Noodler's Baystate Blue

Noodler's Baystate Blue is without a doubt the most controversial ink to be produced by an ink company.  It is both loved and hated with equal intensity in different circles. The color of this ink is modeled after one from the 1950s.  This is most likely the bluest blue that you will ever find. It's almost as if it's a highlighter type of color, but not in the neon range. It's a normal blue that resides in the range of highlighter intensity.  Amidst a line of plain black text, this blue ink will completely jump off the page.
 

There's just something special about brush pens...

With this amazing color comes some unfortunate side-effects, however.  The ink tends to stain plastics and nibs.  This eyedropper ink bottle comes with two pens. A platinum preppy .03 and a brush pen.  The platinum preppy performs as should be expected, but with a little ammonia, cleans up so that there is virtually no trace of the ink ever having been in it.  Ammonia is powerful stuff though, so care needs to be exercised when cleaning.  There is really no need to clean this pen, but I just tried it to see if i could.  It is now my dedicated Baystate Blue pen and will be until I run out of ink. The ink came with a Kuretake Brush Pen, which performs marvelously and is a lot of fun to write with. I don't plan on ever changing the ink in it either.

This ink's waterproof qualities are pretty good. Not bulletproof, but pretty good, a sacrifice completely worth making in return for the fantastic color.  The flow is good in my Noodler's Piston Filler and doesn't even dry up after a few days of sitting around. The ink behaves for the most part, just as well as Noodler's Polar Black.

This is an ivory paper, not plain white.

One of the most frustrating parts of this ink, due in part to my own foolishness, is that it tends to stick to my fingers despite a decent amount of washing.  The amount of hand-washing necessary to remove other Noodler's inks is not enough to remove Baystate Blue. I only really noticed when rubbing my fingers across papers or when touching plastics, as my fingers left blue smears across the surfaces, but it was annoying nonetheless. I just have to exercise more caution in the future.

Overall, I love this ink.  My own mistakes and the potential "drawbacks" of this ink completely pale in comparison to the sheer intensity of the color and the fun that you can have with it.

(Pen used: Sheaffer Italic F)

The Majesty of the Italic Nib

I imagine this was a reasonably cheap pen, because
of the simplicity of its design, but the value of the basement-found
pen is ridiculous!

To the best of my knowledge, this Sheaffer fountain pen is just a generic pen. There is nothing special about the body of the pen or the clip or the weight balance or even the nib.  Basically, this pen is about as normal as can be.  The one difference that this pen has from any of the other pens that I own is that it has an italic nib. The difference that the nib makes in my writing is unbelievable.

What makes this pen write so differently is that instead of coming
to a point, the nib is wide and flat. Genius.

Having been in love with fountain pens for a while now, I'd become fairly comfortable with how I was using mine. Schoolwork was getting done and inks were fun to play with, but I'd never really looked too much into calligraphy, mostly because it was more time consuming and for the most part impractical for my uses. Among the fountain pens that I found in my basement however, was an italic nibbed pen, and I can't believe how much fun it has been!

It isn't that my handwriting is lacking too much, or isn't "pretty" but as far as calligraphic styled writing goes, the italic nib makes a world of difference. After trying a couple times with my Noodler's Nib Creaper Flex Pen, but getting very few results for calligraphy, I tried using this pen and found that this type of nib simply forces you to write "prettier". By widening the lines of the downstrokes and narrowing pretty much all horizontal strokes, your handwriting can very easily look pretty.

Noodler's Axmatoba on plain notebook paper.

The nib isn't scratchy and writes reasonably wet, but I've only used it as a dip pen because I don't think I could ever pick just ONE color to use in this pen. I believe this pen would easily convert to an eyedropper because the barrel just seems to screw on.  If I could find some ink that I absolutely loved (Black Swan in Australian Roses most likely) then I would probably just leave it inked all the time and enjoy the absolutely huge ink reservoir at my disposal.

Writing with this pen has been so much fun. I strongly recommend that anyone who has not tried writing with an italic nib to do so. Even if you're not interested in calligraphy, I'm sure you'll find it just different enough to be fun.

Best Fountain Pens for writing the Arabic Language

One of the reasons that I find fountain pens to be useful is because they're the ultimate writing tool.  Not only can they be used for writing, but they can be used for drawing as well. They're the ultimate calligraphy tool, seeing as calligraphy is the art of writing.  Tracing the roots of the word calligraphy, we arrive at the Ancient Greek word καλλιγραφος which is a combination of the Greek words καλος and γραφος.  Καλος means "good" or "nice" and γραφος means "writing" or "letter". Together we get a word that means "nice letter".

I'm not good enough at reading Arabic to know what this
says, but it sure looks REALLY cool!

Now, Arabic is a language that is different from what we are accustomed to in English, because the script for the language is much more common as an art form.  Because of the religious devotion of early followers of Islam, the people in the Middle East were afraid to draw pictures out of fear of creating idols, something that The Prophet Muhammed warned against.  Searching for an outlet for creative endeavors, the Arabic speakers (since Islam and the Arabic tongue are inextricably connected) put all their energy into mathematics, architecture and handwriting.  The Arabic script can be as beautiful as English cursive or more beautiful.  Both have a lot in common in the way that they flow and rise and fall with twists of the pen and more pressure on down strokes.  While ballpoint pens may work alright with the Arabic language, a pencil is preferable over a ballpoint and a fountain pen over a pencil.

Practicing my Arabic alphabet. Each of the
28 letters has 4 different forms that must
be known. That doesn't even count the short
vowel marks.

I've been trying different fountain pens to see which ones work best with the Arabic language.  The Sheaffer Italic that I used was probably the best one overall, but as far as standard pens that I would carry around with me for use in other languages, I would say the Noodler's Nib Creaper Fountain Pen (filled with Noodler's Bad Green Gator) performed the best.  I was also able to apply more pressure with the throw-back nib and make line width variations, placing it at the top of the list for writing Arabic.  My Platinum Preppy .03 was the runner-up. It was filled with Noodler's Polar Blue.


I tend to use legal pads most of the time because of their convenience and price. Don't worry, I'm moving to bagasse paper as soon as I run out!  This pad has narrower lines than most and as such, wet writers or pens with medium nibs aren't as functional.  This isn't to say that the Parker 51 (medium nib/Noodler's Polar Black) that I used or the Pilot Petit1 (wet writer/Noodler's Polar Blue with a drop or two of Polar Black) aren't great for this writing, but they most certainly need more line space than this legal pad allows.  Other pens I used were my Lamy Safari with EF nib (filled with Noodler's Polar Black and my Noodler's Piston Filler (filled with my favorite ink, Noodler's Red-Black).  Both the Lamy Safari and Piston Filler were too scratchy for a comfortable flow that is necessary for the lines prevalent in Arabic. The Sheaffer Italic F was used as a dip pen in Noodler's Russia Series Ахматова.

I'm a student of the language first and foremost, not a calligraphist, but that doesn't mean that I can't have fun with practicing calligraphy in other languages from time to time.  Maybe someday I'll be able to write as well as in the picture above.

مع السلامة

The Classicist