Your First Dip Pen Session

What to do in the first thirty minutes, and the one mistake almost everyone makes.

The first time most people pick up a dip pen, it either scratches horribly or produces a thick, blobby line that goes nowhere near where they intended. Both of these are almost always the same problem: the nib hasn't been cleaned before use.

Every dip pen nib arrives from the manufacturer with a light coating of protective oil. It's there to prevent rust in transit. It's not there to help you draw. Until you remove it, ink will bead on the nib surface rather than flowing through it, and you'll spend your first session concluding that dip pens are harder than they look when the actual problem is a thin layer of oil you didn't know was there.

Clean the nib first. This is not optional.

Three ways to do it, in order of how much equipment you need:

Pass the nib through a flame for one second — a gas hob or a lighter works. The oil burns off. Let it cool for thirty seconds before inking. This is the fastest method and the one most professional manga artists use.

Alternatively, wipe the nib with a cloth soaked in methylated spirits. Less dramatic, equally effective.

Alternatively, push the nib point briefly into a raw potato. The acidic juice strips the oil. This sounds like an old wives' tale. It works.

Loading ink onto the nib

Dip the nib into the ink until the reservoir — the small curved section behind the point — is submerged. Withdraw it and wipe gently against the rim of the bottle to remove excess. The reservoir should hold enough ink for four to eight centimetres of linework before you need to re-dip, depending on the nib and how wet you're running it.

If ink drips or floods immediately, you're carrying too much. If the nib runs dry after one centimetre, you're not loading enough. Neither of these is the nib's fault.

The three pressure levels

A G-nib — the standard manga and comic nib, and the right starting point — is a flexible steel nib. The degree of pressure you apply changes the line width.

Very light pressure produces a hairline. This is the line you use for fine detail, hatching, and work that needs to read as thin at final reproduction size.

Medium pressure produces a consistent medium line. This is your workhorse. Most of your panel borders, character outlines, and general linework.

Full deliberate pressure spreads the tines and produces a thick expressive line. This is for emphasis, heavy outlines, and gestural marks. It takes practice to control. Don't try to use it in your first session.

What to try in the first thirty minutes

Draw a straight horizontal line across your paper. Draw it slowly, then quickly. Notice how the line changes. Draw a series of lines with increasing pressure from left to right. Learn where the transitions happen in your own hand.

Then draw a simple closed shape — a circle, a rectangle — with the intention of holding a consistent pressure throughout. This is harder than it sounds. Your hand varies naturally. The nib reports every variation honestly.

You are not trying to make anything in the first session. You are learning what the nib does when you do specific things. That knowledge is the foundation everything else builds on.

Cleaning up

Rinse the nib under cold water after use. Never leave ink to dry on the nib — dried ink, particularly iron gall or pigment inks, is difficult to remove and damages the metal over time. A quick rinse takes ten seconds. The Tachikawa ink remover in our accessories section is worth having for stubborn residue.

Store nibs dry. A small jar or a repurposed film canister works perfectly.