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Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
Since I started writing Kanji many years ago I have not been able to find any perfect *and* affordable pen. My very old Parker fountain pen is nice, but useless for Kanji: too stiff and inflexible.
Other pens have been tested and tested and I now use STAEDTLER pigment liner as the best compromise. Good tip, and in a variety of sizes. (I use anything from 0.5 mm to 3.0 mm depending on the size of my writing.)
Now, however, all my pen problems are TOTALLY gone. Just look at
http://www.hisnibs.com/
and you will understand what I mean. WOW!!!!!!! Affordable pricing, a HUGE assortment of fountain pens from all over the world, but in particular from China.
Personal Dogma: Chinese/Japanese PENJI should be done with A FOUNTAIN PEN. Everything else is a compromise. Really.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - rich_f - 2009-01-03
I'm a Sailor Profit Brush Pen person myself, although the brushes will wear out in about 3-4 months of heavy daily use. I order mine from a place in Virginia. They're cheap and plentiful.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
rich_f Wrote:I'm a Sailor Profit Brush Pen person myself, although the brushes will wear out in about 3-4 months of heavy daily use. I order mine from a place in Virginia. They're cheap and plentiful.I bought a couple of Faber-Castell PITT Artist pens, but they were not good at all for me, so I put this kind of "pen" on the shelf. I've heard much good about the Sailor Pen, though. There are many threads re writing on chinese-forums with one "reviewing" various brush pens.
This is a rather delicate affair, so I've been pondering a lot of alternatives for normal size brush writing. Perhaps a standard small/fine water color brush of high quality could be great for "US" (not born with shodo brush in the mouth :-) )
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - Bryan_Saxton - 2009-01-03
I personally like Uni fountain pens (.7mm in black), and I haven't found anything that writes smoother. But I'm always on the lookout.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - radical_tyro - 2009-01-03
You guys try Lamy fountain pens? I read good things about the Safari and Al-Star. I was thinking about picking one up, but maybe you guys have a better suggestion?
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
radical_tyro Wrote:You guys try Lamy fountain pens? I read good things about the Safari and Al-Star. I was thinking about picking one up, but maybe you guys have a better suggestion?They look good, but the price is not that great considering that you can get TEN Chinese pens for the same amount of money, and they will probably be better suited for writing Japanese too.
What looks best this far is something like
http://www.hisnibs.com/uranus_le.htm
where the "protection" is extended quite a bit to cover the nib. This is said to be the IDEAL TYPE OF PEN to write Hanzi/Kanji. Then there are many different brands to pick from. This seems just as good as any with a price tag of $20.00!! I am really excited waiting to get some info re the price in Beijing for pens. I guess that my wife/daughter can bring me a BAG full of pens back :-)
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - Jarvik7 - 2009-01-03
My Sheaffer calligraphy fountain pen works great for kanji and only cost around $8. I doubt you'll find a non-disposable one any cheaper.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
Jarvik7 Wrote:My Sheaffer calligraphy fountain pen works great for kanji and only cost around $8. I doubt you'll find a non-disposable one any cheaper.What sort of nib does it have? Those flat nibs made for WESTERN calligraphy is not ideal for writing Kanji/Hanzi according to the verdict of seasoned PENJI SENSEITACHI (and I agree).
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - Jarvik7 - 2009-01-03
KanjiHanzi Wrote:Most penji books I've seen just use a ballpoint pen in the examples, which is hardly customized to Chinese characters. Basically all that matters is that it writes smoothly without skipping and feels good. If you are using a fountain pen for normal CJK writing you'd want something that is relatively fine and not too wet so that the lines all don't run together. I use a fine ~$100 Parker fountain pen for all of my normal writing (Chinese/Korean/Japanese/English) and the Sheaffer when I want to write in a larger/bolder type.Jarvik7 Wrote:My Sheaffer calligraphy fountain pen works great for kanji and only cost around $8. I doubt you'll find a non-disposable one any cheaper.What sort of nib does it have? Those flat nibs made for WESTERN calligraphy is not ideal for writing Kanji/Hanzi according to the verdict of seasoned PENJI SENSEITACHI (and I agree).
Why do you need a flexible nib? Are are you trying to emulate brush writing with a pen? That's not what penji is. Your Parker fountain pen was probably just scratchy or something. There is no such thing as a fountain pen nib specially adapted to ペン字. Most Japanese stores I've seen carry mainly western fountain pens, with only a few Japanese branded ones at best.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - liosama - 2009-01-03
![[Image: sharpen2.jpg]](http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~yasube_1/img/hard3d/sharpen2.jpg)
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
Jarvik7 Wrote:Most penji books I've seen just use a ballpoint pen in the examples, which is hardly customized to Chinese characters.You are absolutely right. It seems to be very common in Japan to have your PEN WRITING done with a ballpoint pen, but it also seems to be an ENTIRELY different matter in China. I don't know hat "penji" could be called in Mandarin, but the best book I have at all on how to write beautiful Chinese/Japanese characters
Learn to Write Chinese Characters (Yale Language Series)
http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Write-Chinese-Characters-Language/dp/0300057717
is strictly Fountain Pen Only. Unfortunately it's not possible to see any pages with real writing on, but I will upload samples later. It's really the best handWRITING I've seen anywhere, no matter if it's made in China or made in Japan.
Jarvik7 Wrote:Why do you need a flexible nib? Are are you trying to emulate brush writing with a pen? That's not what penji is.It's what Chinese "penji" is about. And I guess it's also what Japanese penji WAS about before the event of the ball point pen: emulating the brush painting. Look at almost every font not specifically made for printing books: emulating brush work.
Jarvik7 Wrote:Your Parker fountain pen was probably just scratchy or something.No, in perfect condition otherwise: too inflexible and stiff.
Jarvik7 Wrote:There is no such thing as a fountain pen nib specially adapted to ペン字. Most Japanese stores I've seen carry mainly western fountain pens, with only a few Japanese branded ones at best.Since I spent the entire morning researching Chinese fountain pens I can assure you that the situation is ENTIRELY different in China (and on Taiwan, too, I guess). There is a HUGE market for Made-in-China-pens in China with more brands than you have time to explore. Just look at the link I provided to the US seller in my first post and you get a good summary of what I'm talking about.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
liosama Wrote:That's not really bad. I prefer good old (soft) PENCILS before ballpoints.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - Jarvik7 - 2009-01-03
KanjiHanzi Wrote:Since I spent the entire morning researching Chinese fountain pens I can assure you that the situation is ENTIRELY different in China (and on Taiwan, too, I guess). There is a HUGE market for Made-in-China-pens in China with more brands than you have time to explore. Just look at the link I provided to the US seller in my first post and you get a good summary of what I'm talking about.You can buy nibs in a wide range of thicknesses, angles, wetness, writing textures (scratchy to smooth) and flexibility. The only difference with the Chinese pens you linked (I've actually been to that site before) is that they are cheap. There is otherwise nothing special about them; in fact they seem to be largely clones of western fountain pens.
Penji is not an art form in Japan as it seems to be (from what you say) in China. It is about having nice readable handwriting for daily use.
Scratchy doesn't mean the nib is in poor condition by the way. Some people like feeling the texture of the paper through the pen. Thats why you should try nibs out before buying them if you can.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
Jarvik7 Wrote:The only difference with the Chinese pens you linked (I've actually been to that site before) is that they are cheap. There is otherwise nothing special about them; in fact they seem to be largely clones of western fountain pens.I don't know for sure but the pen I linked to with most of the upper part of the nib covered is fairly new - unusual - to my. That's exactly the type strongly recommended in the Yale book I linked to above.
Jarvik7 Wrote:Penji is not an art form in Japan as it seems to be (from what you say) in China. It is about having nice readable handwriting for daily use.I only have three books with extensive JAPANESE penji:
1) Remembering the Kanji, 3rd edition with writing I would call calligraphy on its own merits. If not, it's extremely pleasant and personal, albeit on the more anemic side of the writing range. It's extremely well balanced and at the same time delicate. I like it a lot. A pity that these examples no longer are included in RtK.
2) The penji samples in P. G. O'Neill's "ESSENTIAL KANJI". (This is one of my most well used books, probably even more so than RtK). This is very different compared with 1) above. More expressive, free form, sort of. Each kanji - on its own! - is really such a dynamic and strong IMAGE that it's nothing but art in my eyes. The brush samples are equally impressive.
3) "Easy Kanji" is an entirely different beast. Both the single brush sample on every page, and the the several penji samples are made by two "award winning" calligraphers. The penji style is radically different from anything I've seen. It's highly "stylized" but still very formal. It uses A LOT of space to become very "airy" at the same time. It's also very difficult to learn, since it is so personal. Great ART! :-)
Jarvik7 Wrote:Scratchy doesn't mean the nib is in poor condition by the way. Some people like feeling the texture of the paper through the pen. Thats why you should try nibs out before buying them if you can.Fountain pens are totally out of date here and it's almost impossible find them in shops, and even less so to find a shop where one can try the pens. There are hardly any decently priced pens imported either. Looking around I found the cheapest to start somewhere around $200 and I would have had to buy this by mail only. No way.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - Tobberoth - 2009-01-03
Screw nibs, buy 筆ペン ftw! I bought one in a 100yen shop in Japan, worked fine for me
. Of course, that's when you want to write nice-looking kanji, not when you want to write small kanji.. for that I use normal pencils.As for penji caligraphy (which I've never actually seen myself), shouldn't it be pretty easy to learn by yourself if you've studied normal caligraphy? I mean, the fundamental techniques are the same, or?
I've personally never studied caligraphy so I have no idea
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
Tobberoth Wrote:As for penji caligraphy (which I've never actually seen myself), shouldn't it be pretty easy to learn by yourself if you've studied normal caligraphy? I mean, the fundamental techniques are the same, or?Yes, that's the traditional path as far as I know: first study traditinal shodo (or the Chinese original) and THEN start writing with a pen after 10 years or so :-)
I have actually tried shodo a bit, but it's so forbiddingly difficicult that I realized that I didn't have time nor patience to do that. And don't come and say SHODO IS VERY EASY, tobberoth!!! Then you are really knocked out as totally ignorant re anything Japanese!
There is A R-E-A-S-O-N why calligraphy students in China and Japan are required to practice writing a horizontal line - itchi/yi - for a couple of months before starting anything else. And yes, that may not the be the approach when teaching western students since they don't understand this kind of profound learning.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - Tobberoth - 2009-01-03
KanjiHanzi Wrote:I have actually tried shodo a bit, but it's so forbiddingly difficicult that I realized that I didn't have time nor patience to do that. And don't come and say SHODO IS VERY EASY, tobberoth!!! Then you are really knocked out as totally ignorant re anything Japanese!Please tell me you're joking. Why would not westerners understand profound learning? Dumbest comment on this forum yet, probably.
There is A R-E-A-S-O-N why calligraphy students in China and Japan are required to practice writing a horizontal line - itchi/yi - for a couple of months before starting anything else. And yes, that may not the be the approach when teaching western students since they don't understand this kind of profound learning.
I've never said shodo was easy, like I said I've never even tried it so why would I call it easy? Once again, may I ask why you don't read posts before answering to them?
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
Tobberoth Wrote:"that kind of painstakingly outdrawn profound learning" has never been the specialty of the western mind. Neither mine really, apart from a surprising patience with writing kanji/hanzi day out and day in for years. Usually hundreds of characters every day.KanjiHanzi Wrote:this kind of profound learning.Please tell me you're joking. Why would not westerners understand profound learning? Dumbest comment on this forum yet, probably.
This can be applied to almost every "Eastern" art form. In India you are required to practice simple stuff for years, day our and day in before being allowed to proceed to more complex stuff. This is good if you LIVE there but totally impractical for the western student not having more than perhaps a year or two to learn his/her lessons there. Even if we HAD more time, our temperament would probably hinder us to walk this path.
Of course it can be debated whether this should be called PROFOUND LEARNING, but I think it's fairly OK since it really makes you totally confident in the basics and you acquire a solid base before attempting more difficult matters. Me, myself, always run ahead and peek at the more difficult lessons LONG before I know the basics, so I am not judging anyone here. I am a BAD student in almost every way, apart from learning fairly quickly despite my ugly habits.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - shadysaint - 2009-01-03
I don't know about fountain pens but for what it's worth...
After a month of trying different ball point pens the BIC Z4+ is the best I've found. The 0.5 and 0.7 both write very nicely and they are rather inexpensive (about $5 for a pack of 4)
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - kazelee - 2009-01-03
KanjiHanzi Wrote:Random info:Tobberoth Wrote:"that kind of painstakingly outdrawn profound learning" has never been the specialty of the western mind. Neither mine really, apart from a surprising patience with writing kanji/hanzi day out and day in for years. Usually hundreds of characters every day.KanjiHanzi Wrote:this kind of profound learning.Please tell me you're joking. Why would not westerners understand profound learning? Dumbest comment on this forum yet, probably.
This can be applied to almost every "Eastern" art form. In India you are required to practice simple stuff for years, day our and day in before being allowed to proceed to more complex stuff. This is good if you LIVE there but totally impractical for the western student not having more than perhaps a year or two to learn his/her lessons there. Even if we HAD more time, our temperament would probably hinder us to walk this path.
Of course it can be debated whether this should be called PROFOUND LEARNING, but I think it's fairly OK since it really makes you totally confident in the basics and you acquire a solid base before attempting more difficult matters. Me, myself, always run ahead and peek at the more difficult lessons LONG before I know the basics, so I am not judging anyone here. I am a BAD student in almost every way, apart from learning fairly quickly despite my ugly habits.
There are music schools, in the west, where a cellist, for example, is made to do nothing but practice strumming with the bow, for months on end, before moving on to any other tasks.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
kazelee Wrote:Random info:One of the few subjects I have REALLY studied the conventional way (3 years of instrument training and two years of musicology on university level on top of that - I told you I am an OLD man :-) ) and have to admit that I have never heard of anything like that. Honestly.
There are music schools, in the west, where a cellist, for example, is made to do nothing but practice strumming with the bow, for months on end, before moving on to any other tasks.
I'm not saying that it doesn't exist AT ALL, but it must be a RARE exception. Cello is such a difficult instrument by itself so if the students would have to pass through the kind of torture you mention, I doubt many would study the instrument at all. Same applies to all violin-type, bowed instruments, where I think the problem is more in the left hand pitching the strings, so to say.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - bandwidthjunkie - 2009-01-03
For years and years the only think I would ever write with, no matter what was a Pentel P205 mechanical pencil; 0.5mm with an H or 2H lead. It's true that writing with a mechanical pencil requires much more effort than a pen, and the writing is never as pretty as that of a pen, and it is slower, but it is easy to rub out, and I make a lot of mistakes in everything I do.
In Japan they don't seem to have the P205 (alas), but I have a very nice equivalent Pentel called a PG605 (only 600円), it is similar, but has some metal casing around the top, I'm using Uni 0.5 2H lead, which is great lead. To be honest I might even prefer the new pencil to the old one. I tried a 100円 shop pencil and lead, but it was constantly coming apart and the lead would snap all the time.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - rich_f - 2009-01-03
Calligraphy is somewhat difficult at first, but it's hardly impossible. If it were impossible, we wouldn't have any written examples of the language. It simply requires time and attention to detail, like any other pursuit in life. You can't just walk up, grab a brush, and dash off something without understanding how to make the brush do your bidding.
I've been studying calligraphy with a really good teacher for about 3 years now, and the way I see it, calligraphy isn't so much about strokes as it is about understanding how your brush handles ink, and how that brushful of ink interfaces with the paper. If it doesn't feel right, your calligraphy will look like crap, no matter how well you understand the strokes and the character.
If you use cheap crap brushes, the odds are increased that you won't get good strokes, but a really good calligrapher will still be able to get good stuff out of crap brushes. (I can't.) My teacher can make a $3 brush look like a $35 brush. OTOH, I need a decent brush to work with, or I'll go mad.
Now the whole thing with horizontal bone strokes (those ichi strokes you do so many of) is that if you can't get those right, there's no point in trying anything else. Once you figure those out, then there's a very good chance that you'll be able to figure out the rest of the strokes. But until you do, there's no point in teaching you the other strokes. If you can't do a horizontal stroke, you can't do 90% of the characters out there. Hell, you can't even write the numbers 1, 2 or 3! So you take some time up front to get it down.
Some people catch on fast, some don't. It took me a few weeks to figure out the trick that worked for me. Now I can do them in my sleep. Once you get that one down, you work on the others, until you can do the character for eternity (永). Then you do that one a lot. But the thing is, you're always practicing something, you're always working on fine-tuning something.
There's always room to improve.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
bandwidthjunkie Wrote:For years and years the only think I would ever write with, no matter what was a Pentel P205 mechanical pencil; 0.5mm with an H or 2H lead.Have you tried considerably softer lead? When I use a pencil, no matter if it's a conventional one or a mechanical one, I use much softer lead, in a conventional pencil up to as soft as 4B. I could even consider 6B if I had any around.
OK, you have to sharpen a traditional pencil very often with that softness, but "the strokes" get a richer blackness as well as a more varied width which can be what SOME writes are looking for. You can mimic the brush strokes with a fixed-width pen, like the penji person i "Easy Kanji" does, but I find that it requires a lot more skill and training than the variable width method.
You really have to slowly, slowly learn how the tip of the brush changes direction and do that with a pen; look at models available everywhere on the net. *Eventually* you will have to learn this no matter what pen/pencil you use, but in the beginning you can get decent to good-looking Kanji/Hanzi without all that practice.
Extremely GOOD NEWS: affordable fountain pens! - KanjiHanzi - 2009-01-03
Thanks for an excellent overview of the philosophy here, Rich.
I agree with everything apart from the notion that it has been suggested here that shodo etc. should be impossible. I have tried many painting and drawing techniques in my life. I even started my life as a young (14-15 years old) dog thinking about becoming An Artist. My work at that time was very much inspired by eastern calligraphy, and the very reason why I at all started learning Chinese Characters - Kanji - as a hobby also many years ago: I just LOVE it. Still.
Now I am not a puppy anymore and don't have the kind of time or patience I know it would take to learn shodo really well. You say that you have studied 3 years with a good teacher. That's like I would expect to have to do too to at least start making some sort of progress. Too old. Too grumpy. Neither would I find any teacher around here. Next life.