Comparison of Platinum Carbon, Noodler’s Bulletproof, and Pelikan Fount India Inks.

For ink and watercolor drawings, sketcher's need a waterproof ink that will not run or smear. Many inks work in dip pens, but would clog fountain pens that can be used for outdoor sketching. These three inks are made for fountain pens and I have used all successfully. Noodler’s is a dye-based ink that becomes waterproof when it contacts the cellulose in paper. Platinum Carbon is pigmented and comes with a warning that fountain pens must be cleaned regularly to prevent clogging. I applied very wet washes over the flowers and leaves of the first two sample drawings below. You can see that the black lines remained sharp and did not run or smear on either Noodler's or Platinum ink.

These first two are totally waterproof, while—as you can see in the lettering samples below—the pigmented Pelikan Fount India will smear and run a little although it retains the basic black line. To demonstrate these qualities, I lettered the name of each ink with a heavy, thick pen line, allowed it to dry, and then washed it with wet blue watercolor. Then I lettered it again with a light thin stroke and washed it with red.

To test the Pelikan Fount India Black ink on a sketch, I washed red watercolor over the blossom on the left above and found that rather a lot of black pigment ran out into the color. I then tinted the flower on the right with a dryer brush being careful to limit the amount of water that touched the black lines. Pelikan Fount India is not completely waterproof, but it can produce satisfactory results when used with care.

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