The Fude DE Mannen
A Bent-nib Fountain Pen for Artists

If you search for Urban Sketching on the web and on YouTube, you will eventually come across fountain pens that have bent nibs.

These special pens are generally called fude nib pens, and the most popular Japanese model is the Fude DE Mannen by Sailor.

Fude (foo-deh) is the Japanese word for brush.

But these fountain pens are nothing like a brush; the nib is made of metal and not flexible at all.

The misconception that a fude nib fountain pen will somehow produce flowing brush lines has probably led to much disappointment, with some fude nib pens ending up in a drawer or in the trash.

So, what's so great about fude nib pens and what's the connection between these pens and brushes?

In Japan ink writing is traditionally done with a brush that is dipped in sumi ink and then held upright and perpendicular to the paper.

In old Japan if people wanted to write or sketch outdoors, they had to carry a yatate which is a portable brush and ink case.

Then the fountain pen arrived in Japan around the late 1800s and was seen as a modern and portable version of the writing brush.

The Japanese word for fountain pen (man nen hitsu) literally means ten thousand year brush.

But when people in Japan first tried to write with a fountain pen, they held the pen vertically like a brush, and this resulted in a dry scratchy line.

They soon adapted to this new writing instrument and started to write with the pen at a lower angle.

But there are situations such as writing on New Year's cards when Japanese people go back to the traditional style of brush writing.

And many in Japan still insist that the only way to write traditional kanji characters in formal settings is by holding the brush (or pen) upright.

The fude nib pen was invented so these people could write with a fountain pen, but hold it the same traditional way as a brush in an upright position so they could write their kanji characters as they had always done.

Of course, the writing would still look like it was done with a fountain pen and not a brush.

The tip is bent at a 55 degree angle so that the nib will come in contact with the surface of the paper at a proper angle and deliver ink smoothly, and Sailor advertises this fact right on the package.

The only thing these pens have in common with brushes is the fact that you hold them in an upright position like a brush.

But a lot of people write kanji characters with the brush or pen at a lower angle which is not perpendicular to the paper.

So Sailor also produced a second version of this pen with the tip bent at less of an angle, at 40 degrees instead of 55 degrees.

On the 40 degree version packages they changed the wording to say: Recommended for people who write with their pen at a low angle

Regardless of the angle of the nib bend, one unintentional benefit of this unique nib is the different line widths you can get by varying the angle of the pen itself.

You get the thinnest line from the reverse side of the nib.

Then you get a few medium line widths from the regular side of the nib as you lower the angle.

Finally you get the broadest line when the entire surface of the nib is in contact with the paper.

As the photo shows, you can get the same range of stroke widths from either the 55 degree nib or the 40 degree nib, depending on the angle you hold the pen itself.

As with most fountain pens, you can also quickly lift the nib off the paper to get a short tapered line.

The ability to get different lines widths by varying the angle of the pen is also mentioned on the package.

The hard metal nib won't change the line width mid-stroke like a soft brush (unless you do some incredible acrobatics), but a single pen that gets variety of stoke widths can be extremely valuable when drawing on location.

When artists discovered the Fude DE Mannen it became a popular sketching tool, especially with urban sketchers.

This pen came to be used both by old people who use a fountain pen to write their New Year cards, and artists who go around drawing city scenes.

Some artists may find the barrel of the Fude DE Mannen a bit too long, especially if they try to post the cap on the barrel.

This pen is also available as a shorter Profit model with a clip. It is light-weight and well balanced when the cap is posted.

The Fude DE Mannen also comes in limited editions with special colors like this one with a clear barrel and yellow cap that I got from the online Sailor Shop in Japan.

Still, one thing the original long model has going in its favor is its iconic design which is now recognised by artists all over the world.

The length makes it appear more slim, but all the Fude DE Mannen barrels I have tried are actually the same diameter and even interchangeable.

The long barrel does have enough room to carry a spare cartridge, which can be a life saver when you are sketching on location.

But that spare cartridge rattles in the barrel, which can be very distracting.

So I found an incredibly simple and effective solution:

Just take a spring from a click-type (knock) ballpoint pen and drop it into the barrel before you store a cartridge. No more rattle!

These pens come with two cartridges of Sailor water-soluble black ink, but you can also use Sailor Kiwaguro pigment ink cartridges.

Kiwaguro ink is very black and can be waterproof on some papers, at least so they say; I have not been able to use watercolor on top of Kiwaguro lines because it smudges with water even after the ink has dried for a day.

If you want to use ink from other companies, you can get a Sailor converter.

You can also fill an empty Sailor cartridge with a syringe.

A lot of sketch artists prefer to use Platinum waterproof Carbon Ink so they can go over the ink lines with watercolor, but Carbon ink can dry out in these Sailor pens if you don't use them regularly because the caps are not airtight like Platinum pens.

Fortunately, it is possible to take the nib section apart and thoroughly clean it with the nib.

If you use regular Sailor ink in your pen, Sailor says that you only need to clean it once a year. That is good news for people who hate to clean their fountain pens.

Which angle is best for Sketching?

As mentioned above, the Sailor Fude DE Mannen comes in two nib angles, one bent at 55 degrees and the other bent at 40 degrees.

So, which angle is right for you?

Generally speaking, the 55 degree nib lets you get broad lines quicker while the 40 degree nib lets you get fine lines quicker.

In other words, when you hold your pen at your natural writing angle, the 55 degree pen will give broader lines while the 40 degree pen will give finer lines.

To get finer lines with the 55 degree nib, you have to raise the pen barrel to a high angle.

And to get broader lines with the 40 degree nib, you have to bring the pen barrel down to a low angle.

If you lean towards fat lines for most of the sketch as you would do in a large sketch, then the 55 degree pen is recommended.

And if you lean towards finer lines or sketch on smaller paper, then 40 degrees is recommended.

I rarely sketch larger than postcard size these days, so I prefer the 40 degree pen.

But as the photo shows, both pens will get the same range of line widths.

The name explained

Fude DE Mannen is a crazy name.

And it doesn't help that it's all in Japanese except for the word DE which has led some folks to simply call it the DE pen.

So let me untangle that crazy name here:

The Japanese word for fountain pen is man nen hitsu (pronounced mahn-nen-hee-tsoo).

It means ten thousand year brush, or the brush that ain't gonna wear out any time soon.

That last kanji for brush can be read two ways:

• hitsu (pronounced hee-tsoo)
• fude (pronounced foo-deh)

Sailor replaced these kanji with hiragana (simpler Japanese characters), rearranged them, and inserted DE to come up with the name fude de man nen (pronounced foo-deh-deh-mahn-nen).

De is a particle for by means of and Sailor put DE in capital letters for a slightly jarring effect (maybe because it came late to the party).

So the name tells us that this is a way to write like a brush by using a fountain pen.

The next few pages will be about developments which kind of bumped fude nib pens off the radar for a while in my life, but these pens will come back and become my main sketching tool several months later. I write about this a few pages later in Enter the Chinese bent nib fountain pen.

The illustrations on this page of the old woman and the urban sketcher were rendered by AI (Microsoft Bing's Copilot) and modified by me.

AI might take over illustration jobs in the future, but it can never take away sketching as a gratifying hobby.

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