The other day, someone asked me about my favourite drawing tools. Early this year I would've said my best black ink pen was my very old technical pen, my 0.2 old-style Rotring variant, from the late 70s and not made any more. I could draw very fine lines with it. Its point looks like this:
although that's obviously a 0.3 in the photo. The plastic cartridge is pulled off and filled with ink from a bottle, and the line drawn is perfectly even and precise. Some might find all the maintenance to be a nuisance - they needed washing and reassembling if the ink dried out in the tip - but I always got a geeky pleasure from dealing with the mechanics of it. One disadvantage is that handwriting doesn't come out very natural-looking, having to be done a little too slowly to keep the ink flow going. So sometimes I would use an ordinary artist's fine line pen such as Staedtler instead, but as they start running out of ink, the black gets lighter and at a certain point they have to be replaced. But when, exactly? I hated the waste, but also the faded lines.
Then I somehow - can't remember why or how - came across a website that changed everything.
Someone was comparing two budget models of a type of pen I didn't even know existed: a flexible-nib fountain pen, with which line weight gets much wider with increased pressure!
By the end of the article I was determined I had to buy one.
I needed to order from the states, but even with postage it was quite inexpensive and came quickly. And I was not disappointed. Instead of slow clinically accurate lines, I could make variations in thickness to imply shadow, and could write at natural handwriting speed, and could emphasise certain words.
It's taken some learning to get used to the drying speed of the waterproof ink I use - which is SLOOOOW - and stop smudging it quite so much. There is sitll much experimenting with different inks to be done. But I love the look and the feel, and the fact I have to operate its little piston to pull ink into it from a bottle, and it's such a lot of fun to draw with.
Want to know more? This is the one I bought:
Then I somehow - can't remember why or how - came across a website that changed everything.
Someone was comparing two budget models of a type of pen I didn't even know existed: a flexible-nib fountain pen, with which line weight gets much wider with increased pressure!
By the end of the article I was determined I had to buy one.
I needed to order from the states, but even with postage it was quite inexpensive and came quickly. And I was not disappointed. Instead of slow clinically accurate lines, I could make variations in thickness to imply shadow, and could write at natural handwriting speed, and could emphasise certain words.
It's taken some learning to get used to the drying speed of the waterproof ink I use - which is SLOOOOW - and stop smudging it quite so much. There is sitll much experimenting with different inks to be done. But I love the look and the feel, and the fact I have to operate its little piston to pull ink into it from a bottle, and it's such a lot of fun to draw with.
Want to know more? This is the one I bought:
