by robertsloan2

Created on: June 29, 2009   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

Choosing a good ink for calligraphy depends on what you're going to do with it.

For creating an invitation or poster, anything where the finished art is going to be reproduced, don't worry about light-fastness. Dye-based drawing inks like the Winsor & Newton Drawing Inks in their eight-color sets with amusing monochrome artworks on the labels are perfect for this. You can spend the time and work to create a masterpiece with dip pens, brushes or bamboo nibs and have a dazzling multicolored original. Then scan or photograph it, print it in full color, and, if you decide it's worth keeping for centuries, have giclee prints made on archival paper using archival inks.

The original will fade but the prints are so durable that it doesn't matter. So that is one big decision to make at first: permanence.

Pigment-based inks that are light-fast and waterproof are also available, such as Rapidograph's Trans-Media Ink. This can be used in Rapidograph technical pens and other fountain pens like Rotring's ArtPen. Be very careful when using any waterproof inks in a technical pen. If it clogs because you left the top off or left the pen unused for days, you might never be able to dissolve the clog without damaging the fine wire inside the pen.

I've killed plenty of Rapidographs over decades and the only thing I would put in them is finely milled Rapidograph ink like TransMedia or the UltraDraw that comes with them. Technical pens are expensive and fussy, they will give a smooth clean line exactly the width of the nib with no variation. This makes them excellent for inking knotwork and embellishments, but you can get similar results using Sakura Pigma Micron or Rapidograph Archival Markers in your nib size of choice without risking a $20 pen on carelessness.

One friend came up with a good rule for handling Rapidigraphs. Every time she uses hers, she pours the ink back in the bottle and rinses out the nib right away. Her set has lasted for a year with no accidents, so I may get some colored TransMedia inks and go back to using these for Celtic knotwork and detailed penwork in art as well as calligraphy. What the very fine point sizes of Rapidographs are useful for is very, very small text as well. You can use a magnifier and put sections of very tiny texts in simple hands into areas of your art while using them as a value area like stippling, a pretty clever trick.

Technical pens, either fountain pen or disposable, are also pretty good for the script hands like Copperplate

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