n i j o m u

I just got a new pen and thought it’d be interesting to compare it with some other pens I own of a similar type. These are all reservoir fountain pens intended for writing and sketching. My main goal for them is sketching.

The three pens in question are: the Brause calligraphy pen, size 1.1; the Rotring Artpen, size EF; and the Platinum Carbon pen, super fine. I’ve had the Rotring forever (a decade? more?), the Brause for about a month, and the Carbon for a day. So how do they compare?

The Brause. I got the Brause on a whim from Paper & Ink Arts. I have to say, I’ve been disappointed with it. It’s a broader nib than I expected. I guess I didn’t think through the fact that it was called a “calligraphy pen,” so the disappointment is mostly my own fault. Yet the pen shaft is light plastic and doesn’t have a good weight to it. The ink is really watery, also. It makes an okay writing pen, but I expected more from Brause.

The Rotring. I’ve loved this pen for a long time. It has a nice feel to it and a good weight. Mine is getting old and the ink doesn’t flow as evenly as it used to, even after a thorough cleaning. The ink itself is slightly gray and it’s not waterproof. Still, this is a great little pen for sketching.

The Carbon. I just read about this pen on Joseph Lambert’s blog and I checked it out at JetPens. The reviews intrigued me, especially when I read that the ink was waterproof. As you can see from the image above, it really is waterproof. Both the Brause and the Rotring inks smeared when I brushed gouache over them. The Carbon ink didn’t. The pen itself is light plastic like the Brause, which is a negative, but the nib is very fine, finer than the Rotring EF. I like that. It also allows for a little more line variation than the Rotring. And the ink is darker. That added to the fact that it’s waterproof make me excited about the possibilities. I’ll have to see how the pen holds up and how transportable it is, but I really like it so far.