No matter how many fountain pens I have or try, eventually, I go back to a dip pen - at least for some time. But traveling with a dip pen and using it on location is quite tricky - mostly because of potential ink spills. Over the years I tried several different techniques and this one seems to be my personal top runner:
I use an empty eye drops container, wash it, and fill it with ink. Then I apply ink (a drop or two) directly on the nib of my dip pen - and draw. If there is extra ink on my pen - a touch of the tip of the nib to the hole gets extra ink back into the bottle. With this setup I can draw pretty quickly (even while standing): I hold my tiny bottle in the same hand as my sketchbook and squeeze ink one drop at a time. In some cases, I've drawn with the tip of the bottle itself - or used found objects to use as a pen - all because the ink was available in this convenient way.
This week I realized that one of my ink bottles stopped working properly as plastic aged and got too rigid - so I no longer could get one or two drops - it is "nothing or gushing" - so I got a new (quite soft) bottle and moved ink into it - here are some photos of the process - click on the image to see it larger.
