Currently, to revive this discussion, I start most of the times directly in ink. I use a fountain pen with a fine nib most of the times with Platinum pigment ink. The Platinum carbon black is absolutely waterproof. Only once a few of the pigments came off the page while coloring, I still wonder why – maybe a strange coated area on the paper.
Anyway, I then color it in with my watercolors and as I also add fake black for the darker values – green with indigo, brown mixed with phtalo blue, I use these darks also to refine the outlines. Also I usually add value to the initial ink sketch with diluted indian ink I carry in a waterbrush.
