Firstly, you'll want to go through "search" and dig up the whole process thread that patriot54 was doing. I even saved a few of his pix in my photo bucket:
Just to remind myself that this:
Is lame. Patriot's came out so good because of the quality of the original art, of course. I used to buy, sell, and repair fountain pens and (mostly) regrind fountain pen's nibs for fun and profit - until my eyes began acting their age around 45 and took the "fun" out of it. There isn't two hair's difference between the aniline dyes in water-based wood dyes, fountain pen ink, food coloring and RIT clothing dyes, just a few preservation ketones & such that you really do not want on Junior's Easter eggs unless you really, really dislike Junior.
Feathering is going to be your biggest enemy, and the reason why "real" Rapidograph ink may be better. Or even something with shellac & alcohol, acetone etc. For sure you'll need a sealant coat after the burning, before the ink. Zinnser's Wax-free shellac is a great one, but you need to poke around the "compatibility" issue. You actually want some IN-compatibility, i.e. if your seal coat is shellac and you start to draw on it with a shellac-based ink, the ink can re-dissolve the shellac and... umm, randomize your artwork. The blackest of blacks inks are the carbon-pigmented particulate ones, you can thicken inks with gum arabic, speed their drying with alcohol, make then dry harder with shellac, etc. It used to be that the very best-looking & working inks were also the very nastiest, you had to flush technical pens every single time you stopped or....
And professional full-time printers have a habit of dying of the weird diseases like liver cancer, cirrhosis, pancreatitis & pancreatic cancer that are normally only the province of seriously-dedicated drunks. There have been some people doing some really good work with the Sharpies, their big brother Posca markers, Pantones and stuff - the inks all mixed, with all the evaporation & feathering & saturation figured out. My mom used to charge a pretty hefty fee for people's house drawings, the hyper-detailed pen & ink drawings that look like every single brick is painted in. She had it all figured out - draw in the big lines, get a professional copy, draw in more detail, another copy, then finish it with the fine stuff - so the buyer'd get the final full-sized original and two copies they could reduce for stationary & post cards.
ANYWAY - she had thrown over the Rapidographs as soon as the first Pigma Microns came out, no more cleaning snozzled pens. Everybody's making them nowadays, they get down to the .05mm or so range for that truly psychotic experience. I don't don't have time to stay good at both drawing and music - I'd probably have to
get good at drawing first. I can still draw a mean flying eyeball...
We have another way-heavy art guy here, Kuro... something, another scary-good artist guy. I have to go to SLEEP I find later if you don't. First.
http://www.lamborghinimiami.com/sharpie_car.htm
that's gunna keep ya busy for a while.
