First scribblings

In Honour of Talk Like a Pirate Day…

It is a written greeting, so you’ll have to imagine the talking part. I hope that, like me, you find it impossible to read 'thar' in a non-pirate accent, and so it will still count as part of the celebration.

For this blogpost, I have been trying out and experimenting with a selection of fountain pens and have taken a few pictures of the results to share with you. All pictures are taken on my phone camera which is why they don’t quite capture the detail I’d like, 100%. Before today, I hadn’t written with a fountain pen since school (I'm Jade, and I'm new here).  My handwriting tends to be scribbley, even with the ballpoints, and below is a picture to compare with the writing done with the fountain pens.

 

Fountain pens weren’t scratchy as I expected – actually scratch that, they were just as smooth on the page as ballpoints are, and the ink soaked into the paper in a way that gave my letters shape and character which they typically lack. I like ballpoints; they're convenient, but they're not as fun. The novelty of writing in ink soon had me swooping letters, dotting I’s and crossing t’s, and thinking up a reason to write a letter to someone. If only it was Christmas already…

Because I’ve found the perfect pine green ink (that’s Lamy green). My relations won't know who’s sent the card until they read the signature… but would they recognise my usual scrawl through the extra curls and flicks I add to letters as soon as I have a fountain pen in my hand? 

Omas Ogiva Arco Brown Fountain pen

I wrote the green letters pictured above with an Omas Ogiva Arco Brown fountain pen with a broad oblique nib, which is one of the newest editions of their range, and it was lovely to write with. (Pictured above.)

Handwriting has faded out of use and isn’t the most convenient in this digital age – and I like email as much as the next 90s kid - but if I had a pen like this to write them with, everyone who I know by name, however vaguely, would be getting a Christmas card each. 

 

The Lamy pen was my personal favourite, (it was a Lamy Silver2000) and this was the thinnest of the pens I tried, but still nicely solid, and resulted in what I thought is a spidery, italic writing style. The blue letters below were written with an Omas 360 Turquoise which I barely had to touch the page to write as it gave out ink so easily and smoothly.  To describe the difference as best as I can: the first one was like writing with a quill, and the second with a tiny, ink saturated sponge.

I prefer italic, old-world looking writing - Times New Roman instead of Arial - and as writing with a fountain pen was a step back to tradition and I wanted the result to match the experience, I got the most pleasing results with the pens with the broad nibs. You people with nicer handwriting than mine could undoubtedly get even prettier words.