Now, I like fountain pens and I like technical pens, but which is best?
Just starting my homework for this week on Mattias Adolfsson’s online course, The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art.
Pen v. Pen
Tag: Fountain Pen
Eco-T Fountain Pen
This Eco-T Fountain Pen, by TWSBI of Taiwan, is chunkier than my regulars, which suits my large hands. The grip is triangular, or rounded triangular, which means that it’s easy to be sure that you’re holding the nib at a consistent angle to the paper.
The screw-off cap and the filler at the end of the pen also have a triangular cross section so it’s just the transparent barrel that is cylindrical. This pen doesn’t have an option to pop in a cartridge so the whole barrel can serve as a piston filler, giving extra capacity.
It comes with a small plastic spanner, which is used for maintenance on the piston filler: you can lubricate this with silicone grease, a small bottle of which is included in the kit.
This is the version with an Extra Fine nib, so, filled with my favourite Noodler’s Brown Ink, these drawings are probably indistinguishable from those that I’d make with my Lamy Safari or Rotring Art Pen, but after just a few days of using it, I think that I can say that the Eco-T is going to be my favourite, mainly because of that extra chunkiness but also because it has a firm, positive feel to it. At first I felt as if I’d be holding it a bit too close to the nib but as soon as I got into drawing and became less self-conscious about the unfamiliarity of a new pen, it felt perfectly natural.
It was supplied by Pure Pens, so thank you to them for flagging it in one of their e-mails and, after I’d ordered on the Friday afternoon, for getting it to me via first class post by the next morning.
The lime green is a new colour but it’s definitely the one for me to go for, as it’s different to any other pen that might be lurking in the front pocket of my art bag.
Links
Drawing with a Lamy AL-star Fountain Pen
I got on well with the Lamy Safari with the extra fine nib that I bought a week or two ago so I’ve decided to go for the aluminium version of the Safari, the AL-star, this time with a slightly thicker Fine nib, to use for both writing and for drawing.
After writing ‘the quick brown fox . . .’ and ‘jackdaws love my sphinx of quartz’ a couple of times on an envelope and doing a couple of doodles I tried it on those perennial subjects, my hands and my feet.
Bulletproof Black
I’ve decided to stick to Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink in this pen. On the strength of these test drawings, I’m intending to use the pen for my Waterton comic strip project. It doesn’t lend itself to the Hergé Claire Ligne (clear line) technique which I so much admire but that’s not my natural style anyway, as I’m not as decisive and clear-thinking as Hergé.
I’m working with two very different comic strip artists on this project but we’re not aiming for a house style that is consistent across the three sections of the story. In fact the more my section looks like my own work the better.
Energy and Eccentricity
I’ve been reading my diary from forty years ago this month, in the summer of 1975, the year of my degree show at the Royal College of Art, and it reminds me of the energy that I used to put into my work. More energy than expertise, I’d say, I was waywardly ambitious, but there’s something charming about that, and the style lends itself to the energetic and eccentric Victorian character whose life I’m trying to evoke. I don’t want it to look like a facsimile Victorian naturalist’s notebook but I’m happy for it to have a rich, loosely cross-hatched ambience.
Links; Lamy pens at Pure Pens who supplied the pen and the Noodler’s ink.
Lamy AL-star pens and propelling pencils