Reed pens have a long and illustrious history. Essentially any suitable tube that fits the hand can be pressed into service, but my personal choice is bamboo: it’s cheap, readily available from your local garden centre, and a single piece can yield half a dozen useful pens.
I also use feathers: goose is the best, but my country rambles generally provide gull, pheasant or similar, as well as smaller raw materials scavenged from the forest floor or reservoir bank.
Reed pens are useful for adding detail to paintings, for applying masking fluid and for composing a complete picture. The advantage of using them with masking fluid is that should the fluid dry to the familiar resilient goo that destroys brushes, the pen can be scraped clean or, if all else fails, a new nib can be carved. So, first things first, let’s make a pen.

DEMONSTRATION 1

How to make a reed pen

You will need:

• Length of bamboo that feels good in your hand
• Heavy-duty craft knife
• Small block of wood

Step 1



Begin by carving a nib. I like to hold the bamboo in my left hand and use the thumb behind the thumb on my right to control the cutting. When enough material has been removed to leave no pith in the centre, it is time to split the nib.

Step 2



1 Place the pen on a piece of scrap wood and drive in the point of the knife through to the block. This should split the bamboo right to the end of the nib. If it doesn’t, keep the point of the knife hard on the supporting block and move the hand down in a guillotine motion.

2 Make your nib as simple or elaborate as you like, just remember it needs a chiselled end, like the nib on a calligraphy pen. In that way, you will be able to draw a varied line that’s full of character.



The procedure is much the same for any raw tube that you choose. You can easily make a selection of pens, each subtly different in use to the others.

IMPROVISED INK

If you don’t have ink to hand, use watercolour