Rapidographs

[pasithea]

Haven't mentioned any art in a while. Not because I haven't been drawing but more because I'm in a study mode and not producing 'finished pieces' so much as just like drawing hundreds of character studies.

Anyhow, last night I did a whole lot of hatching. While I use brush or dip pin for just about all of my inking, tech pens are still useful for hatching and stippling where you aren't so interested in the weight of line as you are putting down a lot of ink quickly. I couldn't find the felt-tipped pen size I wanted so I got into the closet and dug out an ancient set of Rapidographs.

Mmm. I'd forgot how smooth these things feel when you ink with them. they just glide on the page and make such smooth sharp lines with darker blacks than the felt-tipped cousins yeild. They're a much better compliment to the way I ink with brush and dip pen.

On the other hand, I'd forgot what a PITA they are to clean. Also, I got the set second hand and it turns out that while (in the past I mostly used the smaller ones) the 000, 00, 0, and 1 pens were clean and operated smoothly, the 2 and 2.5 had not been cleaned properly and were jammed. When I went to clean them I also discovered the needles were pulled free of the piston and they were bent to boot. :( so those two pens are more or less dead. :/

Comments

[sci.livejournal.com]

Hmm, these pens sound like the ones my mother used to use when she worked at the Hydrographic department, making maps. o_o

Little resevoir that can spill if you knock them over?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I used to be a rapidograph junkie, but the tendency to skip when slashing out fast lines while working direct in ink, the joys of cleaning them, and the utterly dead lines all combine to give me little motivation to clean my very-clogged pens, or get new ones...

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

My experience last night is just to disassemble, rinse, then soak them in Simple Green for about 15 minutes and the stuck on ink just falls off the parts. I learned with my airbrush. Something in it unbinds varnish and acrylic rather well. It's also not as toxic as varnish stripper or carburetor cleaner and I assume it's safe for plastic parts, since it's made for cleaning counters and linoleum.

Mine don't seem to scratch and skip. Less so than felt tipped pens at any rate. I do however use them at an inclined desk and the pen angle is almost perfectly perpendicular to the surface. That could be the difference.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I might try that. My bathroom stinks of Simple Green at the moment, as I'm using it to clean a few years of lazy ick out of the tub. (Doesn't do a damn thing for the hair dye, though.)

[mel-musing.livejournal.com]

If you have a porcelain tub, get the works toilet bowl cleaner. The kind that comes in a round bottle, not the flatter bottle. It contains sulphuric acid or some such, and gets everything off. Use in a well ventilate area though, and not directly on faucets and metal drains as it discolours them greatly. Oh, and never use on fibreglass tubs, it tends to melt the surface into a gel, it does re-harden into interestingly shaped hills and valleys with the stains now imbedded (can you tell I've made that mistake?).

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, that sounds invitingly dangerous! I think the tub in my apartment is emphatically not porcelain, though.

[mel-musing.livejournal.com]

I gave up on rapidographs, but I never knew about the Simple Green fix. Maybe I'll have to dig my old ones out...

Thanks for the information.