I was curious about different reasoning behind your personal choice. I like the uniformity of just using one color, but I find that gets a bit monotonous. However, when I use whatever ink I fancy at the time, it makes the journal as a whole look messy.

Other opinions?

Every time I get a new ink I write with it in my journal, just for fun. It's usually the first time that I get to use the ink for an extended period, so it helps me to understand how the ink works (e.g. feathering, bleed-through and flow). It's also fun!

I tend to pick up a different pen each day to write in my journal and all my pens are inked with different things, so I suppose I aim for the 'messy' look!! I would find a whole book with the same coloured ink somewhat monotonous, but that's just me. I also have a lot of inks, so I guess I like to make sure that they all get their turn.
Leonie

My approach has changed in recent years. I used to use only blue and black ink in my journals. With the recent proliferation of my pens and inks, my journals have gotten much more multicolored. This is 'messy' in comparison with uniformity, but I spend my day job trying to be consistent in editorial details, so I bust out a little in my journals.

I write with multiple color inks to delineate writing sessions or changes in focus or topic. A given page may have 4 colors on it.

My journal is where I try out each pen and ink combination. I don't necessarily change every writing session but at least once a week.

My approach to writing in my journal has been to use only one particular pen (my Laban Mento ). But I use all sorts of ink all the time. After every tankful (or two) of ink, I'll switch inks.

Since I often journal about something I've read, I'll use 1 color (usually a brighter one) for quotes and another color for my own words.

Mine differs wildly between some painfully bright inks.

I generally write with what ever pen is inked at the time, so one page may be PR Dakota Red, the next will be Noodler's Hunter Green, and the next is Baystate Blue. It's a little painful to flip through. I just haven't the desire to stick with any one ink for long periods of time.

I do exactly the same thing - different pens and different inks for seperate entries on the same page. It might look messy to you, but how boring would all blue or all black be?

Well I am torned on this subject

Before discovering FPN all my Moleskine were blue, Waterman Florida Blue more precisely. They maybe looked more classy but it was boring and finding a special extract was sometime hard.

Now after FPN and some 20+ inks later my notebook are now rainbow-like. I sure miss the homogeneity but on the other hand it is no longer boring

Finding an extract is now really easy too...

I have one notebook that I reserve for 2 inks that are related, Herbin Poussière de Lune and CdA Storm. I find the toggle between the two to create a nice effect. I'm trying to find a method myself to manage the "color" chaos but so far no luck Some people rotate their people every week or two others every day... So goodbuy uniformity

Life is messy. Why should my journal be any different? Multiple colors of the ink of the day.

Perhaps if I were journaling in the same type book starting in grade school, I might consider using the same/similar ink throughout. A serious, historical, book like type of thing. But since I started journaling as a way to clear/dump my brain, keep notes on stuff, and enjoy my pens and ink, things are pretty wild and crazy. I use lots of pens and different colors. If I make entries three times a day, there's probably three colors. I write notes, thoughts, plans, ideas and they are often blocked out in someway so I can spot later. Don't normally draw a block around but a different color seems to help me find.

Much of this is how you use your journal, how your mind operates, and how you want to operate. I never understood people learned, thought differently, and in fact had no idea how I best learned. So do what is best for you, but also allow yourself to try different ways of learning, recording. Doing what you do best is great and wonderful, but changing that pattern and learning/doing something difficult, irritating, poorly, beneath you, or ??? ... can be useful.

Always thought there was a right way to do things in life, a right way to live and if you did, the right, things were fine and in order. Not so.

I get bored easily, so I like to use all kinds of different inks, sometimes switching in the middle of an entry for no reason I can put down. Occasionally I become enamored of one color for a bit, but invariably I switch eventually. I like reading about people who are organized and systematic, but I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that I'm not!

100% with you!

Multi-pen. Multi-colored!

It varies. Sometimes I'll have phases where I only use one colour (it was Pelikan Violet for four months, for example), other times I'll use a different colour for each entry. I enjoy both the uniform effect of every page being the same, or a rainbow effect when every entry has a different colour. Some journals seem to me to warrant only a certain section of the colour wheel: if I'm using an antique-looking journal I tend to shy away from violets and blues in favour of browns and grey-toned burgundies (Herbin Poussiere de Lune). I'm currentl using a Moleskine, and I'm in a multi-coloured phase.

My journal has different colors, although I too go through stretches where a particular ink is used exclusively.

I do not like my journal to look like a mosaic. I use different pens, but they are all loaded with blue inks.

I try to write one day in one ink and change ink the next day. If you're looking for something you wrote on a particular day, this makes it easier to find.

Doug

One pen different ink. This is purely because the only pen I have at work is a Waterman Philas that came in a set with 5 carts a converter and a bottle of Waterman's black. So I have been working my way though the carts and then it will be on to the converter. I live and work in a trailer and have no easy access to mail so my selection is a bit limited.

I love normalization and/or uniformity.

No, actually, I love individuality.

That is why I always have 10 different pens all filled with different inks and I always use all 10 everday. Hey, that's what life is all about.
AND... I might discover (and/or buy) a new ink tomorrow! Or make a new mix!! Worst part: the manufacture of one of my many faves might be discontinued the day after tomorrow...

Mike
<-- at the moment Herbin's ÉCLAT DE SAPHIR

Yes, I was just told that the eclat de sahir will be missing from my next ink shipment, although I just assumed it was temporarily out of stock. Boo-hoo for me!

It's a chance to use all my favorite pens and favorite colors.

Wow! You must have a colorful life

I'm curious, how frequently do you refill your pens? I keep 7 pens inked right now and I average 1-2 refill per week, as a result I get some interesting effects with some inks like Saguaro Wine getting darker and really interesting when it has aged a bit.

It is not the first time I hear about Éclat de Saphire now I'm getting really curious

Changing the inks used in your journal shows the passage of time in a visual manner. Instead of everything blurring together, the colours can help to divide it into sections. Especially you rotate your pens/inks on a schedule, like daily, weekly or monthly, the change of colour could make it easier to flip through and find old entries you want to review.

I pick up whatever pen/ink combo feels right at the time. Sometimes I have weeks in the same ink and at other times I have a different ink for each day. Now when I look through my journals, I find the ink I chose reflects my mood just as much as what I've written.

I do the multi-pen and multi-ink messy stuff, but I admit I do have a favorite: Galileo Manuscript Brown on Ivory or Ecru or offwhite paper. The Galileo just looks so rich.

Various pens, one ink.

But then I paste e-mails and photos in my journals, and occasionally, if I'm quoting someone or a book, I'll use a different color for that bit only.

I've tried using a few colors to differentiate between days or moods, but in the end I prefer the constancy of fade-resistant black.

I've journaled consistently for nearly 30 years. I vary pen, ink as the whim strikes. The curious thing to me is that I never go back and read what I wrote. A waterbed heater fire destroyed the first 15 years of journals, but I didn't really regret the loss. I don't know if that's odd or not, just the way I am.

Maybe I'm a bit like you. Journaling for me is more about getting thoughts out, processing ideas and feelings on paper. Its purpose to me is more in the present moment than as a record of the past.

I write all new pens and inks (both pens and 4 inks ) in my journal for "Pens, Inks, and Random thoughts". I tends tward one pen for primary writing and the other for quotes and critical info. That helps me find the info I really need to find. I also have mis-matched journals, what I like the looks of when I find one. So different pens and colors is not a far reach for me. Just need the extra pens

Joe in Seattle (and all) -

I have 6 or so filled journal under my bed. When I first began I was a very sporadic wrtier and so they filled up slowly, but I also stuck in them pieces of memorabilia from when my children were growing up - drawings, little notes, tickets to concerts etc. I would be absolutely devastated if I lost them to a fire or similar.
I am severely disabled and have chronic pain much of the time. Those old journals keep me going when its rough, along with the kids memory boxes and photograph albums.
My current journal also helps, as I write furiously in it sometimes, in order to vent my frustration as my body deteriorates.
I thought that I only used one colour ink, but looking back over the lest two years' entries (I use very thick books-over 200 pgs that last me about three years) there are smatterings of brown and blue among the black.
When I write professionally, however, (children's novels) my manuscripts have to be in the same ink all the way through -go figure! I suppose I subconcsiously think it looks more professional, somehow.

Cheers
T

I use the same type of Moleskine, and all in Lamy Black, very regimented. I like the consistency. But I do change the pen every month or so. Occassionally even using a dip pen for some copperplate type scrawl -- but the nibs are always on the fine side. This is my life journal and is written at the end of every day or so.

For the messy side of life I always have a notebook with me, the notebook brand might change, the inks change, the pens change, there are sketches, annotations, little notes on what I'm doing, where I am, to do lists, glued in maps, measurements of the kitchen table.....

- Mark

I really love how a journal looks when each entry is one of two alternating colors, especially when the colors are aesthetically pleasing togethrer. But of course this rarely happens because I'm always changing the inks in each pen so there's not enough stability to use just two.

It sure is fun to go back and remember the one-time-only ink mixes I happened upon (by mixing in the converter). But now I keep an ink-journal (and my inks-in-use lists, click below.. some new ones posted recently!) to document all the colors I've come across.

Help!

I'm getting to the point of needing to match the ink hue to the cover color of the journal.

Must... put... stop... to... this!

Even during the stint of nonscientific writing for publication that preceded my current medical writing job, I distinguished writing as a process from writing as a product. I sometimes felt that the hardest work of gestating an article was done in my journal (or project-specific loose leaf book) and the final sit-down-to-the-keyboard was only a summation. And even when I was doing a lot of project-specific "thinking out loud on paper," I kept doing destinationless journaling of the sort advocated in Writing Down the Bones--thoughts about the next project, random thoughts, weather and walking conditions and what was going on in the cafe I was writing in. Shoes and ships and sealing wax. Or should that be, Birkenstocks, buses, and brown ink?

I have journals going back to my undergraduate years, in a totally mismatched congeries of formats and degrees of dilapidation. They don't get reread very often, but I can't see myself discarding them purposely.

I do that! Black cover, black ink!



Seriously, though... I have a couple of notebooks -- one blue, one green, very fetching colors -- that I haven't written in yet, cos I'm wondering if I could write in the blue one with one blue ink and in the green one with PR Avacado.

Hmmm....

I have my gold-covered composition book (flexy plastic cover, courtesy of Target), of just morning thoughts and plannage, and it has to be written on with either gold ink or brown. I fired up my brown Pilot Petit 1 for the latest round!

Sailor Kenshin and ethernautrix, I do that, to a lesser extent. If I have a purple-toned cover to a journal, I use Pelikan Violet and Herbin Poussiere de Lune in it. In a leather-look journal, it'll be primarily Waterman Havana. IN a Moleskine, though, anything goes, because black goes with everything. That's partly why I prefer Moleskines.

I am thinking I'll need some pinky inks for the pink journal I'll be using next, though.

I switch out pens/ink often. Last couple of days:

left page

longish paragraph - J Herbin's Larmes de Cassis
another longish paragraph, but not as long as above - Pilot's iroshizuku syo-ro
another paragraph almost same length as directly above - FPN Van Gogh Starry Night
short paragraph - Swishmix burgundy
another short paragraph - Noodler's Iraqi Indigo (bought before name change, obviously)

right page

medium length paragraph - J Herbin's Rose
longish paragraph - Noodler's Iraqi Indigo
another longish paragraph - Pilot's iroshizuku syo-ro (I love this color!)
last longish paragraph - Noodler's Black (bp)

This is in a large lined Moleskine journal. I was remarkably consistent for some reason. Many days have just a line or two with a specific ink before I switch off.

I keep my pen wrap close by and pick and choose from it, for the most part, though I do have a few other pens on the table next to the chair where I write in my journal. When I move from place to place, I take the journal and the pen wrap with me. (The moving is all within my house.)

Love the colors! One of the joys of fountain pens for me is the glorious inks. Writing with the pens is wonderful, too, but the inks are an important part of that experience, imo.

In my current journal, I tend to switch inks and pens. But I always write at the bottom of
the page the current pen/ink combo for future reference.... ;-)

I have two pens for my journaling (a Pilot 78G in a desk drawer and a Pilot Birdie in my backpack) both inked with Lamy Turquoise. I chose this color to brighten up my diary which has a somewhat boring design, but I should not be comfortable with many colours. The farthest I get is to add some highlighting or some fluo post-it on rare ocasions.

I use some other colours for miscelaneous writing but never on my journal. Maybe I am too conservative... I must be getting old after all

Best regards.

Tito

I use a different colour (and different pen) every day I write in my journal. I don't find it messy at all. I think it adds character, and it makes it easy to flip through and find the breaks from one day to another. Plus it gives me a chance to use inks that aren't always appropriate for daily life (Herbin Bleu Nuit or De Atrementis Pine Green) as well as pens that don't behave well on every day paper.

By doing this I've learned a lot about my pens and ink... which ones don't work well together, which inks fade or change colour over time, which inks dry faster/slower, which inks shade. I've discovered that some pens I gave up writing with actually behave wonderfully in my journal, while others that are great for daily writing don't work well with the hard, smooth, expensive paper I assumed would be universally good. It's been interesting!

Neill