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Happy Fountain Pen Day!
Nov. 6th, 2015 12:44 pmI got into fountain pens about a year ago. I started out with the Pilot Varsity, a disposable fountain pen, and if anyone ends up interested in fountain pens as a result of reading this, I highly recommend you start with the Varsity, too. Writing with fountain pens is very different from writing with ballpoints or gel pens or even felt tips. They don't require pressure to write - I used to get hand cramps if I wrote too long, and I don't have that problem anymore since I write almost exclusively with fountain pens.
My collection! Actually, I'm missing one that I left at work. Most of these were in the $15-20 range, which maybe sounds expensive if you're used to buying ten ballpoint pens for two bucks, but they're definitely on the low end as far as fountain pens are concerned. I use different pens for different sorts of writings, depending on the nib size, what kind of paper I'm working on, what kind of ink I'm using, etc. As you can see in the lower-lefthand pic, fountain pen ink does this really cool thing called shading, where more ink gets laid down on certain parts of letters, so you get lighter and darker colors as you write. Not all ink shades, not all paper shades, but it's one of my favorite parts of the experience.
This is from a display I did at work (though my sister did the Edgar Allan Poe paper cut-out). I used my Pilot Parallel pen - it's the long skinny silver one with the orange cap, they run about ten bucks on Amazon. If you like calligraphy, I would definitely recommend the Parallel. I'm still learning how to best use it, but it was a lot easier writing this than times I'd done calligraphy back in school with a quote-unquote calligraphy pen.
(The ink blots you see here and there are me literally dropping ink on the paper with a syringe, the big ones to cover up mistakes HAHA.)
If you write by hand at all it's totally fun to have at least one or two fountain pens in your arsenal! They're not super expensive, there are a ton of resources online if you run into issues, you can use all sorts of fun and sparkly inks (like this!), and let's face it, they look pretty boss.
My collection! Actually, I'm missing one that I left at work. Most of these were in the $15-20 range, which maybe sounds expensive if you're used to buying ten ballpoint pens for two bucks, but they're definitely on the low end as far as fountain pens are concerned. I use different pens for different sorts of writings, depending on the nib size, what kind of paper I'm working on, what kind of ink I'm using, etc. As you can see in the lower-lefthand pic, fountain pen ink does this really cool thing called shading, where more ink gets laid down on certain parts of letters, so you get lighter and darker colors as you write. Not all ink shades, not all paper shades, but it's one of my favorite parts of the experience.
This is from a display I did at work (though my sister did the Edgar Allan Poe paper cut-out). I used my Pilot Parallel pen - it's the long skinny silver one with the orange cap, they run about ten bucks on Amazon. If you like calligraphy, I would definitely recommend the Parallel. I'm still learning how to best use it, but it was a lot easier writing this than times I'd done calligraphy back in school with a quote-unquote calligraphy pen.
(The ink blots you see here and there are me literally dropping ink on the paper with a syringe, the big ones to cover up mistakes HAHA.)
If you write by hand at all it's totally fun to have at least one or two fountain pens in your arsenal! They're not super expensive, there are a ton of resources online if you run into issues, you can use all sorts of fun and sparkly inks (like this!), and let's face it, they look pretty boss.
