lines skip occasionally because of me still getting used to their handling, but I also like the effect. Despite it's flaws, I'd still choose the Pilot over the Itoya simply because of the Pilot's metal nib and interchangeable cartridges. This will save some money in the long run.

I haven't drawn that much with the Pilot yet, but a while ago I found pictures of two of my favorite artists meeting up and trying each others favorite materials in a sketch jam. Ashley Wood had a go with Yoji Shinkawa's Pentel brush pen, and in Yoji's hand I noticed the Pilot, size 3.8mm.

And here are some Ashley Wood sketches done with the same pen

Oh how I love his stuff.

Speaking of Yoji Shinkawa and his materials, the Pentel Brush Pen is up next sunday!