April-May’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

In the middle of April I inked up a bunch of new fountain pens, and at the end of the month I added two new fountain pens to this rotation. At the rate I’m writing with them I assume that this pen rotation will be with me until around the end of May, when I’ll be putting more “summery” inks into use.

This is a rather eclectic group of pens and inks, but I was mostly looking for inks that I haven’t used for a long time or I haven’t used at all. Here they all are (I was in a rush when I created the writing samples so they’re messy, but life isn’t Instagram, so messy it is):

Mabie Todd Swan “The Swan Pen” 2 nib with Waterman South Sea Blue – a vintage gold plated lever filler pen, this is one of two vintage gold plated pens that I bought in Paris in Mora Stylos years ago. I don’t usually like the bling of gold plated pens, but I was drawn by the fantastic, very wet, flexible swan gold nib, and by the engraving on the pen body.

Normally engravings lower the value of a vintage fountain pen, but this one added value for me – I find it endlessly intriguing. This was clearly a Christmas gift, in 1929, and it was likely a lady’s pen, given its size and general level of decoration. I can stare at this pen and spin dozens of stories from that engraving, and this is one of the main reasons I prefer vintage pens. This one is “use grade” – the engraving, the dings on the body, the brassing on the clip, and the multitude of microscratches on it make it so – but I don’t care. It’s a treasure of a pen with a fantastic nib that I got at a very good price and gives me much joy. What else does one need?

I chose a Waterman ink for it because they’re the best inks for vintage fountain pens – very gentle, very easy to clean out of a pen, non-staining, and on the dry side (though not as dry as Pelikan 4001 inks) which works well with this very generous nib.

Swan 2 nib with heart shaped breather hole

Leonardo Mother of Pearl fine elastic nib with Kyoto TAG Kyo No Oto 03 Kokeiro ink – I wanted a Leonardo pen in rotation (I love them) and I wanted to try this new ink, and compare it to the Rohrer and Klingner Alt-Goldrün ink that I still had going at the time from March’s rotation. The inks are practically identical, with Alt-Goldrün being perhaps a shade lighter than the 03.

Leonardo Momento Mother of Pearl fountain pen

The Leondardo’s elastic or “flex” nib has cutouts in the nib shoulders to provide it a bit of give. It’s a nice nib that offers some line variation, but is nowhere near what you can get in vintage flex or super-flex nibs (particularly Swan and Waterman).

Closeup of the elastic nib with the cutouts in nib shoulders

Lamy 2000 fine nib with Diamine 150 anniversary Silver Fox ink – this is one of two Lamy 2000s that I have, and I really like this pens as workhorses. Silver Fox was part of the original collection of 150 anniversary inks that Diamine issued and it’s a nice mid grey that is very readable.

Franklin Christoph Model 46 Polar Ice extra fine nib with Bungunox June Bride Something Blue – I filled this pen about a week after the others since I wanted a teal ink that wasn’t in as wet a nib as the Swan. I got this ink as a gift from the Pen Addict Membership back in 2016.

Franklin Christoph Model 45L Turqish Crush extra fine nib with Diamine 150 anniversary Blue Velvet – another original 150 anniversary ink (Diamine later issued a second and perhaps also a third line of inks in this series, I don’t remember). This one is a nice royal blue, and another ink that I had used in years.

From left to right: Lamy 2000, Franklin Christoph Model 46 Polar Ice, Franklin Christoph Model 45L Turqish Crush

Oldwin Art Deco red and black striped ebonite, 18k medium nib with Diamine Writer’s Blood – as I’m writing this I have written this pen dry, mostly because it has a very wet and hungry nib and a standard sized converter. I bought this Oldwin from Mr Mora at Mora Stylos in Paris, and it’s a huge and surprisingly light pen.

The nib is also a very large nib (size 8 and not size 6), and the pen is surprisingly not smelly for an ebonite pen. The feel of the material is fantastic – ebonite is such a warm material – and I like it enough to consider refilling it instead of cleaning it out. Diamine Writer’s Blood has been in rotation recently, but it’s a new ink to me and I’m still trying to figure it out. Having it in this pen made me appreciate it more, as it really showed off its unique colour properties and shading plus sheen.

Manufactus Cappuccino Brown medium nib with Diamine Bilberry cartridge – this was a gift that I received from a dear friend who was just back from Italy and bought this (and a wonderful leather bound personalized journal) in the Manufactus store in Rome. The photo doesn’t do justice to the richness of the resin on this pen.

The Manufactus has some heft to it, due to the metal body and trim, and while it states that it’s a medium nib, it runs closer to a fine nib in terms of line width. Diamine Bilberry is an interesting ink that I had in cartridge form, and I wanted a more unique ink than the standard black cartridge that came with this pen. Bilberry is saturated enough to pass as black at a cursory glance, but it’s a gorgeous rich purple with gold sheen that works well in this pen.

Apart from these pens I still have about a quarter fill of ink in my TWSBI ECO T Saffron fine nib with Rohrer and Klingner Helianthus going from March’s ink rotation.

Which of these pens interest you the most?

Currently Inked Pens March 2025

Of February’s pen lineup only two pens remain inked, the Parker 51 with Waterman Purple, and the Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight with Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo. As they’re both running low on ink, it’s time for a new pen lineup, with a slightly different theme than last month’s one:

All the pens are modern (last time I had more vintage pens than modern ones in rotation) and ones that I haven’t inked in years.
All the inks are ones that I haven’t used in years or ever, apart from one that was in the last rotation but I still haven’t figured out so it got another go.
The ink colours are much brighter than those that I used in February.

Here’s March’s rotation:

Writing sample on Midori MD Cotton paper

Here’s a bit more about every pen and ink combo:

Franklin Christoph 03 modified prototype- Red/White/Black motion with a 1.1 HPSteel cursive calligraphy nib. This is a new pen that I bought last year as my chemo anniversary pen (I buy myself a present every year to mark the occasion). I love the unusual resin colour and pattern, and I like FC’s HPSteel 1.1 nibs. They are just wide enough to really show off the ink without becoming a nightmare to use because it takes ages for the ink to dry.
As nice as the pen is (and it is), the ink is the star in this one in terms of interest: it’s the ORIGINAL J.Herbin 1670 Rouge Hematite, which means that it has NO GLITTER and NO SHEEN. It’s just a deep, bright red with some nice shading and good outlining, but it isn’t full of gold glitter and sheen to the point where you can’t see the base colour. Yes, this is also the bottle that had the problematic crumbly wax cover on the cap, but I really think that I prefer this version to the one they issued later (I have both). I don’t normally use red inks, but this one was perfect for this pen.

Original Rouge Hematite compared to Cosmic Glow on original Tomoe River paper. Note the lack of sheen or shimmer.

TWSBI ECO Saffron fine nib filled with Rohrer & Klingner Helianthus ink. I use yellow inks even less often that I use red inks, but this ink is fairly readable for a yellow ink. It is, however, not going anywhere near a vintage pen as it has a tendency to crust over (as many yellow inks do). I wanted something bright, cheerful and different, and this ink checked all three. The TWSBI ECO is a phenomenal pen for those starting out with bottled fountain pen ink, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Aurora Ipsilon medium nib with Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldrün ink. This is my one and only Aurora pen, which I bought years ago in Florence, Italy. Aurora nibs are nice enough, but the pens are priced well above what I believe that they are worth, so I have steered clear of them over the years. The Ipsilon is small pen, but you can’t post it, which is annoying for such a small pen. R&K Alt-Goldrün is a fantastic ink colour – a non standard green with plenty of shading and character – and the only reason I haven’t used it more is because it was tucked away behind two rows of other ink bottles. If you are just starting out with green inks, give Alt-Goldrün a try.

The Ipsilon nib looks ridiculously small but it’s just the design of the section that makes it appear that way. Comparison photo to a TWSBI ECO nib.

Leonardo Momento Zero Blue Hawaii Fine nib with Diamine Steel Blue ink. I have used this pen fairly recently compared to some of the others in this rotation, but the ink has been one that I actually forgot that I have. I love teal and turquoise inks, and Diamine Steel is a beautiful member of this group. There’s a hint of shading with it, and it just pops off the page so nicely. If you want a different take on “boring blue” inks, I highly recommend it.

Montblanc Writer’s Edition Victor Hugo medium nib with Montblanc Around the World in 80 Days ink. I bought this pen in Mora Stylos in Paris before they closed mainly because I adore the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral and it’s featured on this pen. Hugo has the honour of being the saviour of this extraordinary cathedral, and though I shy away from Montblanc limited editions (talk about overpriced) I thought this one was worth purchasing. The ink was last in rotation, in a vintage Montblanc, last month. I just can’t get over how unrelated it is to the green-gold elephant on the box, and I’m not sure what to make of it. I was expecting it to be more like Alt-Goldrün than like the bluish-grey (Payne’s Grey really) that it is.

The Montblanc Writer’s Edition Victor Hugo

Finally, speaking of a pen and ink combo that have gotten “lost” in my collection: the Stipula Model T marbled grey pen was also an Italian purchase, and it has a very peculiar fine “flexy” titanium nib. I would characterize the nib as springy, and as my other titanium nib Stipula does, it squeaks sometimes as you write with it. The ink is one that I bought in 2013 in Fahrney’s pen store in Washington DC. Since then I haven’t opened it and used it, mainly because Fahrney’s Tempest Blue is a blue ink, and I don’t use blue inks often. It shades nicely, but other than that it looks close enough to my benchmark blue, Waterman Florida Blue (now renamed to Waterman Serenity Blue), for me not to bother using it often. Waterman Serenity Blue is a best-in-class blue in my opinion because it’s so well behaved, gentle and easy to clean out of pens that you can safely use it in any pen that you have, particularly vintage ones.

The Stipula Model T. A very sleek design.

February 2025 Currently Inked Pens

I have finally written dry all of my Inkvent 2024 fountain pens, which means that after two months I get to write with a whole new set of fountain pens and inks. I normally don’t spend too much time selecting which pen and which inks I’ll use next, but this time I decided to use some criteria for the next pens in my rotation:

They need to include at least 50% vintage pens. I don’t use vintage pens with Inkvent inks, and vintage pens make up most of my pen collection.
All the pens need to be pens that I haven’t used in a long time (at least a year). It was time to mix things up.
The inks needed to be inks that are new to me, or that I haven’t used in years, and all of them need to be inks that I haven’t swabbed before. This was not only to mix things up, but to get me to use and swab more inks in my collection, instead of going again and again to a few select favourites.

Here’s February’s fountain pen lineup:

The pens from left to right: Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse, Edison Nouveau Premiere Cappuccino, Montblanc 32, Mabie Todd Swan L2 Leverless pen, Waterman 52, Parker 51, Parker Vacumatic Standard double striped jewel.

And here are ink swabs of the inks that I’ll be using:

The Vintage Pens

Parker Vacumatic 1st generation Laminated Burgundy Pearl Double Jewel (striped jewels, striped section) – I adore Parker Vacumatics and this is a “use the good china” pen. The grip section is also laminated (and not plain black), the body is transparent, and the nib is a sharp extra fine gold nib with a bit of character to it. It’s filled with a brand new ink for me, Diamine Writer’s Blood. I never use red inks, but this got raving reviews and seemed dark enough for me to try. I bought the ink in Oxford last year, and the pen years ago from the late Henry Simpole (Henry the Pen Man) in London. I don’t think I inked up this pen since I bought it, as it was too precious, and I still won’t let it leave the house, but I am looking forward to actually using it.

Parker Vacumatic first generation burgundy laminated grip section

Closeup on the striped jewel and the grip section of the Parker Vacumatic

Parker 51 Burgundy aerometric with a silver cap and gold filled arrow clip. I love Parker 51s, they are my absolute favourite fountain pens. I believe this cap is on the rare side, though it’s far from pristine or attractive (it’s blackened in specks, and there are a few scratches and micro scratches on it). The nib is a generous fine, bordering on medium, and like all other 51s that I’ve used, it’s magic. I haven’t used this pen since I bought it, so it’s time to give it a whirl. It’s filled with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama Budo, which is a lovely, sheening burgundy ink, one of the more popular inks in the Iroshizuku lineup. In hindsight coupling this ink with this pen wasn’t the best choice, as the 51 has generous nibs and Iroshizuku inks are on the wet side. It just means that I’ll have to steer clear of cheap paper with this combination.

Waterman Ideal 52 Red Ripple fountain pen with a super flex extra fine nib – my word but this pen has the most glorious nib. The pen itself is elegant and pristine, and because of its age it doesn’t have the ebonite stink to it. The nib is why I bought this pen, and it effortlessly moves between extra fine and broad or double broad lines, with the feed easily keeping up with tines. Like all Waterman nibs that I’ve tried, there is some feedback, so if you like butter on hot pan nibs this one isn’t for you. This is the kind of nib that you can only get in a vintage pen, and it puts modern flex pens to shame. It’s only minus is that this is a lever filler, and I hate cleaning out lever fillers, which is why I rarely use them. This pen is filled with Diamine Autumn Oak, which I haven’t used yet (in bottle form at least – I have cartridges of it). I wanted a brighter ink in this lineup, so Autumn Oak was a perfect choice.

Waterman 52 cap and nib closeup. You know the nib is going to be fabulously flexy once you see that heart shaped breather hole and the slight bend down in the nib.

Writing sample on Midori MD Paper. Notes written with a Platinum Preppy.

Mabie Todd Swan L2 Leverless L205/62? Not sure – Swan did a poor job labeling their pens, and I didn’t write down notes when I bought it. This is a lovely pen that I bought from Henry Simpole years ago because of the phenomenal Swan nib. It’s an oblique flexible nib with Swan’s gimmicky “Leverless” filling system (which is a lever system in disguise, but such were the ’30s – you needed a gimmick to sell pen). I haven’t used it at all since I bought it because I don’t remember the experience of cleaning it out very fondly – imagine all the bother of cleaning out a Lamy 2000, but with a piston that has just one twist of travel. I used Pilot Iroshizuku Asa Gao with this fountain pen, and it’s a gorgeous ink with a good amount of sheen with this nib. I love this shade of royal blue, and I haven’t used this ink in a while. Take a look at the Swan above – it’s almost 100 years old and works perfectly.

Closeup on the nib and cap of the Swan Leverless pen

Montblanc 32 (1967) OM 585 nib – heavens, you can get a gold nibbed, piston filling original Montblanc with an Oblique Medium nib for less than a steel nibbed Pelian M2xx costs? Yes, you can. I love the design of this pen (you can read about it more here) and the nib is great… provided you write in the exact angle it expects. The Swan’s nib is generous in terms of the writing angles it accepts, and the Monblanc 32 is demanding: you will use the nib at the precise angle it is designed for, or it will not work at all! I only wish that the Montblanc Around the World in 80 Days ink was so exact. From the description and the illustration on the box I was expecting a brownish gold ink, maybe with a hint of green. In reality I got a dark, cold grey ink, with a hint of blue to it. No brown, no gold, nothing at all to do with the elephant illustration on the box. I had to double check just to make sure that I hadn’t landed on a bad bottle by chance.

Writing sample on original Tomoe River Paper

Modern Fountain Pens

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse H-EF nib – I haven’t used this pen in over a year, and I wanted a pen with a very fine nib, so that I can use it for note taking. It’s inked up with Sailor Black, a new ink for me and one that’s supposed to be water resistant. I’m using this combination for my certification study notes, and I may also try it out with some watercolours in a sketch, just to see if I can use Sailor Black ink as part of my sketching kit.
Edison Nouveau Premiere Cappuccino fine nib – I bought this pen in early 2012, before they did a run of seasonal limited editions of this pen design. I haven’t used in years, and the same goes for the ink in it: Lamy Petrol. This is a limited edition ink, one that Lamy issued with the Lamy Safari Petrol, and it’s a wonderful blue-black with red sheen.
Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight fine nib – this pen has “only” been a year out of rotation, and it’s one of my favourite Leonardos. The colour of the resin is gorgeous, and it works very well with the Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo ink that it’s filled with. Tsuki-you is a bluish-teal with red sheen and a wet flow, and it suits the Leonardo’s fine nib.

Modern pens writing sample on Midori MD paper.

August’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

August is going to be a month of pens and inks that I haven’t used in a good long while. While I still have a small amount of ink in four of my July pens (the Kanelea, the TWSBI ECO-T Saffron, the Big I Design Fountain EDC and the Schon Design Faceted Pocket 6), they will all be written dry by the end of next week at the latest. It was time for a new lineup, and this is this month’s assortment:

The TWSBI ECO-T is one of my favourite TWSBI designs, and so I have a few of them. The TWSBI ECO-T Mint Blue hasn’t been in use for about two years, so I decided to pull it out and use the Sailor Studio 162 with it, just for colour matching reasons. The 162 is an ink that I’ve used a few months ago but I really like it, so I felt like giving it another month in rotation.

The Lamy Safari Pink Cliff is a recent purchase that I made in Paris last April. I’ve only now inked it up as I wasn’t sure what ink to use with it — until all the discussion about the new (and not as great) Lamy Dark Lilac ink made me want to use the original Lamy Dark Lilac ink. I purchased a bottle of Dark Lilac and the Dark Lilac Safari back when they first came out, but I haven’t used the ink very much. It’s wet and very saturated and so it works best with only a handful of paper options that I have. Still, it’s a very attractive ink.

Visconti Homo Sapiens — this is the original Homo Sapiens, the one that created quite a splash when it came out. At the time it was my most expensive fountain pens, and it’s still one of my most precious pens. I bought it at Mora Stylos in Paris and had it customized with the special initial badges on the finial. I got Pilot Iroshizuku Shin Kai as a gift with my purchase, and though I love this ink I haven’t used it in a while simply because I misplaced it behind another rarely used ink.

The pens from top to bottom- TWSBI ECO T Mint Blue, Lamy Safari Pink Cliff, Visconti Homo Sapiens, Parker 51 Flighter, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Manyo Cherry Blossom, Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2,0 Galattica Universe

Vintage Parker 51 pens are my absolute favourites, to the point where I have a hard time seeing one in the wild and not buying it. This Parker 51 Flighter hasn’t been in use in years, but in the spirit of “use the good china” I’ve inked it up. Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu Syogun used to be my favourite grey ink — and then Diamine came out with a series of excellent grey inks and Sailor came out with the 123. I haven’t used it in years, so I dusted off the bottle and decided to give it another try.

The Sailor Pro Gear Slim Many Cherry Blossom has been in rotation relatively recently, but the ink inside it, the Sailor Shikiori Sakura Mori, is one I haven’t used in years. I don’t have or use many pink inks, but I decided I needed something to brighten up this lineup, and the Sakura Mori ink is relatively readable. It also perfectly matches this pen, which is a nice bonus.

Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe is also a relatively recently purchased pen that has been in rotation not too long ago. I just love the Momento Zero so much that I decided I wanted to ink one up, and so I chose the Pilot Iroshizuku Syo Ro to ink it up with. I haven’t used this inks in years, and I love teal inks so it was about time.

What have you got inked up for this month? Anything new? Old favourites or long forgotten pens or inks?

May 2024 Currently Inked Pens

April was a travel month which meant that I cleaned out all of my fountain pens apart from the Big Idea Design Fountain EDC that I took with me on my travels. So in the beginning of May I inked up five more fountain pens, many of them with new inks that I bought during my trip.

The Big Idea Design Fountain EDC is still a troublesome writer, but I keep reaching for it, so it’s still in the rotation with its second cartridge of Diamine Autumn Oak. Diamine Autumn Oak is a reddish orange with a lot of shading and it’s dark enough to be readable even with a fine nibbed pen.

There are two Franklin Christophs currently in my rotation (I misspelled the brand name in the writing sample, my apologies), and I am using them to compare the Sailor Studio 123 ink to the 224 ink. 224 is slightly more bluish and has less of a pink tint to it, but both are so similar that if you’re looking for 123 and it’s out of stock, you could use 224 and likely not notice the difference. I’ve been using these pens so much that I wrote the Sparkling Rock dry already, and the Thomas Hall Tibaldi edition is well on its way to joining it.

The Momento Zero Mother of Pearl is a gorgeous pen with a gorgeous, springy nib, and a joy to write with. Sailor studio 162, which I purchased on a whim at Choosing Keeping in London, is now one of my favourite inks. It’s a very unique shade of green/teal that makes me want to fill the same pen with it the minute I write it dry.

The Lamy Safari Savannah has Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu ink in it because I wanted something bright after all the muted greys and greens. The issue is that previously the pen had a shimmer ink in it and I apparently didn’t clean out all the particles, so I now have a shimmer version of Kosumosu. The result is fetching so I don’t mind this accident, but I will have to properly dismantle the pen and give it a thorough cleaning once I write it dry. It’s about halfway full now.

I like Rohrer and Klingner inks so when I saw the limited edition Ebony iron gall ink at Choosing Keeping, I immediately bought it. It’s very well behaved for an iron gall ink, but it’s not really a saturated black. I prefer darker blacks, but I’m getting used to the shading that Ebony provides.

A slightly late addition to the flock is the Leondardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe fountain pen, which arrived just in time for my birthday. It’s a stunning pen, and this photo does not do it justice. I knew I wanted a turquoise ink in it, and I haven’t used Bungo Box’s June Bride Something Blue in a while, so that’s the ink I chose. It was difficult to fill the pen from the flat Sailor shaped bottle, and I didn’t get a full piston-full of ink in it because of the awkward shape of the bottle. Lesson learned for next time.

What pens and inks did you use in May?

March 2024 in Pens and Paper

With One Week 100 People I’ve been using my fountain pens much more to sketch with, and I fell in love with them again as sketching tools. There’s something about the expressiveness of the line that they bring in that reminds me of pencil more than of fineliner pens when it comes to sketching – a combination of their varying line width and the varying ink shade.

I’ve also purchased more fountain pens than I planned, buying two Franklin Christoph pens from the pen models that they’re retiring: A model 46 in Polar Ice with an extra fine nib and a pocket 66 Italian Ice with a flex extra fine nib. These two join the Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica that I purchased from Pen Chalet last month, and the Leonardo Momento Zero Nuvola rose gold that finally arrived this month after I purchased it from Fontoplumo and it was stolen during transit. Fontoplumo were wonderful, and replaced the pen immediately, so I intend to purchase from them again.

I haven’t purchased so many new fountain pens since before the pandemic, but the Leonardo Nuvola was a gift to myself to celebrate two years from chemo, and the Galattica was a gift to myself for surviving a hellish month with my father in hospital. The Franklin Christophs were unexpected purchases made only because they were retiring these models and I was curious about these materials (I already have an Antique Glass model 66 and I love it).

So far the biggest success in terms of nib has been the flex extra fine Franklin Christoph Pocket 66 Italian Ice. The nib has only a slight springiness to it, and I wouldn’t call it a flexible nib in the true sense of the word, but it works well for both sketching and writing. Diamine Earl Grey is one of my favourite inks (a bluish grey with tons of character that is legible even with very fine nibbed pens), so I didn’t hesitate filling an eyedropper pen with it. As eyedroppers have such a tremendous ink capacity, you always need to take into account just how much you love the ink you use in them.

The Leonardo Momento Zero Nuvola was a surprise in terms of the resin on the pen body (I was already familiar with LMZs fantastic fine flex nibs, and great pen and converter design). I was expecting a light blue pen with white “cloud” blotches and black outlines. In reality the black outlines are in a semi transparent brown resin, the white is more off-white/cream, and there’s real depth to the design. A very unusual resin that is both classic and unexpectedly unique.

Caran d’Ache discontinued their ultra-expensive and ultra-sought-after ink series “Colours of the Earth” in 2013 and I managed to get a bottle of the entire series besides Carbon right after they announced they wouldn’t be making them (I had bottles of Amazon, Safron and Sunset before they were discontinued because those were the ones that interested me the most). These inks are well over 10 years old and still fantastic, though the Amazon (the green ink) has darkened a bit and so lost some of its depth. The Caran d’Ache bottles are both gorgeous to look at and terribly designed.

Diamine Coral is the most optimistic of inks, a brightly bright coral ink that glows on the page and works best in generous nibs. I felt like a pick-me-up so I filled the Woodshed pen with it.

I made some interesting eexperiments with notebooks and tried a few new pencils, but this post is getting a little out of hand and so I’ll write about those in a separate post.

Did you use any interesting stationery last month?

One Week 100 People 2024 Day 8 (Final Day)

So I was sick, which made sketching impossible for a few days. I’m still sick but I’m slightly better, so I sat down and powered through the rest of the missing sketches.

As I mentioned last time 61-68 were draw from life, the rest from earthsworld. This site is so much better for reference photos than the flickr gallery I used in previous years that it affected both my speed and my sketching quality. Also, I had a lot more fun sketching these portraits this year. The Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight fine nibbed fountain pen was the perfect sketching companion, and Diamine fireside snug performed well on the Stillman and Birn Alpha paper. The larger landscape format also helped make these a joy.
Here are the previous days’ sketches: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6, day 7.

This sketching challenge is always great to do, as it really pushes me outside my comfort zone. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend giving it a try.

And as usual, which one is your favourite?

One Week 100 People 2024 Day 7

Had a packed day today so only a few minutes to sketch, but all of today’s sketches were done from live subjects.

I apologise for the potato quality photo

One Week 100 People 2024 Day 6

A long tiring day with two vet visits meant that I had precious little time to sketch. Got up to 60, and sort of them came out surprisingly well.

As expected, with my injury and the way this week is shaping up I likely will finish my sketches only on Tuesday or Wednesday, but I like the results so I’m not in a rush.

Which one is your favourite in this batch?

One Week 100 People 2024 Day 5

I really didn’t feel like sketching today, as I discovered that my cat has a large lump on his hind leg so I need to take him to the vet tomorrow. I’m worried about him and so considered skipping today entirely, but ended up sketching some people to distract myself. Same setup as yesterday – Leonardo Momento Zero fountain pen, Diamine Fireside Snug ink, Stillman and Birn Alpha.

Writing at Large

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