The colors on an iphone don’t do a beautiful fall scene justice, especially on a cloudy cloudy day….but what was so memorable for me this past Monday about my adventure up to Mount Rainier, it was my cousin’s visit! I haven’t seen her since she was a little girl, and now she’s a grownup 21 year old, traveling on her own and being all kinds of amazing!

On our trip she taught me about the science of the adaptations trees make as you get higher and higher up….and I taught her the differences in the branch formations, which she’d never noticed – and they’re something I see as an artist. A great back and forth for both of us!

After my last video and realizing I hadn’t mentioned some important things about these pens (read the last post to find out more), I also decided to try something that the folks in chat during the Premiere were asking about these brush pens – can you use watercolor in them? Let’s give it a try!

Tutorial: Myrtle Falls (Custom brush pen test part 2)

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

The brush pens

These are fairly generic pen bodies – an inexpensive acrylic – but feel more like a fountain pen than any aqua brush pen. The nib is of course brush-like, and is more in the style of a Zig clean color brush point than, say, a felt type marker nib.

I don’t know at all how long these will last, will they dry out, etc; if you end up finding out, do let me know if yours dry out, and what was in them! The caps aren’t super-fancy or anything and it’s possible they’ll leak air in; I’ll be checking these periodically to see how it goes.

Ink vs watercolor

This was another lesson for me in the difference between ink and watercolor; watercolors are meant to be more transparent in use, which would be why it was hard to get a “thick” mixture of the Moonglow that would have enough flow to be sucked up into a pen like this. Inks seem to work better. Just be sure to get the brush–and the plastic it fits into– covered by the liquid so that whatever science magic of air and moisture happens, it’ll keep pulling liquid into the pen.

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Cleaning these pens

I couldn’t work out taking them apart without possibly damaging the piston by taking THAT end out; I know you can do that with fancy pens, I just didn’t trust these to go back together since they’re not solidly built! So I just went to the art sink and under running water, pulled in clean water, expelled colored water for about 5 minutes til it was mostly clear, then refilled with similar colors in each pen.

What was  your last national park adventure?

And have you sketched it yet? What are you waiting for?