Inktober 2023 Day 7: Pink Antelopes
I wasn’t in the mood to sketch these, but I decided to sketch them anyway. Pelikan Souverän M600 vintage Tortoise Shell brown fine nib with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama Budo.
Category: Ink
Inktober 2023 Day 6: Grey Elephant
I enjoy sketching with grey inks, so I oftentimes have a pen filled with a grey ink of some kind or another. Today’s selection is the Pelikan Souverän M605 Stresemann with a medium nib (which as it’s a gold nibbed Pelikan, verges on the broad) filled with Diamine Silver Fox. Silver Fox is from Diamine’s 150th anniversary collection (one of the original ones they issued), and is a slightly warmish medium grey with fantastic shading.
African elephants are pretty fun to sketch, so I may be tempted to sketch another one of them later this month.
If you’re looking for a grey ink that’s well behaved, offers a lot of shading, is readable even in fine nibs and is slightly on the warmer side of the grey spectrum, then I recommend giving Diamine Silver Fox a try.
Inktober 2023 Day 5: Teal Rhino
I like inks that are on the teal/turquoise range so I almost always have a pen inked up with something in that shade (I currently have three – this Robert Oster Peppermint, Robert Oster Fire and Ice and a Graf von Faber Castell Turquoise). I sketched this white rhino without considering the background — which was just plain rock face, and so something that I should have changed up.
The pen body is from Woodshed Pens, and the nib is a Franklin Christoph fine. I like this combination, as it allows some sheen and shading to appear and yet is still relatively quick drying.
Can you guess what the next sketch will be?
Inktober 2023 Day 4: Red Fish
Diamine Monaco Red is a dark red/maroon like colour that has darkened even more in my Kaweco AC Sport Carbon red fountain pen. The fine nib still shows the significant shading this ink has. Google photos brought up this aquarium photo from Epctot’s “The Seas” aquarium so I decided to sketch it even though it was much better suited for watercolours. The fish in the foreground looked so worried that I thought it was worth a try.
I’m not a fan of red inks, but Diamine Monaco Red seems to be dark enough and well behaved enough for me to enjoy it. There’s also something particularly satisfying with crossing to-do list items with red ink: this thing is DONE.
Inktober 2023 Day 3: Turquoise Pelican
Day 3 of Inktober is for pelicans, and I resisted the urge and didn’t sketch this pelican with a Pelican. Instead I sketched it with a Kaweco Sport in frosted blueberry with a medium nib and a Graf von Faber Castell turquoise ink cartridge.
We have flocks of pelicans passing in the country on their yearly migration, and they are impressively big and impressively loud birds when disturbed. I have a penchant for turquoise and teal inks, so you’ll see quite a lot of this hue during the coming weeks. I like the shade and shading of the Graf von Faber Castell turqoise, so I may yet buy more cartridges once this pack runs out.
Inktober 2023 Day 2: Black Water Buffalo
It’s day 2 of Inktober, and it’s water buffalo time. These are big, impressive and pensive beasts that you don’t want to mess with. They were chewing their cud in the sun, keeping an eye on us as we admired them from a distance when we saw them at Animal Kingdom, Disney World.
I sketched them using a Lamy Safari fine nib and Platinum Carbon ink. Carbon ink lays down a shiny black line that takes forever to dry and so is my least favourite waterproof black fountain pen ink to sketch with (De Atramentis Document Ink is first place, with R&K Sketch Ink Lotte and Noodler’s Bulletproof Black in the middle of the pack). Since I was afraid of smudging the ink, it’s kind of a barebones sketch.
There was a delightful cast member standing nearby, ready to answer questions, and he was a massive Star Wars fan. He clocked my brother and I’s Star Wars Celebration shirts and we started talking Star Wars while standing in front of these guys and gals’ paddock. Of course he got a cast compliment from us (talking to him made our day), and we got to hear about past Star Wars events at the parks from behind the scenes.
The funny thing is that if we would have rushed past their paddock on the way to see the tigers (like everybody else did), we wouldn’t have had this moment and memory, and the tigers everyone was rushing to see decided to hide in the shade anyway.
Inktober 2023 Day 1: Pink Giraffes
It’s October and that means Inktober time. This year I’ve decided to participate in the challenge but to do it a bit differently than I did in previous years:
- It’s still 30 ink sketches in 30 days. I’m using fountain pens for the entire challenge.
- I’ve limited myself to the Traveller’s Notebook airlines edition insert. I’ll post a review of it later this month, but the idea was to deliberately use a notebook that I thought was too precious to use before.
- I’m not following the official prompts (as usual). I never liked them, and this year’s prompts are no different.
- I’m not posting these to social media. At all. I’ll be posting them here and here only.
Now without further ado, here’s Inktober day 1’s sketch:
The giraffes aren’t originally pink, of course, but I sketched them with Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu ink and a Franklin Christoph 03 Iterum Sedona Spa fountain pen with a Nagahara fine cursive italic. It’s a beautiful combo, and fine cursive italics are great for getting interesting line variations while sketching with pen and ink.
Giraffes rarely sit down in the wild, as that’s way to risky for them (it takes to much time to get up and run, should they need to). In captivity they will sit down if they feel safe and comfortable, and it’s quite a sight. We saw these two during a night time safari at Animal Kingdom Lodge in Walt Disney World, Florida. Giraffes are suffering from poaching, from habitat fragmentation and from habitat lost, and many giraffe sub-species have only a few hundred individuals left. If you want to help them, the giraffe conservation fund focuses on these elegant and fascinating creatures: https://giraffeconservation.org
Currently Inked: September 2023
I’ve recently switched out most of my fountain pens and inks for a new batch, so here’s a quick overview of them (from top to bottom):
Montblanc Victor Hugo medium nib filled with Montblanc Victor Hugo ink. I bought this at Mora Stylos just before they closed, mainly because the design is based on the Notre Dame de Paris, which I adore. It’s a weird design and quite a hefty pen, but I enjoyed the nib, despite it being a medium. The ink, also limited edition (but knowing Montblanc is likely a relabeled existing ink) is a nice, warm brown with a good amount of shading. As I post this I’ve written this pen dry.
Kaweco Sport Frosted Blueberry fine nib filled with a Graf von Faber-Castell turquoise cartridge. This is the only fountain pen that I took with me on my recent trip to the US, and I used it on the plane (not during takeoff and landing).
Lamy Safari Terracotta fine nib filled with Platinum Carbon ink. I wanted a waterproof ink for my sketches, and I haven’t used Platinum Carbon for ages. The Safari Terracotta is the perfect coloured pen for this season.
Schon Design Pocket Six 3D Teal x Matte Black pen with a fine nib filled with a Diamine Woodland Green cartridge. This pen is already been written dry by the time I’ll post this.
Schon Design Pocket Six Faceted Patina fine nib filled with a Diamine Jet Black cartridge. Schon Design pens made me enjoy pocket fountain pens, and Diamine Jet Black is proving to be a solid, dark black ink (not greyish or brownish).
Kaweco Sport AL Carbon Red fine nib filled with a Diamine Monaco Red cartridge. The perfect pen and ink match. I don’t normally use red inks, but Monaco Red skews towards the raspberry side of things, and is very pleasant.
Lamy 2000 fine nib filled with Diamine Safari. Before I filled a flock of Pelikans, this was supposed to be my workhorse pen. Diamine Safari is great for sneaking unusually coloured inks into serious office settings without drawing attention to yourself.
Pelikan 140 KEF nib filled with De Atramentis green grey document ink. Another sketching combo, perfect for watercolours when I want my line work to melt into the background. KEF stands for Kugelspitze Extra Fine – or Ball-tip extra fine. It’s a very forgiving and rather firm gold extra fine nib. I inked this up on the Friday of the Pelikan hubs even though I didn’t go to a hub. The 140 is a piston filler from the 1950s with a gold nib that was dirt cheap and is an utter workhorse. It’s user grade due to the brassing, but brassing adds character.
Pelikan 140 OM nib filled with Robert Oster Fire and Ice – Pelikan stopped making OM nibs in 2014 because they’re scratchy and unpleasant to write with if you don’t hold them at the right angle. But at the right angle this nib is phenomenal, and it works great with inks that shade and sheen – and Robert Oster Fire and Ice is definitely one of those. You can see a visible sheen at the edges of each letter, and it makes them all glow. I inked this to celebrate the Pelikan hubs.
Pelikan M600 brown tortoise shell fine nib inked with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-Budo. This is a vintage M600 from the 1980s, with West Germany printed on the band. It’s a lovely workhorse, like all Pelikan Souveräns, and the Yama Bodu ink manages to shade even with the Pelikan fine nib. Also inked for the Pelikan hubs.
Pelikan M605 Stresemann medium nib filled with Diamine Silver Fox. I haven’t had a grey ink in rotation for a while, and Silver Fox is an interesting and dark grey with plenty of shading, particularly with a juicy Pelikan medium nib. Also inked for the Pelikan hubs.
Majohn Q1 Bent Nib Fude Fountain Pen Review
First thing’s first: if you are looking for a writing pen, then the Majohn Q1 mini fountain pen is likely not for you. While you can purchase it with an extra-fine, fine or medium nib, it’s weird body shape would likely make it uncomfortable for long writing session, and as it’s an eyedropper filler, it’s designed to have a giant ink capacity, normally suitable for long writing sessions.
If, on the other hand, you are looking for a fountain pen to sketch with, the Majohn Q1 may be a very worthy addition to your kit.
I purchased the Majohn Q1 bent nib fountain pen after seeing Paul Heaston use it in one of his sketches. “What is THAT?!” I asked, and immediately set out on getting one. This weird looking fountain pen reminded me of the Tombow Egg pen (google it. I’ll wait), which I always wanted and never got because I couldn’t afford one at the time. The Majohn Q1 appears to have almost the exact same design as the Tombow Egg, with a few minor details in the trim and molding of the grip section. I purchased mine on Amazon for $22.
The box the Majohn Q1 arrives in is good looking enough to gift someone. Inside there’s the pen with the Fude/bent nib installed, a spare medium nib (the bent nib is an “aftermarket” installation) and a glass eyedropper that you can use to fill the pen with. The pen itself comes installed with an o-ring so that it can safely be eyedroppered. I filled mine with De Atramentis Black Document ink, which is waterproof when dry.
Now the Majohn Q1 is a very small pen, that holds a very, very large amount of ink. That’s why I was interested in it, as I thought that it would be a perfect fountain pen to add to my urban sketching kit. I currently use a Sailor Fude DE Mannen fountain pen for my urban sketching, and it’s a favourite among urban sketchers for the expressive, painterly lines it creates. It is, however, very long and pretty unwieldy: difficult to pack, and sometimes awkward to hold. Here are the Majohn Q1, a Lamy AL Star and a Sailor Fude pen laid next to each other, for size comparison:
As you can see, the Majohn Q1 is pocket pen sized in length, and very, very wide. It can’t be used unposted, as is to be expected with pocket pens, but once it’s posted, it just becomes an extra wide standard length fountain pen:
The point of this pen is the bent/Fude nib, so here it is, in all the different line widths it can create:
And here’s the Sailor Fude for comparison:
The Majohn Q1 offers much more line width control and consistency than the Sailor Fude, but you sacrifice some of the painterly quality and dynamism of the Sailor Fude to achieve that control.
The Majohn, like the Sailor, isn’t perfect in terms of gripping experience. While it’s much easier to grip the Majohn in a variety of different angles to get a variety of different lines, there’s a pretty pronounced step between the pen body and the grip section that can be uncomfortable if that’s where your fingers naturally land on. For me, I grasp the pen either closer to the nib, or not on the section at all but rather on the pen body. I’d recommend trying it out first, but for $22, it might be worth it just to buy the pen and try it out for a while.
Here’s a sketch of a friend’s border collies sketched with the Majohn. As you can see, it’s relatively easy to get both a good level of control with this pen, a lot of line variation, and some of that painterly quality to the line that makes it more interesting and expressive.
Here’s the complete sketch, just for fun:
If you’re at all interested in fountain pen sketching, and especially if you are an urban sketcher, I recommend giving the Majohn Q1 bent nib fountain pen a try. It’s easier to control and to transport that a Sailor Fude, and holds a much larger ink capacity, which is great for long sketching sessions or when you need to block out a large section with ink. For such a low price you get quite a lot, and the learning curve is much less steep than with a Sailor Fude DE Mannen fountain pen. I don’t do calligraphy, but I assume that it could be worth a try for calligraphy as well, especially if you are looking for a travel friendly solution. And who knows, maybe you’ll get to feel the temperature of writing while using it…
Weekly Update: Reading and Pen Inking
Long time no update, so I decided that it’s about time to write one up.
Reading
I’ve been in a terrible reading rut, and I blame the book that I’m currently reading: “The Books of Jacob” by Olga Tokarczuk, a 912 (!) page historical epic about Jacob Frank and his followers. I’m halfway through, and I’ve decided to put it aside for now and train my brain to enjoy reading again with some lighter and more fun material.
The book itself is masterfully written and researched, with the narrative made out of a carefully pieced together mosaic of characters, voices and narrative styles. I just cannot handle the subject matter right now. As my rights are being taken away by religious, power hungry fanatics, I don’t want to spend my free time reading about religious, power hungry fanatics. It has reached a point where I balk at the idea of reading again, and that’s just not healthy. I hate giving up on books like that, especially good books, but if I want to actually read again and not just beat myself up for not reading, I’m going to have to start reading something else.
Health
I went through a CPET (Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing) last week and it was pretty intense. My lungs aren’t working well in high intensity since my chemo, and so a lung specialist sent me to get this test, to see whether my heart or my lungs are the issue.
It started with a spirometry test (which is a simple test done to check your lung capacity and performance), and then went on to the CPET itself. I was hooked up to an EKG and pre-test measurements were taken. Then I was fitted with a special mask and filter that recorded my air intake and CO2 levels. Finally I was put on a special stationary bike, attached to a blood pressure monitor and a blood oxygen level monitor, and told to pedal without stopping until I felt chest pain or was about to faint, or until I was told to stop. As the technician calmly told me, they have a lot of people fainting during this test, which is why they do it on a bike and not a treadmill. I said it was intense, right?
Anyway, I pedalled for my life, with the bike’s resistance being constantly raised, and me gradually getting out of breath. The point was to see why, so I didn’t stop until the technician stopped me, at which point a little over 10 minutes of constant intense exercise had gone by and I was drenched in sweat and panting. H
ere’s hoping that I get some useful insights from the results. In the meanwhile I’m still running 5 times a week, just not as fast as I would like.
Pens and Ink
I wrote most of my pens dry and filled in a new batch, this time consisting of mostly vintage pens. There are also two expensive pens in this rotation, a few old ink favourites and some completely new to me inks, and a weird selection of colours.
- The Henry Simpole Jasmin Pen is one of the most expensive fountain pens I own, and one that doesn’t leave the house because I can never ever replace it. It’s a Conway Stewart button filler with a bouncy 18K gold nib, with silver overlay created by Henry for it. The late Henry’s birthday was on the 4th of July, and so to commemorate him and his work I inked this pen up. I chose the Kyo-iro ink because it’s an interesting dusky purple that I haven’t had enough time with. Like the Jasmine Pen (bought in Portobello Road market), I bought the ink in London (at Choosing Keeping).
- The Lamy AL Star isn’t interesting, but the ink in it is new to me. The Graf von Faber-Castell Yozakura is a pale and shading pink that I normally would never have purchased, because it’s so light it’s almost unreadable. It was deeply discounted during the closeout of a local pen shop, and I came in late and had very little to buy to show my support. I probably should have inked a much wider nibbed pen with this, but I have a big bottle of it, so there’s always another time.
- In the Mahjon Q1’s case the pen and nib are interesting, the nib is not. This is one of two pens (the other being the Sailor Fude in the end) which I inked solely for sketching purposes. It’s a weirdly shaped pocket eyedropper fountain pen that I bought with a fude (bent) nib. I’ll probably review it at some time in the future.
- The Montblanc Victor Hugo was a pen that I bought at the end of last year, during my last visit to Mora Stylos. This was an impulse buy, something that would never have happened if not for the display that Montblanc used to sell this pen. I love the Notre Dame de Paris, I’ve visited her and sketched her many times, and my heart broke when she burnt down. She’s a survivor, and seeing this pen displayed in a diorama of the Notre Dame in all her white glory, I just had to buy it. The ink was a gift that Mr. Mora gave me with the pen.
- Parker 51 pens. The cocoa and the teal were all purchases made in the local flea market, and the cocoa is part of a set (with a pencil) and the earliest of the bunch (from 1948, a first generation Aerometric). The teal was in pretty bad shape, and took me a while to flush out. The demonstrator Parker 51 is from Mora Stylos, has a gorgeous stub italic nib, and is likely one of the Argentinian, aftermarket demonstrators. The Parker 51 is my favourite pen, and I have a hard time not buying all of them.
- The Pelikan M205 Petrol was a Black Friday purchase, and I haven’t inked it until now. The nib is great, the pen is great, and Iroshizuku Ama-Iro turquoise ink is quickly becoming one of my favourites. Such an optimistic, summery colour.
- The Platinums include two Preppy’s that I’m trying out, after being disappointed with their durability in the past. The Plaisir is the pen that’s been inked the longest of the bunch.
- The Sailor fude is filled with a new ink to me, the Graf von Faber-Castell Carbon Black. The ink was purchased in the same closeout sale as the pink Yozakura, and I’m planning on testing it out as a non-waterproof sketching ink.
- I wrote the Conklin Lever filler on top dry just as I was planning this post, so it’s here for reference only. I purchased it at Mora Stylos, it’s from 1919 and it’s in user grade condition (cap discolouration, significant brassing, the imprint isn’t in perfect condition). The lever filling mechanism is infuriating to use, both for filling and for cleaning the pen, but there nib is magnificent. It’s a true flex nib, going from medium to triple broad with no effort or railroading, and it’s a joy to use. The fact that I enjoyed it so much, coupled with its tiny ink capacity, meant that it took me about a week to write it dry. I used Waterman Serenity Blue in it, and that ink once again proved its worth in troublesome vintage pens. It’s a great shade of blue that is very pen safe and super easy to clean out of pens (think the opposite to Bay State Blue). A must have for anyone dabbling in vintage pens IMHO.
Other Stuff
I’m working on an adventure for a 30+ tabletop roleplaying convention at the end of the month. I may publish something here about how I write adventures for conventions.
In the meanwhile my D&D 5E game, set in a university like setting and a university town next to it, is progressing nicely. It’s the most complex campaign that I have ever written, but it’s wonderful to see the players rush around in this world, having the time of their lives exploring, interacting and trying to break stuff. D&D is a pure joy and a wonderful escape from the pretty dark reality we live in these days.
Speaking of both dark reality and things that cheer me up:
- It’s week 27 of the pro-democracy protests, and we’re still showing up in numbers (that are growing again). It’s great seeing whole families show up, including the dogs, to say no to stripping the judicial branch of its oversight powers.
- I’ve been sketching people’s dogs, and it’s a pure delight to try and capture their personality with each sketch. Plus, it’s making people happy, which is a good thing.
- I’ve managed to help a few people get back to running, and that’s always a joy. Go get some exercise. Do something you enjoy, and even 10 minutes is enough. As Dr. Jen Gutner says, exercise is like finding money in the street: if you find $10 lying around, you’re not going to leave them there because they aren’t $100. Invest a little in yourself, because you’re worth taking 10 minutes a day for.
Writing at Large 