>>3944498Princeton Neptune brushes for watercolor are so great and I have to shill them. They're expensive but they're just as well made as high end natural hair brushes (sloppy craftsmanship is the #1 reason why synthetics suck) and the fibers are better than real squirrel. Even the largest mop points perfectly.
I still have to find a Kolinsky substitute for inking, so I just use Pentel brush pens. I can't believe they can mass produce Pentel brush pens with a great point but they can't make a normal Kolinsky synthetic brush. They all suck so bad. I would try Rosemary's golden synthetics but I would have to place a huge order of #2 or #4 brushes to offset the shipping and I'm not gonna risk that, and the fact that they don't stock their brushes anywhere but on their site is fishy, sure all your brushes have enthusiastic 5 star reviews only.
Also never buy Escoda Versatil. All the 7 Escoda Versatil brushes I bought over the years sucked to the point of being unusable and I paid a lot for them.
Never buy standard fold-out, no-name aluminum watercolor palettes, like Meeden. Especially Meeden is shilled super hard by paid YouTube reviewers. They are likely all produced by the same factory and the enamel has a shitty pink/grey tint to it. I sent back a Meeden palette because of this and I ordered one from Jackson's and it had the same grey/pink tint.
>>3944597Platinum Carbon desk pen is like 10$ and it makes very nice thin lines. It's the best FP I have tried but I only bought a few low priced ones which I ended up gifting away.
>>3944688>i would like to try something other than fineliners and brushes.If this isn't for sketching outside get a bottle of india ink and a starter set dip pen, lots of Japanese sellers sell a bundle of Tachikawa T-40 holder and a bunch of Zebra G-nibs on eBay for something like 9$. Even for sketching outside I just have a capped dip pen and a 1oz Nalgene bottle (eBay) half filled with ink.
