Montblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple Review

A few years ago I used to be really on the FOMO limited edition fountain pen ink band wagon, but over the last two years my ink purchases have petered out to nothing. At some point I realized that any limited edition ink that I buy is bound to be pretty damn close to an ink that I already own, and a person can only have too many inks (IMHO). How many inks can you use at one given time anyway?

The precious few new bottles of ink that I have have all been given to me as part of large (vintage) fountain pen purchases, and so I haven’t felt comfortable reviewing them. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, do you? Then again, the gift was from the store, not the ink maker, so here we are.

The Montblanc Beatles Psychedelic Purple limited edition ink comes in a very groovy box, that is very well designed. Normally I couldn’t care less about ink packaging (excepts as it pertains to price — looking at you Pilot Iroshizuku. You started the trend and you know it), but someone really put some thought in this.

The little ribbon tab helps open the box easily

Look at that design:

I’ve never seen an ink bottle’s cap protected before, but then again this is Montblanc:

The bottle itself is pretty conservatively designed, but classically pretty:

The ink itself is a rich, saturated purple with a good amount of shading (despite being pretty dark), and a very slow drying time. It’s one of the few cases where the actual ink matches the colour of the packaging. There’s some sheen to the ink, but I’ve seen it sheen only on Tomoe River Paper, and it’s super hard to photograph.

I love this ink’s shade of purple (it’s slightly more to the red side of purple than the blue), but this ink was a hot mess in terms of behaviour on various papers. This ink is usable only on Rhodia/Clairfontaine and Tomoe River Paper, it becomes a bleeding, spreading monster on everything else. It also takes a really long time to dry (not surprising, as it’s a very saturated ink), which means that it’s going to be a no-no for left handed users and you really have to take care where you put your hand when you write with the stuff.

And that’s the thing. This is an expensive, not readily available ink that is finicky and temperamental in a hue that’s not so rare as to be unobtainable. Why spend good money and time buying it if you can probably get a spot on match from Diamine? Montblanc Psychedelic Purple cost about $40 when it came out and $80 now for a 50ml bottle. Diamine Majestic Purple costs $15 for an 80ml bottle. You do the math.

If you enjoy hunting for limited edition inks as part of the hobby, that’s fine. Just don’t get swept away by the marketing and the hype. Remember: there’s a very good chance that that expensive limited edition ink is not very different from the ones that you already have and don’t use, or that you can get a similar hue for less than half the price from Diamine.

Moleskine Limited Edition Pokémon Box Review

I was going to  write a review of the Moleskine Pikachu Pokémon limited edition notebook first, but I forgot that I gifted someone the copy that I had. After a bit of internal debate, I decided to write about the highlight of the Moleskine Pokémon limited edition set, the Pokéball Box, first, and order another copy of the Pikachu notebook for later review. As these make such great gifts, I suspect that this copy too won’t make it into my rotation but instead be snagged by a friend.

Last spring I was visiting London with my family, staying right next to a Moleskine store (my poor, poor wallet) and trying to take my luggage allowance into account (notebooks are heavy, and Moleskines are easily purchasable online after all), when I first saw these. At the time, I wasn’t into Pokémon, I hadn’t played the Nintendo games, and the Pokémon GO craze passed over me without leaving its mark. I thought I was safe. Then I saw this box at the store.

Such a simple design, but so effective

I left London without purchasing the box, but I kept thinking about it. As my family left on a flight two days after me and it turned out that they had weight to spare, they asked me if there’s anything I wanted from the Moleskine store. I considered for a while, and then asked for the Pokémon box. They ended up buying all three notebooks for me.

It’s been almost a year since then, and I’ve been swept into Pokémon GO as a way to handle my anxiety while dealing with my mom’s illness, and so when I photographed this box today, it was no longer an abstract thing that I had very little emotional ties to. The design, however, has not changed.

Unlike many other Moleskine limited edition boxes, this one comes with a Moleskine pen. The tradition started a few years ago with the Writing Box, and this year it’s part of the Basquiat box.

This isn’t a review of the Moleskine rollerball, but of the Pokémon box, so I’ll just point out two things: Strangely enough the logo on the clip is set so the Moleskine logo isn’t aligned with the Gotta Catch ‘Em All! logo. When one of them is right side up, the other isn’t. Also, the Gotta Catch ‘Em All is printed only on one side of the pen, which is disappointing. If you clip it to a notebook there’s a 50/50 chance that you won’t see the logo, unless you make sure the cap is positioned so the clip isn’t on the side of the logo.

The other thing that’s disappointing here is the choice of the body colour of the pen. Red would have been so much more functional, as the white is going to look grimy and tarnished just about the moment you start using it.

The pen uncapped. Now imagine in it bright red. So much better, right?

Inside the notebook you are greeted with a whole lot of Pokéballs, both on the front and back endpapers.

Front endpaper
Back end paper

The design even continues into the inner lining of the back pocket:

This edition comes with four Pokéball bookmarks, like the other Moleskine Pokémon limited editions.

All in all it’s a nice box, but in terms of design, it’s all in the cover. The endpapers are bland in my opinion, and they could have done a much better job on the pen. The initial price on these was pretty high, but as it’s now dropped somewhat, I still think that they make a great gift for the Pokémon lover in your life, though you might want to consider the other Moleskine Pokémon notebooks.

Westinghouse No. 2 Pencil: Not a Review

I just started using a vintage Westinghouse number 2 pencil, instead of the Palomino Blackwing 530 which reached the Steinbeck stage. There’s no point in reviewing a pencil that isn’t widely available, but I got a pack of these on eBay for a pittance and they are excellent pencils, so if you’re looking for great, super cheap pencils and don’t mind petrified erasers, give branded vintage pencil listing on eBay a try. You never know what you’ll find.

Kaweco Liliput Brass Fountain Pen Review

A certain famous young actress, whose work I love, was recently photographed while pensively holding the copper version of this fountain pen, and this summarises this pen perfectly: it’s very, very photogenic.

I got this pen at a close out sale in a local art supply store, and the only reason I was tempted to buy it was because it was so shiny and pretty and at bargain price. Even so, I should have left it to languish unloved at that store’s counter. This is not a good pen. It’s not even a usable pen. It’s a lovely prop.

As its name suggests, this pen is tiny. You can’t use it unposted, and even posted it’s far from comfortable to use. I have tiny hands and even for me the Kaweco Liliput, posted, is just a hair breadth above the Steinbeck stage.

How does the pen write? Fine, as long as it writes. This is a fine nibbed pen and it writes like a Japanese fine nib (despite being made in Germany), if the Japanese fine nib that you have in mind has serious flow issues. The nib constantly dries up. I used a Diamine blue black cartridge in it (there’s no really viable converter option for this pen), a good, middle of the road ink, and the Liliput behaved as if I was using the driest ink ever and had left it uncapped for at least 10 minutes before I started writing. I wouldn’t even call it a writing experience, as so little writing went on. Start, stop, shake. Start, stop, shake. Nothing but shaking would get it writing again for another letter or two.

The pen is already starting to show some patina, which is excellent (you buy a brass pen for the patina potential after all). This means that it will only look better with time. If you’re a petite actress trying to look pensive and sophisticated for a photo op, this is wonderful news for you — the Kaweco Liliput Brad’s is the perfect pen for you. Everyone else: spend your money elsewhere.

Moleskine Pokémon Charmander Limited Edition Review

Moleskine’s Pokémon limited edition notebooks are some of the most attractive and colourful ones that the company has come out with in recent years. Even if you aren’t a fan of the franchise you might want to pick one of these up, just for their design. Also, if you’re looking for a gift for the Pokémon fan in your life, look no further. Even if they aren’t a notebook fan they’re bound to love these gems.

The cover design, with the paper wrapper still on, is fantastic. You can see little Charmander dreaming of when he’ll be all grown up and a Charizard. It’s cute, perfectly aligned with the wrapper, and the colour contrast with the black background really make Chaemander pop.

Dreaming Charmander
The back cover. I love how understated Moleskine’s logo is.

 

The cover looks great even without the wrapper, which is a thing because Moleskine has created designs in the past that look much better with the wrapper on than they do unwrapped. The only thing that could make this cover better is if dream Charizard was embossed on the cover, adding a little texture to it. On the other hand, that would have almost certainly made the design less durable over time, so I guess that’s it’s good that Moleskine went for a simple print this time.

Inside the front cover you are greeted by a multitude of very happy Charmanders, and that design continues in the back.

Just look at the perfect alignment of the print on the back pocket. Also, way to go Moleksine for fully embracing the cute.

 

Instead of the usual specially designed sticker set, this edition gets Pokéball bookmarks. Again, these are super well designed, but like all bookmarks of this type, they’re not likely to hold up to much use.

The B-side of the wrapper shows the various evolutions of Charmander (Charmeleon, Charizard), which is nice, if not Moleskine’s best B-side idea yet.

There are two more notebooks in the Moleskine Pokémon limited edition set and I’ll review those later on. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a cool gift (that costs less than a Nintendo Switch) for the Pokémon lover in your life, this is definitely it.

Tournament of Books 2019: Warlight

I just finished reading the fourth Tournament of Books 2019 book, Michael Ondaatje’s “Warlight“. It’s in the first round of the competition, running against Azareen Can Der Vlier Ollomi’s “Call Me Zebra“.

This book should have been named “Utter Drivel”. It’s not a bildungsroman, not a war story, not a spy story, not a story about post WWII London or Britain. It’s not a story at all, just a collection of unbelievable and uninteresting scenes, repeated again and again, and connected by wild circumstances that are yet again, unbelievable. The characters are, you guessed it, unbelievable phantoms with nothing to make them feel real, likeable, or anything really. It’s as if you’re wandering in the fog with Ondaatje, neither of you having any sort of clue where you are and where you’re going. It’s not even truly bad, it’s just boring and pointless, which is what makes it so frustrating.

I’m surprised that it was published, and even more surprised that it made it into the first round of the Tournament of Books 2019, while excellent books like “Speak No Evil”, “A Terrible Country” and “America Is Not the Heart” were left to battle it out in the Play-Ins. I haven’t yet read “Call Me Zebra,” but it’s going to have to be terrifically bad to lose against this pointless book.

Tournament of Books 2019: A Terrible Country

I just finished reading my second Tournament of Books 2019 book, the play-in contestant “A Terrible Country“. It’s up against “Speak No Evil“, which I’ve already read and was excellent, and “America is Not the Heart,” which I’m about to start reading. I’ll comment which of these three needs to win this round once I finish reading “America is Not the Heart,” but I can already tell that it is going to be a very hard decision, and I don’t envy the judges.

It’s very rare to find a book that is so stylistically innovative, and yet so readable, so familiar that it’s kind of like an out of body experience to read it. This novel is a work of fiction that reads entirely like a memoir/travelogue written by the main character Andrie. It’s so convincingly well done that several times I checked the author’s name and the book description to make sure that it was a work of fiction that I was reading.
This feat of technical mastery is entirely at the service of a moving and relatable plot, wherein a young American man, completely out of depth, tries to take care of his 89 year old grandmother in Putin’s Russia circa 2008. It’s the heroics of everyday life, with its triumphs and tragedies, enmeshed in memories of the Soviet past, great Russian literature, and the dangers of living in such a terrible country, and it is well worth the read.

Paper for Fountain Pens Notebook Review

Back in the (not so good) old days, Tomoe River Paper was an exotic kind of paper available only in bulk order from Japan, or through various indie creators that advertised mostly on the Fountain Pen Network. The magical paper that made all your inks shine (not literally, this was in the pre-sparkle days of ink, when shading is all we dared dream of in an ink) was very hard to obtain, and very expensive.

It was at that time, in 2013, when I was looking for reasonable priced Tomoe River Paper notebooks that could be shipped to Tel Aviv, that I ran into Paper For Fountain Pens, through the Fountain Pen Network. Since I just received my latest three-pack of notebooks from Jay at PaperForFountainPens.com, I decided that now would be as good a time as any for a review.

The notebooks that I ordered are the larger, 374 pages (187 sheets), ones, which are available only around this time of year. The regular notebooks have 320 pages, but are otherwise identical. Jay uses 52 gsm Tomoe River Paper for the notebooks, which are 4 3/4 x 8 3/8 inch page size; 5 1/4 x 8 1/2 inch cover size.

The notebooks used to be shipped with a paper cover, now they arrived vacuum packed as well, to protect them from the elements, and in a heavy duty box that prevents them from getting damaged by the postal services of the world.

Vacuumed packaging.
Paper wrapper.

Tomoe River Paper is much easier to find now and these notebooks aren’t cheap, as you are paying for the binding. The covers are very durable, made from a material that (with the binding) makes the whole notebook look and feel like a vintage hardcover book. It has that solid, over-engineered feel to it, and is very pleasant to use and hold.

The notebook isn’t inconveniently thick, even with the larger page count.

There are no frills to this notebook, just blank end papers, no elastic closure or bookmark, nothing but the paper and the covers. The pages lie flat, and the binding is extremely durable (I page a lot, a lot in my Paper for Fountain Pens notebook and not a page has wavered in my years of using it).

The front endpaper 

I’ve used the slimmer version of this notebook as a research notebook for my novel and it has held up well through years of use. I do, however, only keep it on my desk. Travelling with such fragile paper in a notebook with no elastic closure is a recipe for disaster, so if you do intent to use one of these beauties as your everyday carry notebook or journal, I highly recommend placing it in some kind of protective cover that you can zip up.

The back endpaper

This notebook is slightly thicker than the Baron Fig Confidant and Moleskine large notebook, is about as wide as the Moleskine, but a tad taller.

Paper for Fountain Pens above a Moleskine Large notebook and a Baron Fig Confidant

You can see the difference in sizes with the notebooks stacked up. The Paper for Fountain Pens notebooks have thicker and heavier covers than the Moleskine and Baron Fig ones, but the lightweight paper in them keeps them from being overly heavy to carry around.

Paper for Fountain Pens above a Moleskine Large notebook and a Baron Fig Confidant

All in all I recommend these notebooks, with one caveat: they may intimidate you to a point where you won’t use them. There’s something about their book-like format that makes you feel that you can only write the next Booker prize winning novel in them. Notebooks should be used and not stacked and stared at, so if this one will scare you off, pick a more humble notebook instead. Otherwise, buy a three-pack of these — it’ll come out cheaper (particularly with shipping), and there’s an excellent chance that they’ll become your new favourite.

Moleskine Spring 2019 Catalog

Chronicle Books has uploaded Moleskine’s Spring 2019 catalog and it is interesting.

Here’s a break down of what’s new and changed this season, as well as my take on some of their decisions. Some of these notebooks are already available, others will become available over the next few months. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, open the catalog, and dive in:

Classic Notebooks

  • Of the seasonal colours, I’m pretty sure Reef Blue and Daisy Pink will do well. It’s nice to see Scarlet Red, Sapphire Blue and Myrtle Green join their regular lineups. In the past black was pretty much their only offering, with an occasional red thrown in, but it looks like regular colour options are here to stay.
  • I’m curious about their new “medium” size, between the pocket and the large. There’s no sizing info in the catalog for this option and it appears to be available only in the hardcover notebooks. My guess is that it will be in the “Two-Go” size, which I think is a pretty useful size (11.5×18 cm or 4 1/2×7”).
  • Sad to see that they still haven’t brought back the reporter notebooks in squared paper, and how little love in general squared paper gets from Moleskine.
  • Great to see the new dotted (dot grid) options. These ought to be popular, and Moleskine didn’t dip their toe in with just pocket and large black hardcover notebooks, but is offering them in all their core colours and in what will likely be their best selling seasonal colour, Reef Blue. As is stands, dotted paper is getting more love than squared paper, which is not surprising. Squared paper is niche outside the stationery blogger/podcaster world.
  • Classic notebooks expanded” is a new offering from Moleskine — a large hardcover or softcover notebook that has almost twice as many pages as a regular large Moleskine, with two ribbons instead of one. This may seem a bit unwieldy, but I use a large Moleskine daily planner as a meeting notebook and because of its size it’s still pretty convenient to use. If you plan on using your notebook a lot (as a daily journal for a year perhaps?) this may be a good option to check out.

Non-Standard Cover Material Notebooks

  • Leather notebooks – these aren’t available everywhere (Barnes and Noble have them), and I haven’t tried them, but they’re still on offering, with or without a box. I’d recommend that you spend your money elsewhere, unless you’re really looking for a corporate executive gift to put the company logo on.
  • Two-Go notebooks are still on offer, with four colour options (added last year) and in an excellent size, with thicker than usual paper and a surprisingly useful albeit non-standard blank-and-ruled format. If you haven’t given these a try I highly recommend them. They can handle fountain pens pretty well.
  • Blend notebooks, with their tactile, super fun and durable fabric covers now come in four new colours that promise to blend better in office settings than their current (and still produced) camouflage Blend offering. Black, Green, Blue and Beige are offered in a woven, slightly distressed look with contrasting elastic closure, as usual only in large size and with ruled pages. Definitely worth trying out if you haven’t had a chance to give their fabric covers a spin.
  • Denim notebooks, which first came out as a super popular and a very well designed limited edition offering, are now part of the regular lineup, sort of. The limited edition notebooks are still more attractive in my opinion, with their white contrasting branding label on the back and their white print on the front, but these notebooks, in Antwerp Blue and Prussian Blue (pocket and large, ruled only) are a great way to get some of that denim feel in your life without trying to get a hold of overpriced LE notebooks on the secondary market. Of the fabric covered notebooks that Moleskine (and Baron Fig) offer these feel the best, and I recommend these over the Blend notebooks for that reason.

I’m not a planner person, so I’m not going to go over Moleskine’s extensive planner collection.

Limited Edition Notebooks

  • This is where Moleskine excels beyond all current competition, and in my opinion they’re starting this year stronger than they finished last year.
  • Fall-Winter 2018 limited edition notebooks, Looney Tunes, Super Mario, 007, Astro Boy and Harry Potter are still available, though the very attractive Harry Potter notebooks (especially The Marauders’ Map edition) are starting to be harder to find.
  • Spring-Summer 2019 limited edition notebooks are Lord of the Rings, Basquiat, Wonder Woman, Bob Dylan and Gundam. Each is designed to appeal to a different demographic, and I think that they really nailed it this time.
  • This is not the first time that Moleskine is tackling the Lord of the Rings in a limited edition, but this edition is much, much more attractive and well designed than their previous rather lackluster attempt years ago. The covers, endpapers and special insert all seem spectacular, and this is one edition that I’ve already preordered and plan to review. The “geek” edition, this notebook is designed to appeal to the same people that bought the Harry Potter and Alice editions
  • Basquiat limited edition notebooks are for the hipstery crowd that liked the Kieth Haring limited editions, Dr Seuss editions and probably also enjoyed the Monopoly limited edition, but in an ironic way. These are extra expensive but they’ll probably be popular, considering Basquiat’s success on Uniqlo t-shirts. They’re offered in plain and ruled paper, though I wish Moleskine would have stepped up and offered a sketchbook Basquiat edition. In terms of the boxed set, this one comes with a pen (the regular editions come with stickers), so it’s probably a better deal than the slightly lackluster LotR boxed edition (comes with nothing, will sell like hotcakes, because LotR).
  • Wonder Woman is the comic book edition, and as usual it is the most colourful one, and where Molskine allowed themselves more creative freedom. Bold red and blue action packed covers that really celebrate the character in drawings and text, what more could you want? Ruled only, comes with stickers.
  • Bob Dylan limited edition notebooks are aimed at music lovers, as the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Blue Note editions were before them. These are really reminiscent of the Blue Note limited editions, and like other music themed limited editions, are pretty tame, design-wise. If you’re a Dylan lover, you’ll likely love this edition, and it will make for a great gift, especially around father’s day. Is it surprising then that these come out in April? Ruled only, comes with some pretty dull stickers. The numbered boxed edition is the best designed of the bunch in my opinion. These too are relatively expensive limited editions, though of course expect a difference between RRP and what you actually pay online and anywhere but the official Moleskine stores.
  • Gundam is the anime edition, and as usual is more subdued than the comic book edition, but still pretty colourful. Ruled only, comes with stickers.

Journals

  • I’ve no idea why Moleskine calls their Cahier and Volant offerings “journals” and not notebooks, but I guess you have to differentiate them somehow.
  • Cahiers, formerly available only in Kraft Brown and Black have been expanded to include Cranberry Red (a darker shade of red than the Scarlet Red, likely because of printing limitations) and Myrtle Green, but that’s not that new. What’s new is the three new seasonal colours, Brisk Blue (a darker shade of Reef Blue), Kinetic Pink, and Tender Yellow. I’d stay away from the yellow, as it will turn dirty and blah in about a day’s use, but the other colours are solid and fun. Kraft Brown is the most fun to decorate and make your own (with black in second place), but the other colours seem pretty vibrant for cardboard covers.
  • It is worth saying that of all of Moleskine’s offerings, the Cahiers got the most paper love in recent years, which is a very good thing as the old paper used in these notebooks was garbage. Not acid-free and super thin, it turned yellow and brittle with age very, very quickly. Now the Cahiers use the same paper as the regular notebooks, and they even got some dotted paper love.
  • Subject Cahiers, a new offering that is geared for academic note-taking (Cornell Notes anyone?), and is offered only in large and extra-large. If I was still working on my degree this would be something that I would probably look into using.
  • Volants have become more colourful as time has passed, with Moleskine moving them from a light and dark shade of the same colour to complimentary colours instead. They also got stickers to boost, but still only come in plain and ruled paper. They are the only notebook left that Moleskine offer in extra small, which is both not surprising and a bit of a shame.

There’s nothing new in the Pro Collection and I don’t use any of these business focused notebooks (I like to build my own meeting notes formats), and so I won’t go over these.

Art Notebooks

  • Moleskine’s art collection has gone through a significant overhaul in recent years, all for the better. The sketchbook paper is less pronouncedly ivory coloured, and the paper has less coating on it, which means that it can now take things like light washes, fountain pens, rollerballs, etc without them beading up on it.
  • The sketchbook also got some love in the form of new colours (Red and Sapphire Blue), which is always nice.
  • The recently added sketch album (which is a landscape formatted notebook with cahier covers) is now available in Kraft Brown, which is awesome, because they’re so fun to customize.
  • There’s also a sketch pad, which has less pages and I completely don’t understand. It appears to be a more expensive way to get a sketch album with less pages. Huh?
  • The ever popular (and justly so) Watercolour Album got recently expanded into a Watercolour Notebook (standard format, as opposed to the landscape album format). Now the Watercolour Notebook has been expanded to include the pocket, A4 and A3 size. This is a must buy for me, and will probably be pretty popular amongst urban sketchers.
  • The Music Notebook got a surprising new addition, a Music Cahier in extra large. Moleskine is one of the few stationery companies to offer this layout, and good for them for expanding it.
  • The Japanese Album and Storyboard notebooks are niche products and so unsurprisingly, got no love.

Themed Notebooks

  • Not much is new in this area. There are no new Passion Journals, no new City Notebooks and not much new with the Voyageur.
  • What is new is a Travel Kit, that contains the Ocean Blue Voyageur, a pen and a luggage tag. The Voyageur appears to be more popular than the Travel Journal, so I wonder how long before the Travel Journal is phased out.

As for the rest (the non notebook stuff), here my interest wanes, and this post has been long enough as it is. The catalog is 151 pages long, and full of eye candy, so even if you aren’t a Moleskine fan, take a look.

Pentel Fude Touch Brush Sign Pen Review

I planned to review the Sharpie brush pen, after spending the best part of a week with it, but as it turns out, I forgot it at the office. I’ve been using the Pentel Fude Touch Brush Sign Pen instead, so here’s a review of this boring little brush pen instead.

Today’s journal comic/review, drawn on a Moleskine Star Wars crawl text blank notebook. This paper is smooth, although not Rhodia smooth, but the pen still really dragged on it. It was worse on any sort of paper with even the slightest tooth, making it super not fun to use.

The brush pen tip is pretty firm, which means that you get a medium amount of line variation, but that it’s very easy to control. If you’re starting out in the wild world of brush pens, either for drawing or lettering, this tip grade is probably the best for you.

The black ink is black, and not greyish or brownish, and completely not waterproof, which can be a good thing (if you want to “stretch” it or use it for shading, as wet it produces a good 50% cool grey), or a terrible thing (if you want to combine it with watercolours).

A closeup of a D&D character group drawing that I did with the Pentel Fude Brush Sign Pen. 

The pen body itself looks and feels cheap and plasticy, which isn’t too unusual in the disposable brush pen market. Why do all these companies have a thing for a dark pen body with pronounced gold lettered marketing splashed all over it? Pentel’s also put sparkles in its, body, just for some extra garish fun.

 

The pen is torpedo shaped with facets along the body that somewhat help keep the pen from rolling. It’s borderline too thin to use for long periods of time without cramping, but  otherwise it’s comfortable to hold and use.

The Pentel Fude Brush Sign Pen would be a good beginners’ brush pen if there wasn’t so much competition at the same price. As it is, buy a Zebra brush pen, which allows for greater line variation, or a Kuretake brush pen, which is also waterproof, or add a little more and get the experience of two brush pens in one with the Pilot Futayaku. As it is, this Pentel pen lacks enough line variation to make it fun and interesting to use, and it isn’t cheap enough to justify buying it over the competition.