My silly Pilot Varsity tree animation. I hope Santa brings you all pens!
I received TWO Pilot Parallel pens (and thanks to Sera O for the initial thoughts that lead to all this!) in the same day (one from a GAF secret Santa! I should note that I mentioned having one before, but I went looking for it, and realized I had tried it, shelved it, and given it away. Oops)! Despite my complete ineptitude, this is basically the most fun you can have with your pants on. I have the 2.4mm and the 3.8mm nibs - the two in the middle of the range. I agree that 2.4 is way more usable, but it's fun to write larger stuff and practice individual lines with the 3.8
It's intimidating posting in this thread (that I started?) with people with some actual skill at this, but what the heck:
I've been noodling around using friends' names, bands, games...
With two pens, you can do this neat color blending - you just hold pen #1 upright, nib up, and touch it with the nib of pen #2 (there's no way to describe it that doesn't make people giggle). #1 will pick up some of the ink from #2 (but not vice versa), depending on how long you hold them together. You can tap for just an initial spot of color #2, or hold them together a bit and get a more gradual fade from #1 to #2. There's a bit of that in this image.
The pen comes with a nice little guide, that demonstrates an Italic, Roman, and Gothic hand. I spent a few days just fooling around before trying to learn an actual system of writing. I settled on an ornate 15th century Gothic:
(15th century ones)
(sorry for the cell phone pics - I was tweeting people their names
)
So everyone I know now has to endure this junk. I've been at the Gothic hand for 3 days - these are pretty early examples, I guess. I have zero experience with this, but I can already see myself improving. I have the alphabet largely memorized. It's just a matter of reigning in my spacing, slant, consistency...It will be interesting to see how it impacts my normal writing to have to relearn things like this. Eventually, I want to put together my writing, an ornate Gothic (for initial caps), and elements of a simpler Gothic (the one Pilot shows you is much easier) into my own distinct hand.
It's certainly fun in the meantime. I find it very therapeutic. There's a combination of the tactile nature and the concentration that kind of keeps me from just ruminating on crap.
The pens themselves are really fantastic. For $12, you're getting a plastic pen, two cartridges, a thin sheet of plastic to get paper out of the nib, and a cleaning cartridge. You're getting a tool, more than something that is itself beautiful to behold. But they are so easy to use! You get a lot of feedback - if you're using the broad edge of the nib, you'll get only part of the line if your pressure is uneven. You'll see it left to right and front to back. It might be helpful - especially in a smaller nib size? - for people who struggle to find the correct writing position.
A box of Pilot Parallel "Mixable Colour" cartridges is a must. I've used them before - they fit my Plumix pens - and the colo(u)rs are all very vibrant. The green is much darker than Pilot's Namiki green carts, for example.
The downside is that a Plumix sips ink; a Parallel is more like a paintbrush. It lays down a LOT of ink with each line, as Sera O warned. The carts go fast (and, if you're like me, end up all over your hands). It seems like most folks end up refilling them with a fine needle. They aren't super pricey, but if I stick with it, I can see the cost of ink carts becoming annoying.
The other thing is, with this much ink, even my nice Rhodia pads get overwhelmed. You can easily see it in the images - things feather and pool (the gorgeous green ends up as two shades, even without my blending with a dark blue). I don't mind now, since I'm just fooling around and learning, but still...I wrote "Dark Souls" in Gothic and it got reblogged rather quickly from my tumblr of this crap. I did a shitty job with it, the paper did a shitty job, but because it says "Dark Souls"...it's just mildly embarrassing. I keep thinking, "But I can do so much better!"
All in all, these pens are just great fun, and I think they have a lot of value as learning tools. A 2.4mm and a 3.8mm make a nice set - once you try the color mixing, you'll definitely want two (or more). I don't have experience with anything similar to compare it to, but the pens seem so forgiving for a beginner, and do so much of the heavy lifting for you - I feel like anything that comes out okay is at least 80% the pen's doing - that I cannot recommend them enough.
Then you can
watch someone with actual TALENT on youtube...he seems really taken with them too, so maybe I'm on the right track.
