Sailor Demannin Fountain Pen – Analog Artist Digital World

After arriving in Oklahoma City, I hiked to downtown to find a restaurant to eat in and sketch. I settled on Zam Zam which is a Mediterranean restaurant. Since I was eating on my own, the hostess asked if I wanted to eat at the bar, but I wanted a table with a view of the room, so I could sketch.

A large table of eight people were seated across from me. It was the birthday of the little girl at the head of the table.

With this sketch, I used a large one inch brush for the first time to block in the watercolor. It was liberating being able too cover the page with just a few brush strokes. I used a pill bottle to hold the water. I need to rig up a way to clip the water container directly to the sketchbook, since holding the water container and the palette is impossible. In this case I could leave both on the table, but in other cases I need to reach rather far to dip the watercolor bush into the water container.

The one horrible thing that happened while doing this sketch is that I lost the 3 fountain pens that I brought for sketching. This sketch was done with the Sailor Demannin Fountain Pen. But when I went to do a sketch the next day all 3 fountain pens were missing. I searched to hotel room extensively and they are simply gone.

I returned to the restaurant the next day in the rare hope that they might have a lost and found. Most people might not consider a fountain pen useful, but to me it is like loosing my Stradivari. Unfortunately the manager didn’t find the blue box that contained my precious pens. My heart sank. I wanted to eat at the restaurant again if the pens surfaced, but now I will never return since the place is like the Bermuda Triangle where art supplies disappear.

Since I will be needing good fountain pens when I head over to Europe, I went ahead and ordered several more and they will hopefully be at the studio after I drive back to Central Florida. I fully packed the backpack that I will be taking to Europe to figure out what I truly need. I am traveling with just a backpack which can be slipped under an airplane seat. For winter supplies I have a down jacked and a shell that is light and compact. I am realizing that I need a light fleece sweater for the times a hotel blasts air conditioning too high. A down jacket seems like overkill, but maybe not.

The empty lot next door with the sand sculpted Mayan temple of beach sand now decided to drill a well to find water. The truck backed up and set up to drill right at the edge of the property line.

Two thick metal peg leg supports were lowered to stabilized the back of the truck and then the large yellow lift was rotated up at a 90 degree angle.

The drill was rotated around and lowered through a U shaped device at the back of the chassis. Once the pipe hit the ground the drill was turned on. It let out a deafeningly loud repetitive banging noise that persisted for well over an hour. I have ear plugs in a tiny metal jar on my key chain. Those came out immediately. I also have noise canceling headphones, and together the sound was still unbearable. When the drill is turned off it lets out a loud hiss and water vapor flies everywhere.

As the saying goes, if you can’t beat um, join um. Work had begun at high noon on the hottest day in recorded history. I decided to leave the air conditioning and go out and sketch. There were very few shady spots n the lot since all the trees had been chopped down the weeks before.

I set up my artist tool inside the back patio, which thankfully had shade because of the hot metal roof. It was still hot as bloody hell and my hands sweat on the page as I was putting down lines.

There was some debate about how close they were drilling to the edge of the property line. There is supposed to be 75 feet between a well and the drainage filed for a septic system. There is however no rules about how close wells can be drilled next to one another. The property line was marked by a black fabric fence. Any drilling is supposed to happen 10 feet from the property line. With the new lot flag, several feet of property would be lost on this side of the black fabric fence. The stake with an orange flag however was several feet in towards the property I was sketching from. Lots of ferns and native plants were actually on the property that had just been stripped bare. All those plants will likely be ripped out and thrown in a large dumpster that was now at the front of the empty lot. There were plans to dig a trench along that property line to help drain rain water to the back of this property. I’m glad that wasn’t done since that trench would have fallen in the contested area.

I was having trouble with my fountain pen leaking every time I drew. That is because I was using a syringe to add fresh ink into a used plastic ink canister. I got an ink inverter which can stay in the pen and uses a plunger to draw ink into the canister. I’m happy to say there are no more leaks. This sketch is the first time I was using new fountain pens and I was pleased with how easy the ink was flowing. Most of the sketch was done with a Sailor Demannin Fountain Pen which has an angled nib that can put down very thick lines or very thin lies when the nib is turned on it’s side.

At the end of the sketching session I puts out a new Sailor 21 K Zoom Nib Pen and it puts out such a rich thick line. I don;’t think I will sketch with this pen all the time since there is no option to get a thin line. The delicate nib in this pen splits gloriously far however when I want to draw very bold. I will have to rethink how I use line if I want to draw with this pen more.