A comic diary and my thoughts on fountain pens

 

I've bought so many fountain pens in the last 10 years that some don't get used much. One of them is the Custom Heritage 912 with an FA nib ground to an XF and a custom feed from Flexible Nib Factory. I suppose that needs a bit or elaboration! The FA nib that came with the pen was pretty flexible but the feed couldn't keep up so I had to buy a custom feed! Yes, I ended up spending more. My friend and nibmeister, Greg Minuskin, is a master at retipping and grinding nibs, so I got him to adjust it. I liked really thin lines at the time because I drew small a lot. Fountain pen hunting and getting it customised to get that ideal feeling when drawing, can get rather addictive and also pricey.

But after arriving at a threshold, I realised there is no end to it. And I find it a better use of my time and energy to create art with the pens I have. OK, at the time, it wasn't all bad wasted time either. Because, every time I got a pen, I found myself drawing more. That improved my drawing skills. Hunting down various speciality nibs also helped train me to draw in different ways. I found that pens don't adapt to me. I have to adapt to them! So I don't regret a certain amount of pen hunting haha. Buying some good pens is beneficial. But once I found that I had all the kinds of fountain pens and nibs that I wanted, and I could create a wide variety of lines, buying more pens didn't serve me more. It was just more of the same. Sadly.

So recently, I've filled up some old fountain pens and started using them again. Using some felt like a new experience all over again because I've not used them for so long!

Above is a spontaneous comic diary of recent events. This was done without prompts, meaning, I just wrote and drew what came into my head without much planning. Doing a comic diary is rather therapeutic for me, especially when I have so much to do and think about. Perhaps it helps me slow down and think. And pens help with that. Pens tend to force me to record things down in a decisive way since ink is not something easily corrected.

So to end this, I'd say, pens aren't just for buying and buying. That's just a pricy, never-ending hunt. Pens serve me best when I'm enjoying using them to create and do stuff like this comic diary. So that's what I'm doing with the ones I've bought these days.