Fountain Pens, Cursive Writing & Penmanship

 If you put "fountain pens" into my Search Bar, 

you'll find previous posts about them.

I've been taking notes about the history of pens, writing tools 

& penmanship from a book, 

Script & Scribble, The Rise & Fall of Handwriting. 

Using fountain pens

is "Slow Writing"  compared to computer tapping in the way that

eating whole foods is "Slow Food" compared to eating fast food.

I so enjoy the tactile feel of ink flowing through a fountain pen nib

on quality paper.

The variety of pens & inks these days is amazing. 

I mostly write with a range of blue to green inks, 

though I still enjoy good old black, 

especially waterproof, so that I can add watercolors.

They are simply one of my very very favorite tools.

They have been since I wrote with 

my 1st Schaeffer cartridge pen at age 11.

Visit Goulet Pens if you want to know more about fountain pens!

Italian Language Study Wandering

Sketchbook Wandering is studying languages again. 

I'm taking a beginning Italian language class for travelers as well as an advanced French conversation class. 

Fountain pens, journals & colored pencils are a big part 

of my arsenal for studying. 

Missing my sketchbook wandering, but I'm loving this! 

My brain & spirit are happy.

Fountain Pens & Ink

 I spend a good deal of time in the company of fountain pens. 

Writing in my journal/s, writing anything & everything 

that needs recording or processing.

I'm old fashioned. As much as I love word processing,

it is pen, pencil, ink, & paint that I adore using

(and scissors & glue).

This was a photo that I posted on a fountain pen site. 

It's interesting to be among fellow pen enthusiasts.

I am not the collector that many of them are,

but I do have, well, more than one pen (ahem).

Something new is to draw & paint using inks,

inspired by some of the artists on the site.

 

Goulet Pens sells small vials of ink samples, 

a great way to try out luscious colors & various brands. 

For the Love of Penmanship

What do all these images have in common?

I wrote a letter to my 3rd grade teacher to thank her for teaching me cursive.

(It's not one I can really send). But it was a great prompt for journaling/memoirs.

I've been refining my cursive writing with a book, The Art of Cursive Penmanship.

A Test of the Pens in a new Quo Vadis Journal.

Clairfontaine dot grid but on white instead of cream color

like my favorite Rhodia Web Notebooks.

 

Pages from my Daily Journal

A different sort of art journal. Folio collage in which I'm using up snippets, little drawings

& watercolor washes & designs from my stored stash.

Yes! Handwriting with fountain pens! Love!

PS My favorite source for pens, ink, journals, paper:

Goulet Pens. Variety, customer service, yes,

but also education & inspiration of how to further 

their use & enjoyment.

Do you write/draw with a fountain pen or did you?

Blue: Folio Book with Pockets & a Pamphlet Booklet

 

I promised myself & you, blog visitors, that I 

would glue up my painted Blue papers (previous post) 

into a folded folio.

The pages of the little tied up booklet 

have become ink swatches

of 5 favorite fountain pen inks in blue: 

Diamine Polar Glow, Noodler's Midnight, Sailor 940, 

Sailor Yonaga, & Noodler's Blue. 

The sentence in the lower right middle, on vellum says,

"Blue, réconforte-moi." Translated: "Blue, comfort me..."

The Journaling Practice: Organizing

I've been absorbed in my journaling practice...

I taught a little Zoom workshop with a focus on 

organizational forms of journaling:

Planner/calendar meets Sketchbook Diary

The prep work got me to develop my own practice far deeper

than ever before.

Some of my current active notebooks:

• Daily Journal (Master Journal)

• French & Polish Study 

• Music & Dance 

• Food & Fitness

• Weekly Creative Journaling Group

• Art Learning/Noting

• Journal About Making Journals 

• Creative Projects Journal

My three most actively used notebook journals.

Perhaps journaling wouldn't be such an active part of my life

if I weren't sheltering in most of the time. 

With the influence of many online journalers my layouts

are more conscious now. There is consistency with variety

from day to day.

The colors & color codes are not only fun, 

but they help me to be able to easily refer back.

A before picture. 

This started out to be a Books, Music & Films

notebook. Eeek! what chaos.

Soon I'll begin the work 

of organizing this into a neat little notebook.

In the meantime I've been organizing my old art work.

I found some plastic sheet protectors with 2" X 2" slots 

for old fashioned slides at a yard sale. 

I've been filling the little pockets

with all these snippet cutouts 

that I'd thrown willy nilly into a box.

What's cool is that now that I know where to find them,

I'm actually using them in some of my current creating!!

All this journal writing & organizing 

would not be as much of a pleasure

if I didn't love to handwrite with fountain pens

on beautifully smooth paper...

And if I didn't love using my art materials, 

especially the watercors & colored pencils.

So, my Sketchbook Wandering takes place more within

the confines of my home these days

than out of doors.

Home-Time in My Small Town

Since retirement, my home-time is very pleasurable. 

I have "stations" around the house for:

Painting • Drawing • Zumba & Exercise

Special Projects • Writing • Reading.

I am grateful for a working kitchen.

This is one time where being an Introvert comes in handy.

My life is less disrupted than are many others' lives.

In my small town the changes don't seem drastic to me,

 even though we do run out of toilet paper. 

We are lucky that we can afford to be calm & accepting.

We walk outdoors, & passersby are pleasant.

We are still a town of Hello's & waving to strangers. 

Yesterday as I was walking the Harbor Walk,

 a woman on a bench called out to me:

"We can still do this!" & she did a thumbs up,

& I replied "Yes, we are lucky!" 

and raised my thumbs to her.

 Kathy at the blog Catching Happiness 

(click Here) 

has a post about "Staying Positive..."

She mentions "Stress Cleaning."

I've been enjoying "Stress Organizing," like

taking inventory of my colored pencils. 

At some point I will do a phone order/roadside pick up 

at Fiddleheads,

my local art shop, which is closed...

Temporarily.

 Oooh, order & labels for my fountain pen inks!

(the small ones are samples I get from Goulet Pens.)

 Writing in my journal remains a daily pleasure.

On this day I was listening to France Bleu radio

& decided to create a sort of dictation & to search words
in the dictionary (Reverso online).

I just started a new Rhodia daily journal.

A new Lamy "Turmaline" fountain pen arrived from Goulet 

just before things shut down. 

Goulet is a small business with heart, 

that is paying its employees during this time. 

Voilà. 

Nice to reinforce good feelings via online networks 

in a time of physical isolation. 

How are you occupying your time 

in your "confinement" and "sheltering."?

Fountain Pens in the 21st Century

For any one pleasurable tool or object that existed in the past, there are now gazillions. 

And so it is with Fountain Pens.

There used to be "A cup of coffee". Now, well, do you remember the scene in You've Got Mail where Nora Ephron inserts a little essay: "The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee..."   

I love drawing & writing with fountain pens & now I'm learning to hand letter and to practice my penmanship. 

I love the mechanics of fountain pens, the care & cleaning of fountain pens, the memories of my father's & my grandmother's fountain pens. I love the memory of my own first fountain pen. With the Schaeffer Cartridge Pen I only had to decide on a translucent color for the barrel (red, yellow, blue, green or clear). Blue or blue-black ink. The simplicity!

These days I spend a lot of time looking at varieties, varieties & more varieties. There's a whole vocabulary in "The Fountain Pen Community":  "Piston filler", "converter", "hard starts", "work horse pens", "wet writers", "holy grail pens", "feedback"... There are conventions, penmasters, online "Rock Stars" (Brian Goulet, you know who you are), reviews, comparisons, instructional videos...

Bricks & Mortar pen stores are scarce. I've been known to travel to Boston to The Bromfield Pen Shop just so I can actually hold & try a pen before buying it. 

There is a site called The Pen Habit, another called the Pen Addict.  I've learned online that there are people who own hundreds of pens. There are pens that cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

I try to keep my pen "hobby" manageable, but the pens online do call to me, with their pretty colors & smooth flowing inks. And, as with so many products now, there is the promise that there is one more pen out there that will be even more perfect than any I own... that sparkling new pen that will change my life forever! 

For other posts I've made that include pens, click on the label, "fountain pens".

Café With a Fellow Sketcher

I met one of The Sketchers at a café downtown...

She is our steadiest & most persistent member

& a total inspiration.

It's so nice to sketch with someone else...

We draw, we chat a little...it frees my process...

Takes the pressure off that my brain wants to impose.

That's my Kakuno fountain pen 

filled with Platinum Carbon waterproof ink. 

The pen is very inexpensive,

but draws super well on Moleskine sketch journal paper. 

It felt like the pen was drawing rather than me!

Sketching While Waiting

One of my favorite rewards of sketching:

At the grocery store I had fun instead of impatience

while waiting for J to shop. 

I remembered to bring my new 7 X 9" book 

(previous post) & my Extra Fine LAMY pen!!

PS. For those of you on the coast of Maine:

Artist & Craftsman in Portland 

now carries LAMY fountain pens!

And Molly over there is an expert!

Sketchbooks. End of 2018: Bring in the New, Continue the Old

 I have a new, larger sketchbook!! Paper Blanks, 7 X 9"!!

I use these for journal writing, but I got an extra one on sale

so I turned it into a sketchbook.

LAMY AL STAR fountain pens. I have "a few."

In the Wyeth Center at the Farnsworth Art Museum. 

The annual model train village, "Share the Wonder."

Sketching the mini buildings & cars is a fun way 

to work with linear perspective.

On the left: I sketched a line drawing that Jamie Wyeth

did when he was very young. Part of a series featuring

a Christmas wreath as a "character" in a medieval Christmas.

NC Wyeth's large painting: "The Morris House: Port Clyde". 

Can't do it justice with a quick sketch 

as the colors are so beautiful!!!

But sketching gave me the opportunity 

to scrutinize it more closely, & to gaze longer.

The Wyeth Center is only open a couple of more days.

I went to say good bye to the NC Wyeth paintings upstairs.

When they are back on display sometime, you have to come to Maine to see them in person!

And to see the Maine coast on which they are based!

I've been sketching in my usual 4 X 6" 

Pentallic Traveler Sketchbook.

It also doubles as my Art Learning Journal. 

Both live sketches & notes from books, 

museums, etc. go in there.

 Earlier in the month I went to the Farnsworth 

with an artist friend who wore an adorable felted hat

that she'd found at a thrift store. She sketched 

the gold dragon in the Chinese Zodiac exhibition.

She made a lot of people happy with that hat!

 Waiting in the small town post office line before Christmas.

A relatively small line in a relatively small town.

We enjoyed good natured conversations while waiting.

And for me, sketching made it go very fast.

At the Belfast Saturday Indoor Farmer's Market.

It is my Saturday morning ritual to go there. 

The vendors are not just farmers.

They are artisans, artists & musicians too.

They are local.

 LL Bean, the flagship store is like a theme park. 

There are these real stuffed animals on display.

While waiting for J to try on clothes, I sketched 

"The Three Headless Men of LL Bean." (my title.)

 Trip to Boston in November. QUICK sketches! 

It was my very fist visit to

The Granary Burying Ground. Boston's 3rd oldest cemetary

where many notable men 

from the American Revolution are buried.

 I guess the live people interested me 

more than the dead ones, though it was impressive.

 A quick stop to the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. "Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World."

Subway Sketching, 

The Red Line from Cambridge back to Boston.

 Thanks for browsing through my sketches.

I wish you the happy pursuit of your passions

& pastimes in 2019.