| Christine | Farmer |

I was really impressed with how quickly my order for new pens and a Rotring Pen Cleaner Unit arrived! The unit comes complete with several packets of cleaner fluid which you mix with water, before screwing down the top of the unit and inverting. The instructions say you can soak the pens for no more than 16 hrs., so considering the time of day, I’m going to give them about 10-12 hrs. and then leave them to dry out, as per instructions.

Note: I should have realised that the rack that goes inside the tub was open at the bottom. Unfortunately I managed to drip ink all over the wooden kitchen worksurfaces! Next time I’ll make sure I put something underneath when I put the dirty pens in the unit.

Update: The pen parts came out after 10 hours, with some ink still stuck to the barrels. I wonder if I should have given them a manual clean first? I haven’t had chance to test out the pens to see if they’re properly unblocked yet, but I’ll report back here as soon as I have. I may have to give them another dip later on if any are still clogged.

All images and text ©Christine Farmer Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

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As I’ll soon be re-photographing my work for my new online pen and ink drawings gallery, today I’m beginning to touch a few of my drawings up. Just small things that I feel need darkening here and there: some clouds to make heavier, some skies to deepen. So for the first time in a while, out come the pens.

I had a little burst of buying new Rotring Rapidograph pens last year, just to make sure I had some in reserve. So I needed to check what I have, and see what needs cleaning or replacing. Sometimes it seems a nib gets a bit ‘gushy’ (developing a little globule of ink on the end if you pause too long during stippling) and I don’t know what to do other than replace it and keep the ‘gushy’ one in reserve. I also have a couple of nibs that have blocked, and I really need to buy a cleaner unit. In the past I’ve always relied on a lot of shaking and even sucking the end of the pen… but that usually gets you a mouth full of ink if you’re not careful!

Here’s the current collection (above left): ,13 and 0,5 (which I’ve been using most often in the past couple of years), up to 1,0, which I almost never use. Today I ordered some ,25 and ,35 which I used to use more in the past and will be using for the new projects. I’m going to be recording the progress of the new work here in the blog, from first ideas to photography to drawing. So if you would like to keep up to date with my progress, please subscribe and you’ll get regular updates (one email a day on any day that I update the blog)!

So today I’ll be concentrating on sharpening up the detail in this drawing (below), and later in the week I’ll be photographing it ready to upload it into the gallery.

All images and text ©Christine Farmer Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

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