Calligraphic Black

I'VE BEEN LOOKING for the "blackest fountain pen ink". There are pages and pages of online reviews for brands not available in London. Who are Noodlers? Should I have heard of them? I've never seen their products anywhere...

The standard ink here in the UK would be Parker Quink. But it's nowhere near dark enough. They should call it Quink Dark Grey. I used to use this stuff called Higgins Eternal, but it's eternally even lighter mid-grey than Quink, and certainly not proper black.

The one I'm using now is called Lamy black, but it's still too washy for my exacting taste. I want my writing/artwork to look "like a void in the universe" as someone else put it.

Why is it that rollerball and gel ink pens write so much darker? Is it that because for a throw-away pen they can use a more intense formulation that would clog a fountain pen over time? Who knows. Actually, does anyone really care?

WELL ANYWAY, I'm learning (my own style of) calligraphy, you see. Very slowly. I mean, I  wish I could be as artistic as this (I'm getting in this direction):

or even this (by JRR Tolkien):

But I'm not quite there yet. One day soon I want to learn "real" calligraphy. Did you know you can get work calligraphing lawyers' deeds? I'm serious. For that I'm gonna need really ultra-black lawyerly cosmic ink, y'know the type fraudsters cannot wash off. I used to have an india ink pen, which was really for doodling and drawing, not writing: that produced fantastically black scribbles, but I heard you can literally wipe it clean from parchment and vellum. Not very fraud-proof! Is that true?

I'd also like to learn Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. When my set of TEN books is finished (not just one book ~ ten) and I've got paid however much you get for writing bestsellers these days, then I intend to invest in the Rosetta Stone Japanese course, but you'd need to write a bestseller or ten to afford it. The complete course costs £279 ($449.35)

VIDEO: ISN'T THIS FANTASTIC?

BARBER'S ADAGIO FOR STRINGS

SUNG BY THE CHOIR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

VISUALS BY NASA

DEBS THIS IS FOR YOU

O, and last but not least; THIS is what a real Tolkien manuscript looks like (the one on Saturday's post was by God knows who, but it wasn't JRR Tolkien!)

Isn't it beautiful.

Ukh and that's another thing. I have to learn how to do proper pen-&-ink drawings to illustrate all TEN VOLUMES of my kiddies' book. If I end up publishing it myself. Even if I do get a real publisher, I want them to agree to let me print up limited fine editions myself. So I'm STILL going to have to learn to draw. Wish me luck because I only have a talent for abstract art, not the real stuff. (I would be make a good interior designer of mosques.)

Illustrated: Noodler's ink bottle by Geeky Girl at her blog; homespun calligraphy in black Quink; dwarfish runes on MS by Tolkien, another Tolkien manuscript; mosque design...