Drawing Fp?

February 18, 2017

So, Im new to fountain pens, and I was was wondering what would be a good fountain pen for drawing and sketching? I have seen in other websites that for someone new to this the lamy safari and pilot metro are kind of the way to go, but i really dont like these all that much. I dont want a pen exclusively for drawing, but I am gonna use it for that a lot. My budget would be around $100 but the price varies here in my country with some pens.

February 19, 2017

I'd say it would depend on a lot of factors. Not only the pen itself and how ergonomic it is, but also the nib width and what sort of line it puts down.

For me, the two fountain pens I like drawing with the most are really different from each other. One is a Rotring Art Pen with an EF nib. It's a c/c pen with a nail for a nib, but good for fine detail line work. The downside of that pen is that it has a tapered barrel, so I can't post the cap on the back of the pen when I'm using it. The other is a Pelikan M400 from the 1990s, with a very juicy F nib (writes more like a . It's a piston filler pen, so it holds a fair amount of ink in it, and the nib, while not really flexing, has some give to it, so you can get a bit of line variation. The downside of that pen is that it's such a wet writer I have to be a bit careful what inks to put in it (my original plan was to use it with Iroshihzuku Yama-Guri in it -- it's such a beautiful sepia tinged brown -- the the ink was too wet for the pen; OTOH, Noodler's Walnut, which is very dry ink, IMO? That behaves beautifully.

In all fairness though, I will say that I was an art major in college, and drew with dip pens ( a cheap cro-quil nib is really nice, especially with Higgins Sepia -- which you do NOT want to put into a fountain pen, BTW), a bamboo. pen, a set of Rapid-o-graph technical pens (they were for ruling lines with? Who knew.... ), and even a Speedball dip pen with a C-6 nib....

Given your price range, you can probably get a Rotring and probably have plenty of cash leftover for ink and paper. Oh, paper -- that's another issue. You can also probably get a Desiderata Daedulus (a fountain pen with a feed designed for using with dip pen nibs) and still have a bit of money left over. The caveat there is that dip pen nibs don't have tipping on the tines -- I have a prototype with a Zebra G nib on it, and apparently I got a bum nib -- it even scratched and tore good paper like Rhodia -- the only paper I had which it worked well with was Clairefontane.... My pen was supposed to be a "blow filler" but I didn't have the lung capacity, so I converted it to an eyedropper.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstaiinedruth

February 19, 2017

I'd say it would depend on a lot of factors. Not only the pen itself and how ergonomic it is, but also the nib width and what sort of line it puts down.
For me, the two fountain pens I like drawing with the most are really different from each other. One is a Rotring Art Pen with an EF nib. It's a c/c pen with a nail for a nib, but good for fine detail line work. The downside of that pen is that it has a tapered barrel, so I can't post the cap on the back of the pen when I'm using it. The other is a Pelikan M400 from the 1990s, with a very juicy F nib (writes more like a . It's a piston filler pen, so it holds a fair amount of ink in it, and the nib, while not really flexing, has some give to it, so you can get a bit of line variation. The downside of that pen is that it's such a wet writer I have to be a bit careful what inks to put in it (my original plan was to use it with Iroshihzuku Yama-Guri in it -- it's such a beautiful sepia tinged brown -- the the ink was too wet for the pen; OTOH, Noodler's Walnut, which is very dry ink, IMO? That behaves beautifully.
In all fairness though, I will say that I was an art major in college, and drew with dip pens ( a cheap cro-quil nib is really nice, especially with Higgins Sepia -- which you do NOT want to put into a fountain pen, BTW), a bamboo. pen, a set of Rapid-o-graph technical pens (they were for ruling lines with? Who knew.... ), and even a Speedball dip pen with a C-6 nib....
Given your price range, you can probably get a Rotring and probably have plenty of cash leftover for ink and paper. Oh, paper -- that's another issue. You can also probably get a Desiderata Daedulus (a fountain pen with a feed designed for using with dip pen nibs) and still have a bit of money left over. The caveat there is that dip pen nibs don't have tipping on the tines -- I have a prototype with a Zebra G nib on it, and apparently I got a bum nib -- it even scratched and tore good paper like Rhodia -- the only paper I had which it worked well with was Clairefontane.... My pen was supposed to be a "blow filler" but I didn't have the lung capacity, so I converted it to an eyedropper.
Ruth Morrisson aka inkstaiinedruth

thanks a lot!