I've avoided dabbling in ink drawing without drafting with a pencil underneath because the thought of putting ink on the page without a plan fills me with irrational dread, but that changes now! (The avoidance is changing. No guarantees on the irrational dread.) This is also my first time doing plein air drawing, so there's excitement all around.

I hate pretty much every fineliner I've ever tried, so I decided to give fountain pen drawing a try. I went shopping through the pens I already have because I had no desire to buy a designated "art pen" just for an experiment.

I tested the three finest pens/nibs that I have: the Platinum 3776 soft fine, the Platinum steel fine (available in all of their sub-$100 pens), and the Sailor Compass 1911 medium fine. I ended up going with the Sailor Compass because it runs quite dry and puts down a pretty thin line... and I needed an excuse to get use out of it... (My annoyance with this pen has been documented previously)

Fountain pens are smooth and satisfying in a way that fineliners and other pens aren't. I could just get ink on the page without fighting with the pen! Amazing!

I replaced the ink in the Compass with the black ink cartridge it came with, and it feels like a completely new pen with it. It's a very wet ink that compensates for the ink flow issues I was having with the Compass earlier.

Drawing trees has always been a sore spot for me. I find it difficult to partition the tree into basic shapes (and this is a problem for a lot of things since I view images so literally), so I'll be focusing on that as I do more drawings.

I also learned that the standard Traveler's notebook is a terrible size for plein air drawing. It's fine if you've got a table, but it's awkward to rest in your lap otherwise. I plan on moving into my passport size notebook once I get some sketchbooks bound, so that should help with portability.