Is it okay to practice calligraphy with a gel pen? That's quite possible.
Many novices who have just started practicing calligraphy have asked me the same question: Which is more suitable for practicing calligraphy, gel pen or fountain pen?
I have been thinking about this question for a long time, and I think there is another question that is very similar to it: Which one is better, fried chicken or skewers?
Fried chicken and skewers are obviously different things, but which one is more delicious is a matter of opinion and wisdom. The same goes for fountain pens and gel pens. You won’t know whether it suits you until you use it. As the saying goes: Children make choices, adults want them all.
My opinion is: fountain pens are suitable for writing, and gel pens are suitable for practicing calligraphy.
Why do you say that? I have summarized the main features of the fountain pen:
First, fountain pens are usually more expensive.
Personally, I feel that the writing quality of steel nibs is not much worse. Many steel nibs priced at one or two hundred yuan (such as Lingmei’s Hunter and Stellar, such as Baile 78G, etc.) do not feel better than the 12-yuan Hero 616. . But if you want to choose a gold tip pen, domestic gold pens (Hero 100, Eternal Life 101, etc.) are at least around 300, Japanese ones are around 500, and European and American ones are even more expensive.
Therefore, except for ordinary steel-point pens, most gold pens directly exclude students with average consumption levels and people with limited liquidity.
It's like going to a restaurant famous for its turtle soup and finding out that you only have enough money to eat a plate of shredded pork with green pepper. Then why don't you find a home-cooked restaurant to eat?
Second, fountain pens are picky about paper.
Because pens and inks are a magical combination, this combination is likely to cause accidents due to various circumstances: for example, the water from the pen is too strong, the ink itself is too thin, the quality of the paper is not very good, and various reasons may cause ink bleeding. Case. If you think about it, a stroke that was originally very refreshing has already flowed out into dozens of tributaries within two seconds of writing it. Can you still read the words?
Third, fountain pens require higher pen-handling skills.
This has to do with the structure of the pen itself. All pens have a very special organ called iridium. There is a saying that the pen tip is the soul of a pen, and the iridium grain is the soul of a pen tip.
Of course, the nib of the long-sword nib is very special (so it is also quite expensive), and ordinary pens do not have such large iridium grains. However, in pen writing, in order to write textures that change in thickness, you must frequently use the technique of pressing the pen tip and rotating the pen to adjust the contact surface between the iridium particles and the paper.
Yes, most friends may not know that when using a pen, you need to constantly adjust the angle and strength. Many people may have been using pens as brushes, right?
But don’t fountain pens have any advantages? Of course there are advantages.
The writing quality of a fountain pen is unmatched by a gel pen. Otherwise, some people say that holding a gold pen in your hand makes even writing feel ritualistic and dynamic. Moreover, the rustling sound of the pen tip rubbing against the paper is particularly like the sound of swordsmen unsheathing their swords and the sound of the phoenix piercing the sky. It can be summed up in one word - cool!
Therefore, the pen is very suitable for writing. But if you want to practice calligraphy and focus on practicing the writing skills of Chinese characters, pen skills, and force exertion skills, then a gel pen will indeed be more suitable. because:
1. Gel pens are very cheap.
A gel pen costs an average of 2 yuan a piece, and a better domestic pen only costs about 3-5 yuan a piece. The refill is cheaper and does not require filling with ink, so the cost is very affordable.
Besides, if you buy a 3,000 pen, and after writing for two days, you find that you don’t want to write anymore, you still have to figure out how to pour it out of Xianyu, or put it in a drawer to collect dust; if you just bought it, It costs 20 yuan for a gel pen. If you don’t want to write, just don’t write. You won’t lose much money. How happy it is to be a salted fish.
2. Gel pens don’t pick paper.
The ink is different from the ink and will not bleed on the paper. You do not need to buy 10 yuan and 50 sheets of high-end calligraphy paper to match it. The 10 yuan and 500 sheets of notebooks are enough for you to use for a long time.
However, the exception is direct-liquid gel pens such as Baixue. Because straight-liquid gel pens do not use ink, they tend to bleed easily when writing.
3. The gel pen is easy to use (very plain)
Most of the time, when the gel pen makes a 360-degree uniform linear motion on the paper, the lines displayed are almost the same and will not cause a lot of interference to you.
You can concentrate on the study of techniques and experience the different changes brought about by different pressing pressures, writing angles, and writing speeds. Using this method to summarize rules and develop habits will help you master some skills as soon as possible. General writing skills.
From my personal experience, I prefer bullet-tipped gel pens. Generally, 0.7 refills are bullet-tipped. I think they are most suitable for practicing calligraphy and are suitable for the most common 1.5×1.5 grid on the market.
As for the 0.35 or 0.5 pen tip, it is thinner and suitable for daily use; the 1.0 pen tip is thicker. If you are in the climbing stage of calligraphy practice, maybe you can try using it to practice pen control?
For example, the famous teacher Zhao Hexin uses 1.0 gel pens to demonstrate his precise pen control ability.
So the cost of practicing calligraphy is really not that high. You can start anytime you want.
