What pen(s) are you using today?

[amberleadavis]

1 hour ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

TL;DR: A TWSBI Eco green with EF steel nib, plus a re-grind by Pablo Carrasco (FPNibs.com) to a fude (ink brush). Inked with Diamine Sherwood Green; the other pen had Diamine Scarlet for breakfast. 

 

The figures depict various aspects of the pen. Sorry for the low-light photography. 

 

Figure 1. The pen next to a drawing. 

 

Figure 2. Zoom in on the nib, middle angle to emphasize the fude. 

 

Figure 3. Zoom in on the nib, side view to show the full fude incline. 

 

Comments are welcome. 

 

Looks GREAT!

[amberleadavis]

12 hours ago, mallymal1 said:

A Wearever. Inked with Waterman South Sea Blue.

 

It's always a surprise, that the cheap looking, ill proportioned nib, which should be gold coloured to match the hardware, is such a pleasure to write with.

 

 

Yep, I would expect a good nib, but darn it writes nice!

[flodoc]

Parker 75 Custom in blue lacquer w/18K medium nib and Parker Penman Ebony ink. Manufactured in Q4, 1991 (U).

[DvdRiet]

7 minutes ago, flodoc said:

Parker 75 Custom in blue lacquer w/18K medium nib and Parker Penman Ebony ink. Manufactured in Q4, 1991 (U).

Quite a handsome pen!

[essayfaire]

2 hours ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

TL;DR: A TWSBI Eco green with EF steel nib, plus a re-grind by Pablo Carrasco (FPNibs.com) to a fude (ink brush). Inked with Diamine Sherwood Green; the other pen had Diamine Scarlet for breakfast. 

 

The figures depict various aspects of the pen. Sorry for the low-light photography. 

 

Figure 1. The pen next to a drawing. 

 

Figure 2. Zoom in on the nib, middle angle to emphasize the fude. 

 

Figure 3. Zoom in on the nib, side view to show the full fude incline. 

 

Comments are welcome. 

Beautiful!  Maybe you should start posting to my pen and plant pairings thread!

 

Plus, now I'm even more excited about the pen I just mailed off today to get turned into a fude, albeit a writer's fude rather than an artist's.  Good reason for that, too!

[flodoc]

13 minutes ago, DvdRiet said:

Quite a handsome pen!

Thank you @DvdRiet, I had a Parker 75 collecting problem for many years, hence I have far too many now!

[DvdRiet]

6 minutes ago, essayfaire said:

albeit a writer's fude rather than an artist's.

That sounds quite interesting! What’s the difference between a writer’s and an artist’s fude?

[DvdRiet]

5 minutes ago, flodoc said:

I have far too many now!

I’m afraid I don’t know what that means 

[essayfaire]

24 minutes ago, DvdRiet said:

That sounds quite interesting! What’s the difference between a writer’s and an artist’s fude?

Ah, you need to ask Mark Bacas.  He does both.  I know my pen is being turned into the writer's version and started life with a Jowo #6 F, so it might have to do with the maximum line width.

[inkstainedruth]

25 minutes ago, DvdRiet said:

That sounds quite interesting! What’s the difference between a writer’s and an artist’s fude?

Yes, I'd like to know that too.  I'd never heard of anything except for "fude" (as a general term).  I only have the one fude nabbed pen, a cheap Guanleming pen that I got when I first started down the FPN rabbit hole.  I don't use it much, but it was nice for writing italic before I got any calligraphy sets.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[OldTravelingShoe]

1 hour ago, essayfaire said:

Beautiful!  Maybe you should start posting to my pen and plant pairings thread!

Many thanks for the kind words, @essayfaire! (Also, @amberleadavis, @DvdRiet.) 😊

 

I am too new at both drawing and fountain pens to really post my attempts, but I'd appreciate a link to the thread so I can enjoy and appreciate the art of others. Thank you! (I may still contribute drawings as I learn and get more exuberant about my art.) 

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, DvdRiet said:

What’s the difference between a writer’s and an artist’s fude?

 

Is one more pretentious than the other? 

[inkstainedruth]

Mine cost $5 US.  Hardly what I would call pretentious.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[OldTravelingShoe]

6 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Is one more pretentious than the other? 

I've also never encountered this distinction, but let's get excited and explore this idea 😄 :

1. The typical fude nib extends 0.6-1.2 mm beyond the feed and is upward shaped, so a skilled artisan can get a lot of variation out of one pen. Tina Koyama has a 12-part series on searching for pens that cam deliver this kind of character, starting with an 11-part grail search and one final moment. 
2. Moonman Delike used to offer mini-fudes, which were closer in behavior to a Waverley nib but still considered fudes. Rupert Arzeian has a recent take on this. I find this kind of nib is very nice for writing, but has limited expression for drawing. 
3. Very large fudes exist, including the Duke 551 nib that extends 2.0-2.2 mm. Teoh Yi Chie "Parka" has an excellent written review (and video, iirc). I find this kind of nib is very nice for painting, but has limited application for writing in regular settings. 

 

We can now use a new pair of terms: fudes for writing (compact, easy to handle), fudes for drawing (large, full of expression), with some unclear area in-between. But of course these meanings are just shortcuts, and as such inaccurate and imprecise. (I'm sure one with more experience can improve both accuracy and precision.) 

[A Smug Dill]

2 minutes ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Moonman Delike used to offer mini-fudes, which were closer in behavior to a Waverley nib but still considered fudes

 

A fude is a brush in Japanese, so I'll accept at a broad stroke that Fude nibs are designed to produce the type(s) of ink marks that mimic the output of Oriental brushes as writing, drawing and/or painting instruments on paper.

 

Is there some distinct characteristic or feature that distinguish between brushes used for (Oriental) writing and (Oriental) drawing and/or painting as ‘art’? I've recently bought quite a few books on traditional Chinese painting, as well as a whole pile on Chinese calligraphy. I'm not convinced there is a difference between the two types of brushes. Drawing leaves coming off a bamboo shoot is not necessarily so different from the short, triangular shaped diagonal strokes in ‘writing’.

 

Furthermore, I don't see writing, as a term, inherently excluding writing in 50mm letter/character height on a large scroll, even it's not something I do or so much as imagine myself as enjoying doing. Putting five very large hanzi characters on a wall-hanging scroll (e.g. 空手無先手, “Rule number one” in the Miyagi-do school in Cobra Kai), for example, surely must count as writing, as opposed to drawing or painting? What about a sutra of several hundred hanzi, intended to cover a wall panel?

 

On the flip side, there is drawing something very complex or detailed as art, to cover an area equivalent to one side of an Oriental teacup or European demitasse.

 

I don't think the framing of producing marks on paper that is sized between A2 to A6 in inherent in making a distinction between writing and art.

 

[OldTravelingShoe]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

A fude is a brush in Japanese, so I'll accept at a broad stroke that Fude nibs are designed to produce the type(s) of ink marks that mimic the output of Oriental brushes as writing, drawing and/or painting instruments on paper.

 

Is there some distinct characteristic or feature that distinguish between brushes used for (Oriental) writing and (Oriental) drawing and/or painting as ‘art’? I've recently bought quite a few books on traditional Chinese painting, as well as a whole pile on Chinese calligraphy. I'm not convinced there is a difference between the two types of brushes. Drawing leaves coming off a bamboo shoot is not necessarily so different from the short, triangular shaped diagonal strokes in ‘writing’.

 

Furthermore, I don't see writing, as a term, inherently excluding writing in 50mm letter/character height on a large scroll, even it's not something I do or so much as imagine myself as enjoying doing. Putting five very large hanzi characters on a wall-hanging scroll (e.g. 空手無先手, “Rule number one” in the Miyagi-do school in Cobra Kai), for example, surely must count as writing, as opposed to drawing or painting? What about a sutra of several hundred hanzi, intended to cover a wall panel?

 

On the flip side, there is drawing something very complex or detailed as art, to cover an area equivalent to one side of an Oriental teacup or European demitasse.

 

I don't think the framing of producing marks on paper that is sized between A2 to A6 in inherent in making a distinction between writing and art.

 

This is an interesting discussion, with a part we can resolve logically and a part we cannot. The key point of distinction seems indeed whether there is a clear separation possible between writing and art. If there is, by looking at sizes and maybe even quantifying other aspects, we could distinguish between brush-nibs attached to fountain pens. If there isn't, we can at best aim for a useful definition for specific, practical settings. 

 

The part that we could resolve logically seems to me the idea of what writing is - conveying information by means of letters, phonemes, or even icons. Art, to paraphrase Gombrich, does not have a particular goal, but also is not necessarily devoid of it. This logical part leaves unresolved many types of writing (and of art): in the illustrative writing, in writing that is more illustration- or ideogram- or icon-based, in writing that is meant to attract and inspire so goes beyond the mere informational, etc. So I second you, @A Smug Dill, that we cannot draw an abstract separation. This means I can

see how we could end up _not_ having a meaningful set of concepts around fudes for writing vs. for art.

 

Concurrently, looking at the common setting of A6 to A4 booklets to which one can apply ink-strokes, there could be useful distinctions in the range of commonly available fude nibs. These distinctions could even help a prospective buyer, much like when one buys brushes -- the rigger is different, longer than the regular cut, etc. 

[A Smug Dill]

10 minutes ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Concurrently, looking at the common setting of A6 to A4 booklets to which one can apply ink-strokes, there could be useful distinctions in the range of commonly available fude nibs.

 

I personally would not use a BB nib to write, in English or in Chinese, on A6- to A4-sized paper, but only to ‘draw’ or ‘paint’ bold strips of colour or perhaps fill in an area such as a wall, the sky, or the sea; whereas I'd be happy to write with a Japanese EF nib or even Platinum UEF nib (and I have a handful of nibs that write as finely as the latter does), in order to fill text densely on the page the way I like it. Yet others would not write with anything less wide than a wet Western medium nib, and reserve EF nibs only for the finest lines in their drawings. So which nib widths are the writer's tool, and which are the artist's tool?

[OldTravelingShoe]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

I personally would not use a BB nib to write, in English or in Chinese, on A6- to A4-sized paper, but only to ‘draw’ or ‘paint’ bold strips of colour or perhaps fill in an area such as a wall, the sky, or the sea; whereas I'd be happy to write with a Japanese EF nib or even Platinum UEF nib (and I have a handful of nibs that write as finely as the latter does), in order to fill text densely on the page the way I like it. Yet others would not write with anything less wide than a wet Western medium nib, and reserve EF nibs only for the finest lines in their drawings. So which nib widths are the writer's tool, and which are the artist's tool?

Hehe. For writing, I'd argue we could check the common teaching methods, which I believe establish sizing and density for a specific culture of writing (and, further, for a specific hand). When one introduces flair into their writing, they do so explicitly, for an artsy purpose or perhaps some other condition (e.g., even medical), but this would not be pursuing the common goal of information sharing using (de facto) standards. However, this argument again excludes extremes and inversions by simply labeling them art. 

 

Following this argument, the context where the statement "this nib is a fude for writing" or "that nib is a fude for drawing" would need to include not only page sizes, but also the school or method of writing one wants to test the statement against. This could again be practical, as in "use the rigger brush to draw ropes that limit sails and rigs, for European realistic painting". (But therein the limitation: if someone does differently, can we just say it's art(sy)?) 

 

P.S.: I keep hoping there exist some de facto standards, especially local. But this turns out time and again to not be true, even for things that are supposedly measurable and directly comparable (e.g., nib sizes). 

Edited April 26, 2022 by OldTravelingShoe
Added the post scriptum.

[Waverly]

Lamy 2000 EF and a Cross ballpoint with a broad black ink refill.

[mallymal1]

A Conway Stewart Coronet eyedropper. IM nib, inked with Noodlers HOD.