Painted fountain pens

I love fountain pens: restoring vintage pens, reading about vintage pens, talking about pens, writing with pens, and decorating pens.

Every pen is one of a kind—I do not duplicate pen designs, at least not currently. I also paint fountain pen converters.

I currently take commissions only very occasionally. The best ways to get a painted pen are:

Photo by S.C. Franklin

One-of-a-kind, hand-painted Fountain pens that personalize your writing experience

Each pen takes between 8-15 hours to design and paint.

Designing the art and layout: While some of the design is spontaneous, multiple hours may be spent hunting for reference images, developing a concept, and sketching. Designing for a cylinder, as well as for a small visual object, brings its own set of challenges.
Prepping the pen surface: Depending on the planned coverage and pen material, the pen surface may need to be disassembled, sanded and cleaned.
Painting multiple layers: The painting itself usually takes place over several days, as layers must dry, additional resource images may need to be sourced. Sometimes I carve the paint. Errors may need to be sanded since on a small object, the texture of built up paint layers is extremely obvious and may not always be desirable. I use artist quality acrylic paints.
Varnishing: Pens must be varnished as they are meant to be handled and used. Currently I varnish my pens with multiple layers of Liquitex acrylic medium artist varnish. The varnish helps to prevent flaking and removal of the acrylic paint.
Finishing: Removing bubbles in varnish, removing paint or varnish from undesired locations, reassembling pen.