Italix hair-tearing

[twigletzone]

OK. Two new Italix pens, as nib tests before I invest in a Parson's Essential. And I'm really having trouble figuring out which of the nibs I prefer/which one suits me more.

 

The thing that's tweaking me most is, I got a cursive and an italic, both M, and as far as I can tell I'm actually getting more line variation from the stub. The italic has the crazy buttery smoothness that everyone who reviews Italix talks about, and it's definitely the smoothest italic nib I've ever used. The stub just has a tiny little bit of feedback, but not in a bad way and of the two it seems to suit my writing more. I do see good line variation in the italic when I really pay attention to angle and so on, but, well, I guess there's a reason they call it a cursive - it just plays well with "ordinary" writing. The italic takes a bit more focus (and technique I don't yet have, no doubt) to make the best of it.

 

Here is a writing sample with both. Your thoughts much appreciated!

 

 

[sgphototn]

Perhaps you'll find more variation in the way you hold your pen to paper than with the nibs. I can take a Italix Broad Italic and depending on how I hold the pen get a variety of line variations from a thin line to a thick line.

 

Don't overthink it. Get the nib you want most, then practice holding the nib at different angles to the paper, not only parallel to the line but at an angle as well. Try different elevations of the nib to the paper.

 

Don't get hung up thinking that there's only one way or one correct way. There are more variations than you can imagine.

 

 

 

[twigletzone]

That's just it, I was experimenting with all sorts of paper rotations and as much pen angle fiddling as I could without losing the line (they both definitely have a sweet spot) - and it was just harder to get anything that really showed the line variation from the italic, unless I stopped dead and took a deep breath and wrote about one letter every five seconds. 

 

It's making me think that cursive is the way to go because I'll just have more fun with it and therefore use it more. I don't think it's smart to "invest" in things that require me to be somebody else before I can appreciate and enjoy them - like, don't buy a wedding dress three sizes too small and tell yourself you're going to lose weight before the Big Day. Love what you have.

 

The other thing that surprised me was I also found I had to press down on them way harder than I was expecting to get a line, at least to start with - it eased a bit after a while but they still respond positively to a bit of leaning on them. I'm used to italic nibs being like paintbrushes, and it feels very unnatural to me to lean on a nib like that - but these are really quite dry in terms of flow. I'm guessing that will wear in a bit after a while though.

[Beechwood]

Very good advic above.

 

Sorry to say that I can see very little difference in the two nibs for your particular handwriting.

 

I don't want to sound insulting but your handwriting is small and not particularly demonstrative, it will be difficult to achieve great things from a speciality nib, you may be better with a simple Fine or Medium.

 

There is no shame to a fine, I have just taken out a Fine Parker 51, first time for over 10 years,  and it is a joy to use, a nib like that would suit your handwriting very well.

[Karmachanic]

Red ink italic nib shows more line variation than the blue. Experiment a bit with the angle at which you hold the pen; it may make a difference.

Like mine, your "e" is closed. In my experience, a more defined letter shape gives one better line variation. Just a matter of slowing down a bit, and paying more attention. Advice I need to heed myself.

[twigletzone]

1 hour ago, Beechwood said:

Very good advic above.

 

Sorry to say that I can see very little difference in the two nibs for your particular handwriting.

 

I don't want to sound insulting but your handwriting is small and not particularly demonstrative, it will be difficult to achieve great things from a speciality nib, you may be better with a simple Fine or Medium.

 

There is no shame to a fine, I have just taken out a Fine Parker 51, first time for over 10 years,  and it is a joy to use, a nib like that would suit your handwriting very well.

 

No, I'm well aware my handwriting isn't particularly expressive or aesthetically interesting - I hate that and I'd love to change it, but it is what it is and achieving any improvement will take work and practice. (At school I wasn't taught a particular style of cursive so much as "these are your options for joining up letters, make up your own style" - I went for what was fast and legible, and twenty or thirty years on this is the result. Other people in my year got gorgeous "artist handwriting" out of the exact same lessons. This is why I have some books on that lovely French style of cursive on order, I think I need a set of rules to follow if I want to have pretty writing instead of fast!)

 

I usually write with a Medium - I don't actually own any Fines at the moment (just a Pilot MR which is a fine-medium, and I do like the look I get from using it). I had several bad experiences with scratchy, barely usable F nibs I tested and I do like smoothness so I've erred on the side of bigger for the most part. My Platinum Prefounte may well get a friend in F because it moves like butter on hot glass, but that's not quite the same sort of investment as a Parson's Essential!

 

I did try out both nibs on nicer paper (Rhodia) last night, and interestingly enough I found that the cursive skipped a lot but the italic got on fine (and of course the line definition was a lot crisper, and even with my writing added some interest to the look). I seem to need to use these pens at a lower angle to the page than I'm used to or they start very hard and tend to skip, and doing that also showed me the difference in smoothness between the two - the italic was glassy smooth, as everyone who reviews Italix talks about, but the cursive had a fair bit of feedback when used with the feed a bit closer to the page. I think the cursive is quite a dry pen so I'm going to try a really wet ink, but so far I'm wondering about ordering a plain old M and a backup spare section in the italic just in case I get good at pretty writing. Unfortuinately pretty much none of the Parson's Essential reviews I can find talk about any nibs other than cursives and italics, so I can't get much of a sense of the line width for its ordinary M - SBRE Brown has done the Churchman's Prescriptor in every nib they make but I have no idea if that's the same nib as the PE.  They're Leonardt nibs apparently, the owner of the business said as much on here, but I can't find a single word on google about Leonardt nibs for fountain pens, only dip nibs.

 

 

[twigletzone]

2 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

Red ink italic nib shows more line variation than the blue. Experiment a bit with the angle at which you hold the pen; it may make a difference.

Like mine, your "e" is closed. In my experience, a more defined letter shape gives one better line variation. Just a matter of slowing down a bit, and paying more attention. Advice I need to heed myself.

 

Would you mind unpacking that a bit? I'm not sure I'm following. You mean a looped 'e' rather than a Greek-style 'E'? And what do you mean when you say a "defined" letter shape?

 

I definitely got more line variation with the italic than the cursive on Rhodia paper (the sample pictured above isn't such good stuff so there's probably some feathering).  I liked how it looked, although I know I don't have aesthetically nice handwriting.

[Beechwood]

6 minutes ago, twigletzone said:

 

No, I'm well aware my handwriting isn't particularly expressive or aesthetically interesting - I hate that and I'd love to change it, but it is what it is and achieving any improvement will take work and practice. (At school I wasn't taught a particular style of cursive so much as "these are your options for joining up letters, make up your own style" - I went for what was fast and legible, and twenty or thirty years on this is the result. Other people in my year got gorgeous "artist handwriting" out of the exact same lessons. This is why I have some books on that lovely French style of cursive on order, I think I need a set of rules to follow if I want to have pretty writing instead of fast!)

 

I usually write with a Medium - I don't actually own any Fines at the moment (just a Pilot MR which is a fine-medium, and I do like the look I get from using it). I had several bad experiences with scratchy, barely usable F nibs I tested and I do like smoothness so I've erred on the side of bigger for the most part. My Platinum Prefounte may well get a friend in F because it moves like butter on hot glass, but that's not quite the same sort of investment as a Parson's Essential!

 

I did try out both nibs on nicer paper (Rhodia) last night, and interestingly enough I found that the cursive skipped a lot but the italic got on fine (and of course the line definition was a lot crisper, and even with my writing added some interest to the look). I seem to need to use these pens at a lower angle to the page than I'm used to or they start very hard and tend to skip, and doing that also showed me the difference in smoothness between the two - the italic was glassy smooth, as everyone who reviews Italix talks about, but the cursive had a fair bit of feedback when used with the feed a bit closer to the page. I think the cursive is quite a dry pen so I'm going to try a really wet ink, but so far I'm wondering about ordering a plain old M and a backup spare section in the italic just in case I get good at pretty writing. Unfortuinately pretty much none of the Parson's Essential reviews I can find talk about any nibs other than cursives and italics, so I can't get much of a sense of the line width for its ordinary M - SBRE Brown has done the Churchman's Prescriptor in every nib they make but I have no idea if that's the same nib as the PE.  They're Leonardt nibs apparently, the owner of the business said as much on here, but I can't find a single word on google about Leonardt nibs for fountain pens, only dip nibs.

 

 

 

You are at some crossroads here. it is possible to change your handwritinng, I have seen someone who could not read her own handwriting change to become  a superb and admired writer, to the point where people remarked upon it.  She practiced over and over, you have a simpler objective, if you increase the size of your letter so that lower case letters are at least half the line width then that will allow for greater expression with the more specialist nibs, perhaps go for longer tails on the lower case y, p, g, type letters more open o, e, q, c, try go for very large upper case letters, double line width.

 

An early device in better hand writing is to take two sharp pencils, sellopatpe them together so that their points are level. Put the points together and practice C and O and Q in a line and see how the line width changes, try and obtain the same effect with an itallic nib. I must hold my hand up and say that despite being involved with calligraphy for 3 years in my 20s I cannot use an itallic now to save my life, mainly because I write quickly and I rotate the pen on the page, therefore an oblique nib is perfect for me.

 

If I were you I would look to try a Fine nibbed pen, they dont have to be scratchy and one pen that you can try for very little money is a Jinhao X450 or the 750, I think that they have a fine nib as standard and  are typically under £5 delivered through ebay. Your handwriting just says FINE nib please!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Karmachanic]

29 minutes ago, twigletzone said:

 

Would you mind unpacking that a bit? I'm not sure I'm following. You mean a looped 'e' rather than a Greek-style 'E'? And what do you mean when you say a "defined" letter shape?

 

 

With the understanding that I am no master of cursive writing.  I recognize in your cursive the problems I have in mine.

 

I refer to your "e". which, for the most part, has no open loop, as opposed to your "a" and "d" which are mostly open. We both also tend to hug the horizon, with our letters close to the line. I tried writing larger, which did not work out very well. My solution, up to now, is to slow down and try to write taller, if that makes sense. As one might with an italic hand. Refer to "but without" in the last sentence of you example. If the letters b, u, w, and h were taller there would be defined. As written I recognize them through context, rather than being easy to perceive as  b, u, w, and h.

 

When I write taller I get more line variation out of my cursive italic nibs.

[twigletzone]

5 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

 

With the understanding that I am no master of cursive writing.  I recognize in your cursive the problems I have in mine.

 

I refer to your "e". which, for the most part, has no open loop, as opposed to your "a" and "d" which are mostly open. We both also tend to hug the horizon, with our letters close to the line. I tried writing larger, which did not work out very well. My solution, up to now, is to slow down and try to write taller, if that makes sense. As one might with an italic hand. Refer to "but without" in the last sentence of you example. If the letters b, u, w, and h were taller there would be defined. As written I recognize them through context, rather than being easy to perceive as  b, u, w, and h.

 

When I write taller I get more line variation out of my cursive italic nibs.

Aah! Right - the "sat on by elephants " look. Yes, I see

 

Yes, I'm entirely with you on writing taller. Aside from dabbling in calligraphy as I'm sure many of us here on FPN do (apparently it's a wise idea to learn foundational hand before you get to italic, so getting anything out of calligraphy practise that might support my everyday writing is going to be slow), I've decided I'm going to try to learn the French style of cursive to address that. Apparently in France it's taught using Seyes ruled paper, which has the "line height" divided into four equally spaced sections, and there's a specific height each part of each letter is meant to be. Part of the reason it looks so lovely is that it pays very close attention to tall, elegant ascenders. I won't be able to get that looking right without learning to move my pen a little more in relation to my wrist. Still waiting for the instruction books I ordered, I had to go to Amazon's french website to get them, but the Seyes paper is Clairefontaine so it's superb for fountain pens.

[Karmachanic]

Rather than learn a formal hand, I'll work on improving improving my own. I've purchased  Improve Your Hand-Writing by Sassoon & Briem which, according to reviews, should move me in the right direction.

 

Enjoy your italic nib!

[twigletzone]

2 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

Rather than learn a formal hand, I'll work on improving improving my own. I've purchased  Improve Your Hand-Writing by Sassoon & Briem which, according to reviews, should move me in the right direction.

 

Enjoy your italic nib!

Thank you

 

Ultimately I'll probably end up blending some stuff from French style cursive with some homegrown tweaks, but I think it's best to know the rules if you want to break them in style