So you want to rock a fountain pen. Here are some tips on how you could master the art of penmanship. For More: Essays & insights www.thequirkyinquiry.com/ My Novel: www.amazon.com/Learned-Disgui...
I love the fact that he makes Dark Academia much more than just the aesthetic. The aesthetic is just the "surface", it's more of the result of the interest and passions that an individual has than a cosmetic front.
Honestly, while there is a whole range of fancy and beautiful fountain pens that look like pieces of art, there is an even bigger range of less fancy looking but extremely well working commercial fountain pens that will serve you for literal years. They will still look well, not like a ballpoint, they come in multitude of colours and designs but most importantly they deliver you the absolute joy of fountain pen writing on a very reasonable price. I've bought my Lamy Safari, a literal workhorse of a pen, roughly 4 years ago, and i have been writing with it every day, through my extensive university notes, through my writing journals, through the small notes i need to make on the go - it's fantastic. It comes with a nice cartidge system that is easy to refill - you stick it in a bottle and roll and costs roughly 20 bucks. Sure, i plan to upgrade myself to some other pen one day, more beautiful, with golden nibs and ivory-like design, but i am pretty sure that i will go back to Lamy Safari for my every day purposes. Not to mention that the experience of writing in a journal with a fountain pen - vs everything else is literally not comparable. It's an absolute jou, even when your entry is two sentences, one of which is 'Tired.' There are other options at very moderate prices that manage to look respectable and less 'cheap' and you should check out this great channel called Goulet Pens, these guys will walk you through every commerical option available in a given price category. Sorry for the longread, i am a passionate admirer of fountain pens, and like with dark academia itself, i don't believe it should only consist of bespoke expensive things like montblanc pens, custom-made stationery and hand tailors tweed suits. It is accessible and the price tags on the maximum scale shouldn't scare you from checking out the middle market. Have fun!
You can buy a cheap $7 Jinhao off of amazonor other retailers online and if you look around, you can get yourself a Muji aluminum pen for around $14 Jinhaos are cheap and often weighty and they come in a fair amount of different colors and patterns. They might not last forever but you can definitely get some extended value out of one for that low price. Mujis are lighter (aluminum, duh) and meant more for daily functions. They aren't as flamboyant as most other pens but they make for good workhorses. They'll come with their own inks, and you can buy packs in bulk for super cheap. Personally, I'd recommend a one-time purchase of some quality Waterman ink cartridges. Some outlets sell them for pretty cheap and they are reliable inks.
It is absolutely possible to start this hobby inexpensively. There are lots of beginner and budget friendly pens out there, and lots of resources online nowadays to help you find them. I haven't bought myself a single fountain pen over $30 yet. Guide: www.jetpens.com/blog/the-best-fountain-pens-for-every-budget/pt/368 (I don't work for jetpens or anything, you don't have to buy anything from them lol. Their guides are still useful, tho) People end up spending a lot of money in the hobby because they like to try lots of inks and/or like to collect expensive or vintage pens.
Honestly I do have a fancy fountain pen, because you know, flea markets (very inexpensive if you buy it there, but you have to find it first!) but even department store brands sometimes carry fountain pens with no brand... they’re like six dollars (yes, I do have about about forty of these... oops?) and they might be slightly less smooth, but honestly they work just fine and last quite long still... most of these aren’t even ugly, mine are mostly just metallic, or white metal...
For me, writing with a fountain pen and black ink is must, especially when journaling. If I don't find my pen in my mess I'll write with a pencil and rewrite when the pen is found. I just don't like the feel of ball pen... and amidst this complete lockdown I am kinda running out of ink so I made my own black ink with lamp black..but can't use it in fountain pen...
I also have this thing with black ink, I have to write in black ink. Because I always feel the need to be prepared I have some ballpoint pens with me in case my fountain pen breaks but even there I switched the ink cartridges. It went so far that when something I wrote was used for an exhibiton and they wrote it in blue I was actually really upset
I have done the same thing, no ink left so I got creative with cuttlefish ink and I’ve been writing with a quill! It’s nice, but the ink blots a bit too much... I’m slowly getting better though
Wow. I'm over 60 years old, and found that I have been living this. Although an RN, I have a degree in chemistry, but consider myself a "shakespearean nerd". I have been writing with fountain pens and a glass nib pens. I have studied history, art and literature for the fun of it. Now, if I could find others in this tribe...
I’m 25, and minored in chemistry and philosophy. Majored in biology with a concentration in physiology. I work in the hazmat industry. I love reading the classics, and history too. I like to be knowledgeable in a lot of different areas. Gives me a slightly better understanding of the world we live in. I like to see myself as a wannabe polymath lol
Firstly I’m sorry about your granddad and I hope you and your family are healthy. I bought a lamy 2000 last year and I love writing with it, however I came to realise that using it in exams is a terrible idea. Partly because the exam paper is often bad quality, but mostly because I write too slow when I get into the art of writing and I don’t want to damage my nib by overworking it. I think it would be a great thing to pass down to my grandchildren one day. Great video :)
getting into fountain pens was the best rabbit hole i've ever fallen into (my wallet says otherwise). using the finished ink bottles for plant propagation or paint water is nice as well since i'm not putting any more waste in the environment :)
I don’t know about other countries but as a french, fountain pens was requested by instructors as a school supply we had to own with other stuff as notebooks, rulers etc. It was very unlikely that we use ballpoint pens as our main writing tools. I used a Parker and a Pilot one, both pens gave stunning results.
$40? No , There are actually cheaper and very good for "newbies" for $ 20 (or even much less), you don't need to buy something expensive to get started. For example the PILOT Metropolitan ; including the Jinhao brand has good options.
If he's in Australia, which is what I assume based on his uni, then absolutely the good newbie pens start at $40. The metropolitan here is $39.90, and if we bought it from a US website, it would be even more expensive (currency exch., import tax and shipping). Even the LAMY Safari here is $45-55. Unfortunately, this is all from personal experience.
I bought my first fountain pen because of this video. I can barely put it down, it makes writing feel like such a special experience. Thank you for making this.
I was close to commenting on asking if you could explain more deeply about the way you write cause it's so gorgeous, and I literally just found your handwriting to be extremely satisfying, then you proceeded on explaining about the look of the handwriting. I have always have had a lot of contact with fountain pens, my mom literally kept talking about them when I was at elementary school because the way she was taught was so different to nowadays. She _always_ was talking about fountain pens, _especially the ones ya dipped to the ink._ My sister literally owns an old ink pen set, got to try that one. Then eventually got my first fountain pen as a birthday gift when I was younger. It tried up to be completely unusable within a year cause I didn't know how to take care of it properly. Here is a small dip of history to those who decided to read this far: My mom described in high detail, how the very first thing that they did at their fabric crafting classes they always did from the _scrap fabric_ these square pieces that they stitched at one corner so they had a nice thing to wipe and clean the tip, either for the end of the writing or to get some ink off so it doesn't dry to clog up the tip itself for when ya needed to dip the pen to the ink. And because it was excess scrap fabric, my mom always started the pen cleaning with the "ugliest fabric" and slowly working up to the "prettiest fabric". And when the whole fabric bundle was used up, they washed it up! Used it as many times as possible until they had to just throw it away and create a new one. I want to include that piece of history in my everyday living. Thank you for reading through this wall of text! Have a lovely day, sip beverage of your choice and enjoy your snacks! Please remember to stay safe too.
My fountain pens are some of my most treasured possessions. You were spot on saying that they have their own personality. I have a reconditioned Parker- it's very small and plain but makes my handwriting look amazing. I'm a big fan of Waterman pens. Don't get me started on choosing ink!
I love fountain pens! Especially those very fine japanese nibs. Have you tried Rhodia and Tomoe River Paper ? With paperblanks those are my favorite paper to write on.
Damn, I just found this channel while I was looking for some tips for making antique handwriting and wow, I'm surprise by the aesthetic and the elegance of everything. New Sub! :D
I usually lay something under my wrist and angle my page to the right (towards me) so that my hand is "below" my writing. It took ALOT of practice. Also, noodler's ink. It's amazing.
As a leftie, a fine or extra-fine nib with a quick-drying ink is the best, the medium is also fine if you like thicker nibs, it doesn't smudge even if you write quickly. kaweco, pilot and twisbi are my favourite brands with good prices too. (15+ dollars)
European kids must write with fountain pen so I have had mine for 18 years now. And yeah Parker are good like for real but I think for beginner it is better to start with a Stabilo or a Pelican they are around 10$-15$ and they are done for beginner, for kids so they are easier to handle.
Recently like a month or two ago I have developed an interest in fountain pens and it goes hand in hand with my journaling and I'm enjoying the experience very much. Although I am yet to grasp the habit of writing everyday but I am trying my best to make scribbling my thoughts on paper into a daily rountine. Thanks for this video. It encouraged me further to pen down my thoughts every single day!
Just found your channel and I love the way you approach this subject through your videos. I've been interested in the concept and aesthetics of dark academia for a while now, the intrigue for me through journaling and artistic perspective of it, watching your videos has really helped understand dark academia as a whole. Loving this content and so glad to stumble across it, new sub here! :)
My dear, I discovered your channel a couple of months ago, and I was surprised to see that we are very much alike. I came to this realization upon seeing this video about fountain pens. As a great enthusiast myself, I really enjoyed the new knowledge you gave me today about this passion of ours. I must say that is very pleasing to see how much care and love you put into every video. Keep up the good work and amazing spirit. Greatest regards!
I'm really glad I came across your channel. 😊 I have a few fountain pens from a sampler set I bought awhile ago but rarely touch them. Might need to get back into using them again when I journal.
this is so strange to me? that some people find them so special haha. i'm french and in elementary school we were not even allowed to write with ball point pens. we had to write with fountain pens! most of my peers still do now in university because we've just written with these our entire lives. teachers like it better when we write our assignments with fountain pens, because you can erase the ink and stuff so the writing is usually much less messy. love them! i just like writing with them so much.
@@lacampanella2406 sorry I didn't see the reply until now ^^ well there's a special little pen, with on one end a white tip, which enables you to erase the ink (I don't really know the whole chemical process lmao) and at the other end of the pen you have a blue tip, and you write over what you just erased with it :)
@@lacampanella2406 hi, I'm French too, and this is what we use to erase ink in school : www.cdiscount.com/arts-loisirs/papeterie-fournitures-scolaires/effaceurs/f-161030414-pap3501170125502.html?idOffre=15960319#mpos=4|mp Hope it helps
I don't know if this is offensive or not so I apologize in advance, but I find it fascinating listening to your voice, as you soften your voiced "th" sounds but not your unvoiced ones. It is super unique I've never heard anything like it
My first fountain pen was a $25 cheap-o my dad got me that was plastic. It still works 4 years later! I now use a Lamy one that I got when my art store closed down. I'm a comics nerd and I draw most of my comics with a fountain pen, so here's some pen love across all mediums of self expression
fountain pens! been using them for I think 5-6 years now. Started on a cheap Platinum Preppy (it's so cheap, ~$6) and that got me hooked. I've got 4 in total, my favourite being the TWSBI Eco with the clear chamber. I use them for journaling or drawing/drafting. None of my friends are super into pens so just listening to someone express enthusiasm like this is really neat. Thanks!
I'm afraid it sounds like unintelligent thing to say but...man your subs grows up like 4k in a day! I watch your videos everyday religiously and saw 29k yesterday but today it's 33k! Keep up the amazing content
I got my first fountain pen at eleven as it was mandatory for for the school I attended. I had a Parker Vector, and we were only allowed to use blue ink as it’s erasable. My handwriting is very small though so I switched to extra fine nibbed platinum preppy which is only a couple of quid so I have several with different colours and they can be a little temperamental but they’re amazingly fine.
So I learned how to write with a fountain pen when I was in second grade because it is one of the skills you are taught in school here and is even expected in primary school. I still avoid writing with ball point pens because it feels like I am scratching the paper and indenting it and it just feels bad to write with them. When I then moved to Ireland for a while it was quite funny to see how everyone was so fascinated with my pen haha (I think most people stop to write with a fountain pen when they become teenagers even though we learn how to write with them which I cannot understand but to each their own)
@@finn8819 I went to school in Germany, we have to learn how to write with a fountain pen and in cursive in primary school. I love that I have those skills now but I remember being super frustrated because I just wanted to continue writing with a pencil haha In my school (and I know many other schools did this) we got a Füllerführerschein so basically a fountain pen drivers license but that was just because it was a fun incentive to get us to practice.
I love fountain pens, they were the only pens we were allowed to write with in elemtary/middle school (I still have my fountain pen from when I was like 7/8). I'm a leftie though so it's quite an inconvenience which is why I don't write with them that much anymore. 😔
hello marijke you can use a quick-dry ink in combination with a pen that is more ‘dry’ I.e it deposits less ink on the paper :) I have sweaty palms that smudge ink very often and with these things I’ve managed to almost eliminate accidents :>
You used a Parker in secondary school?! Not even I did this. Kudos. :D (I use yellow wooden B pencils. AND soft white erasers. Sharpeners, of course. Nothing beats pencils. Nothing.) (Fountain pens? Haha, you know what that reminds me of? The Sorrows of Young Werther. LOL)
I started with Parker Vector that was plastic and sold for $8 at that time in college. I moved up to collecting after first two years of college. Most fountain pens require thicker paper, like 32pd instead of the regular 20, keep that in mind otherwise it goes through the paper. One can try different nibs and colored inks, the colors are endless. Worth completely the buy!
The Twsbi Go is a really nice entry pen, and it's around 20-25 bucks. Really good quality for the price. Platinum is another winner. Even the super cheap Preppy writes beautifully for around 5-10 bucks. I have more expensive pens, but I still reach for my preppy sometimes. You can eyedropper it, too, which makes the ink capacity insane. Another beginner favorite is the Pilot Kakuno, and this one comes in many colors so it's easy to find one that suits your taste. Fountain pens are such a nice hobby!
My mother used to write with a fountain pen for her first seven years in school and she told me these pens leaked very often. She could put the pen into her bag at home and then open the bag at school and there was ink all over it! So she was very happy when they were allowed to write with ball point pens. But her handwriting is still beautiful while I learned to write with a ball point and my handwriting usually looks... well, not so beautiful.
I've always heard about the joys of fountain pens. I bought an inexpensive one a few years back. But it was so scratchy that I just couldn't use it. I ended up giving it to a friend. I hope all pens are not that way! For me, it's like nails on a chalkboard. I just can't handle it. Maybe there's such a thing as a store where you can try out different kinds.
I need to try different brands. The first two brands I owned leaked like sieves and I always had ink stains on my fingers. I found the disposable kind, which are sealed and which I loved, but their nibs were never less than a medium when I wanted a fine tip.
In France, we have to use fountain pens from primary school. They’re really common and reasonably cheap, a few euros maybe. I tend to use Waterman ones. Also you can get ink that disappears with a special pen called an Effaceur.
I love fountain pens but I'm left-handed. I make do with Schneider's rollerball pen which are technically considered as children's pens but I found that they sell cartridges with steel tips which produce a fine thin line instead of the messy blot that the conventional plastic tips cause. Then I realized that the steel tip cartridges are no longer being sold in my country (I live in Europe) and I scoured the internet to find some. Finally, I found the only store that had them on E-Bay. So I paid the import tax to had them shipped to me from California. Lately, I'm experimenting with different combinations of pen and paper. I have a few notebooks from my old job which had this extra smooth paper and I'm trying to figure out what kind of paper this is so that I can buy more when I run out of those that I hoarded from my old job.
In Germany we actually learn writing with fountain pens and often aren't allowed to use ball pens until secondary school, so many people just stick with it. I however used ball pens for most of my writing in school and now in uni because it's more practical, but I still love to journal with my fountain. My dad actually gave me a matching set of fontain and ball pen for my middle school graduation 4 years ago and I still love and use both daily. Its really great because I can refill the ball pen to
I've always been a sucker for black wet ink on a page rather than biro, much to the distaste of basically...everyone around me😄 I'm thinking of moving to fountain pen, but only once I'm through with my black ink pens I bought in bulk in quarantine...
Hello, I have a question for you and the community. I have a cheap fountain pen, I am still practicing with it and it feels wonderful - so I want to use it in my journal. I am struggling to find a lightfast, waterproof ink to use, though, because I would like my memories to resist to the test of time. Any suggestions? Is there any sort of archival ink out there?
I got my first fountain pen in middle school. My grandpa gave it to me when he understood how much I liked his pen -and he wasnt using it anyways-. It was beautiful. Black and gold with flowers as decor. Sadly one day after a break I found the nib broken. Maybe a classmate tried to write or something I will never know. I got another one a year or two ago again from my grandma (a parker this time) . I still have it. I dont know how much ink it can actually hold because the way it get the ink in is by opening it and putting a small capsule of ink inside, i dont know if it can get bigger capsules, i just put the ones I found here. Now I am thinking of getting another one that can hold quite a bit of ink (because the parker one lasts two pages maximum per capsule)
Wow, I hope I can also own and use a pen for a long time. I have one fancy, perfect pen for me here but I can't bring it anywhere esp in school to use. I remember how my pen will just vanish in thin air once it drops on the floor (or left for a sec on my table) 😂
I've always had fountain pens, between 10 and 30 quid. I use them till they break. I have only one now (the others I had broke), but ordered 2 new ones today :)
Until 8th grade i was forced to write with a fountain pen at school so I'm pretty used to it but I have always loved it... Almost everyone in my class gave them up as soon as they could but, even as a leftie, I still use one as often as I can (considering how common fountain pens are here it's so easy to find ink and most of the ink dries pretty fast, sometimes faster than a ballpoint pen on glossy paper, so my hand doesn't actually smudge it that much) I will say they are not the most practical thing for note taking cause it's harder to write fast but when you're writing anything else the fact you write slower helps you write nice and it looks so much prettier and it's so fun and god I love fountain pens
Not to mention the lack of enviornmental impact they have. You can buy eco friendly ink refills, as opposed to buying a 10 pack of shitty plastic throw aways that'll end up rolling around on the side of the road for 50 years until they disintegrate. Edit: Instant subscribe, I just looked up those paperblanks journals you mentioned and Im literally drooling. I was ready for them to be 15 - 20 dollars a piece, but most of them arent over 12. Pissing drooling and vomiting, there's so many different styles, this is life changing.
No, in the Netherlands you also have to learn to write with a fountain pen. When you are around 7 or 8 years old you get your first fountain pen from school.
In middle school, our french teacher made it compulsory to use fountain pens during his class. From there on it became a habit until I realised that the ink was fading. I like to be able to go back to my old journals at anytime so the fact that the ink was fading was a big issue. Maybe the ink I used back then was not that good 🤷♀️ I have no idea but until then, I'm using gel pens for my journals. Tbh it doesn't feel the same. Fountain pens feel special
In my experience, paper is as important as the pen. If you have a fancy Mont Blanc pen, but an awful notebook, you will be better with a ballpoint pen. Writing by hand is like and environment that needs to be considered holistically.
I’m never one to care about style of clothing thought I’ve always complained not having a certain look. But this man’s choice of clothing is too good to not draw inspiration and start making up my own style.
after watching this video I decided to find my fountain pen i got from italy for 6 years now and i was convinced i broke it because it wouldn’t work. turns out it was just out of ink (I don’t know why that didn’t cross my mind) but wow it’s so so smooth and it’s my new favourite pen,, idk why more people dont use fountain pens??
haha wha? i don't know the names of the fountain pens you're talking about Lammey? Mon blanc meista stock? and i don't see it listed .. so i'm still in the dark about finding a fountain pen that someone recommends.. i'll keep searching
I also love fountain pens! I am turning 20 now, and not very people my age like them. I started reading the secret history by Donna Tartt and started laughing when they talked about montblac fountain pens, since I have the 149.
The fountain pen trap: Buy one, it'll last you forever. 3 months later, 7 pens and every colour of pelikan ink later- "How do I start mixing the perfect colour of ink to go with this new pen I ordered?"
