Adventures in Writing Part 3: Getting the Feel of a Falcon

Old Farmhouse Door (5" x 7" pen & ink)
Namiki Falcon pen with Noodler's Black Ink on Stillman & Birn Epsilon paper.

As promised, the next test for my new Namiki Falcon fountain pen was to use it to create a piece of art. This exercise is the result. I was debating whether or not to put it up here as, frankly, it is not one of my better pieces. Not better for several reasons that have nothing to do with the pen used to create it. Briefly, and for the sake of critique, I will say that the lack of success of this piece is due to drawing errors made in perspective and the lack of quality reference material used to draw it from. Having cleared that up, I can now move along to the true purpose of this post, which is to describe how the Falcon performed as an art pen.

As an overview, the Namiki Falcon creates a lovely line. It’s consistent and a pleasure to draw with. My pen has an SF (fine) nib. It creates a fine (narrow) width line, as fine or finer than anything else I have to draw with. Its balance is wonderful and it’s a light pen, even posted, and my hand did not get fatigued while drawing. There were a lot of different marks used in this piece and the pen handled them all extremely well. As the Falcon’s nib is only semi-flexible, for some of the darkest marks I decided to use a Noodler’s Flex pen. But those marks were in the vast minority. The vast majority of the marks were made with the Falcon. It was an interesting test to switch back and forth between the Noodler’s Flex and the Falcon. When switching it was easy to notice the difference in quality between the two pens. But that's to be expected as the Namiki Falcon costs 10x the price of a Noodler’s Flex pen.

So what were my lasting impressions? Would I use it again? Was it worth the price? To all of these I would have to say a resounding Yes! I’m not certain that I would use it as my only pen for a pen & ink piece. I like having a few different pens available for creating different textures and tricks. But I would use it alone for a delicate black & white illustration or one that was to be tinted with watercolor later.

So kudos, Namiki Falcon, for your first inking performance and welcome to my pen case!