NOTE: The saga of Ahab started HERE.
After the initial impressions yesterday, I left two Ahabs to rest overnight and a better part of this day. Then after a day’s work I couldn’t help myself and pulled them out again to see how they are doing. The clear one was the first in line and after a bit of a dry start it started dancing. On a slightly thicker Fabriano Disegno the nib glided smoothly and flexing was similarly pleasant. The ugly feathering is still there, but it has nothing to do with the pen. Ahab the Clear worked great.
Going for even stronger option – Fabriano 300 gr watercolour paper in sheets – changes the behavior of the nib considerably. Not a hint of feathering, but better yet, the stroke is now much finer, “in line” with my expectations:-) But everything must be paid for – in this case with the pronounced “railroading” as this kind of paper absorbs much more and dries the nib. Also being slightly textured it interacts with the tip and breaks the flow of lines here and there. Apart from “railroading” on longer and faster strokes (and that could even be used as the effect sometimes), everything goes.
Then it is the other one’s turn to show if the rest was beneficial. Maybe because the feed got saturated with ink overnight, once the dry-start phase is through, Ahab the Red also puts up a better performance, exhibiting less skipping than yesterday. This pen prefers it slow, at a moderately laid-back pace; insisting on speeding things up pushes it into hick-ups. So I follow it’s demand, taking it easy and work through two thirds of my sketch… and then it stops. Shaking, side-testing, shaking… starts. A third kind of surface, the slightly textured but also glazed paper, is not really a right choice for this particular pen. But overall the impressions are better today.
Let’s sleep over it again.
NOTE: The saga of Ahab continued HERE.