OK, so I gave in and bought a calligraphy pen. Or two. And a dip pen. And some ink. And maybe some nice paper. Whatever.
It makes me sad to think about beautiful writing becoming a lost art. Although there seems to be a recent increase in demand for hand lettered wedding stationery, so maybe it's not on the out just yet.
I confess that I am a bit of a doodler, and you may have figured out by now I'm also a bit impulsive when it comes to trying new stuff. The pens I bought are Pilot Parallel pens, a relatively new style of pen utilizing two parallel plates of metal that allow the ink to pass between them rather than the traditional split down the middle of the nib. This is supposed to deliver the ink more consistently, which cant be a bad thing when you're learning.
So I bought two of these pens because the other really cool thing about them is that you can blend the ink, making beautiful gradients as you write. You do this by touching the nibs of the two pens, which allows the ink to pass from one to the other. I filled my pens with ink the same color as their respective lids to avoid confusion, and gave it a go...
The blue pen that I used for the lettering has a 6mm wide nib, whilst the green one is 3.8mm. The decorative lines at the bottom are done with the larger blue pen using the color changing trick. Pretty cool eh? And to top it off, if you hold either of the pens on their side, you can write with a basic 0.5mm line. Now tell me that these pens are not the most versatile ever!? And the ink for them comes in some great colors! (see bottom-left below)
My other pen (can I call it that?), is the complete opposite; traditional, fussy, messy, temperamental and scratchy. But still just lovely in its own way. It makes me feel like I should be writing on treasure maps "There be dragons ahead...".
It is a Brause EF66 nib and is a little smaller than what I was expecting. But bear in mind that I have never bought a pen nib before, so that doesn't mean much. Yes, its very different to write with than the Pilot pens (or just about anything else I've ever written with), but it's so worth it, as nothing else comes close to achieving such beautiful line thickness variation...
Now I just need to do laundry find a use for all this fancy lettering!
