My Nifty New Pump Pen

Hubby lent me his Ackerman pen and I’m not giving it back.
As my favourite 7-year old would say, I don’t like it, I LOVE it!

This is an artist’s pump pen, an inspired work of genius that will do for your sketching and doodling what the Cuisinart did for my food prep: you won't go back to your clunky old tools.

Yasmine - R. Koleilat©2007

This oh-so-clever pen works very much like a regular fountain pen, but with an added pump feature, and nib and brush tips you can replace at will (you can use your old nibs, they work just fine). The fountain-pen design is this cool tool's most excellent feature - no more dipping! And it’s transportable!

But you do have to be very careful how you store the pen, if it still has ink in it – if it’s not upright, you may get an unwelcome mess when you open it. You're also better off road-testing it first - it takes a little while to get used to the flow of the ink, and you tend to overpump when you’re first trying it out. At least I did.

Another lovely feature: the pen will happily work with whichever water-based medium you like best: I’ve tried plain old black ink and like it very much, and hubby is using his with watercolours to absolutely brilliant effect.

Here's the other main reason I really love this pen: you can clean it in seconds under running water – no clogging, no dried-up gunk, no flakes! Love that.

I think the pens are totally worth the $30+ US price tag (of course, I did steal mine) – you can check them out at Charles Ackerman’s website http://www.ackermanpens.com/
The pen comes with easy to follow instructions and lots of tips – but nothing beats getting your hands on it and trying it out for yourself.

I hadn’t bothered with ink for a while because of the fussiness that comes with it (I don’t have a lot of working space, but I do have too many cats, and 2 kids and too little time) – and now, I have the perfect, coolest tool for it. Gotta go do some more sketching