Pens pens pens - drawing with the Falcon again

Inspired to bust out the Falcon once again by the new NMA video featuring Glenn Vilppu:

And it was very cool to see him using the water brush with the Falcon again. Apparently he hasn't done it for a long time. I really dug the ones where he started with the waterbrush with some wash in it - I simulated that by starting with a light grey Tombow brush tip, and on the last one I finished with the black Tombow. I also sort of used a little Stanchfield at times - I feel I need that more free and exploratory approach rather than Vilppu's strict form building.

Got in a bunch of brush pens (fude) from Jet Pens (Japanese importer in New York I believe) and also a few ballpoints. Of all of these the only likely candidates seem to be the Bic Velocity - nice broad point pen but it keeps cutting out on me (More later), and the little Petit3 refillable brush pen. The rest of the ballpoints are too thin and scratchy or a weird shade of blue, and the rest of the brush pens can't keep up with even a moderately fast line, they skip out and turn light grey, or already are to begin with.  Though I do think I scored with the white Sharpie poster paint pens.

On the ballpoint front - all the decent ones I have (Velocities, plus the old Silk Writers) keep cutting out every few seconds which is super annoying. I thought to look up ways of fixing that and discovered rubbing alcohol and holding the tip over a flame briefly, plus just good old scribbling. One article also mentioned tapping the pen's tip on the table a few times. These tricks seemed to be helping, though not completely fixing it (apparently long term storage causes ink to dry out behind the ball point, and writing or drawing with one for a day or so often breaks it in). But unfortunately the little plastic tip on the Velocity pens is really cheap and thin and made of brittle plastic that breaks into pieces with gentle tapping, a little heat, or even apparently vigorous scribbling. Went through 3 of them already!! Finally hit on the idea to take the refill out and just work on that, then put it in a body only if it shows some promise. And never try to fix it in the body, always pull it out first. I also decided if worse comes to worst I can actually draw even with a pen that cuts out regularly - hell, I've been doing it with the old SilkWriters this whole time!