The high quality of the best Rotring pens makes them particularly popular amongst professional drafters, students and others involved in technical drawing. But they're also good for outlining, shading, sketching, artwork and calligraphy, making them a good choice for both professional artists and anyone learning how to draw. Line width variance was pleasingly simple – a slight turn of the nib produced a noticeable change in stroke size and I’m looking forward to putting the Art Pen through its paces on a larger test piece. You can see this in the foliage of my tree doodle. Hatching and shading One thing that’s quite surprising is how narrow the majority of the pen is. Again, I suspect this was to model the pen on dip pens or quills but that main body of the pen (the bit you hold) is a comfortable 10mm in diameter so it’s wide enough where it matters. The first Rotring fountain pen was unveiled in Germany in 1928, combining an ink flow regulator with a fine nib and regulator wire. While the pens these days are manufactured in Japan, the brand remains steeped in its German heritage – the name Rotring literally translates to "red ring", which you'll see around the barrel of the manufacturer's pens and pencils today. Just like the Leica red dot in the world of cameras (another German firm), it's an iconic symbol that instantly denotes quality.

Convert the pen into an “eyedropper” pen, allowing you to use the whole barrel as a large reservoir. The mid-priced Rotring 600 is one of the brand's most iconic and popular mechanical pencils. This all-metal, silver pencil offers the benefits of precision lead advancement and an adjustable lead hardness grade indicator, which helps for easy identification when working.You’ll find a comprehensive, unofficial guide to the Pilot Parallel here, including details of how to convert it into an eyedropper pen. Safety pens In this article, we bring you the best Rotring pens available today, across a range of pen types, so you're sure to find what you're looking for.

Another doodle, larger this time, showing that stippling is also possible with the Art Pen. Conclusion This means that you can put Indian ink in a Pilot Parallel without worrying about the pen. It also helps that the pens are not expensive to buy. Safety pens were originally designed in the early twentieth century to allow them to be carried on an aeroplane without leaking. This isn’t usually a problem with modern fountain pens, as materials technology has improved a lot since then, but you should still be wary of using a fountain pen in flight. The problem is a difference in air pressure between the air in the ink reservoir and the air outside of the reservoir, in this case in the cabin of an aircraft. The air in the reservoir will be at a higher pressure than that in the cabin, and so, if you remove the cap of a conventional fountain pen while flying, you run the risk of experiencing a sudden equalisation of air pressure through the tiny capillaries of the feed, resulting in an explosion of ink. You can avoid this by: ArtPens and Carbon Pens can use each other’s inks with no apparent problems, and I have seen a report that the ArtPen is capable of running unmodified Indian ink. I haven’t tried this, but I would be reluctant to leave such ink in the pen for any significant time. Other special designs IndigraphTintenkuli Stylograph in Lined Burgundy Marble with gold filled trim. In Near Mint condition. Piston fill. Works Perfectly. The Indigraph is an otherwise conventional fountain pen with a humidifier in the cap, preventing the feed from drying out. It’s a relatively recent innovation and the pen looks very well made, but I haven’t – so far – been tempted to buy it. It’s the most expensive pen listed here and, while it doesn’t come with a flexible nib, it seems that it can be fitted with one.