An Enos brand ruling pen, once again from the Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies, rhapsodized about here. I could post images from here all day, reader. I won’t, but I could.
Ruling pens are amazing devices, and I still have one somewhere that I use for ink drawings on occasion. It works a little like a dip pen, where pressure draws the ink up into that cavity, and you use the knob to adjust the width. With enough practice, you can make incredibly fine, straight, continuous lines with ink that would be impossible with even a quill tip or dip pen. You do need to practice, though, because it’s gravity-fed and if you draw up the ink incorrectly or in too large an amount, it will blob out all over your paper and make a mess. It’s delicate work.
I even discovered at a certain point that you could use thinned oil paint in it, allowing you the ability to create wispy linework in the context of an oil painting, giving my hopeless Julie Mehretu knockoffs an extra layer of twee busyness. That development remains my sole contribution to the field of oil painting.
