I'm a fountain pen guy.  I use them to sketch all the time - I love the way that FP ink lays down on sketch paper.  I have more fountain pens than I care to mention - it's a bit of a fascination for me.  I have a couple of Safaris, nice pen.

What is your problem with the photocopies?  Are you talking about color copies? 

I have a couple of really high-quality fountain pens, but whenever I try to use them for sketching, I wind up going back to my trusty Sign Pens or Lumocolors.

Fountain pen drawing on tracing paper is particularly problematic. I don't recommend it.

Yea I have a problem with colored photocopies. 

Why is fountain pen drawing on tracing paper problematic? I never had an issue, as long as you have a fast drying ink like Waterman's it doesn't smear, and dries quick. 

Maybe I just don't have enough practice, but I found that my fountain pen didn't let me sketch/write quickly enough... the ink would skip if the nib moved too fast across the page.  I decided to go back to thin felt-tipped pens for sketching.  Sketches need to be fast.

It was a Lamy Safari... maybe better fountain pens don't have this problem.

Lamy Safari's are iffy on their nibs I find. I have 3 Safari's and all 3 write in their on way. You might have a troublesome nib. They are easy to switch out. www.gouletpens.com sells the nibs individually. Give it another shot, but sounds like your tines might need to be adjusted. Shouldn't skip at all. 

Beats the crap out of disposable pens.

Yea, I love them, no pens in the landfill, and you choose the ink you love. I dunno I guess its a personal vice of mine... there are a lot worse things to have vices on I guess  

Funny story... I had a contractor destroy a nib of one of my Lamys. He was on the phone with a sub, and had to write down a phone number, first thing he saw on the table was my pen, he grabbed it, attempted to write with it, and was like why isn't this thing writing, and  then proceeded to add tons of pressure on the pen and destroying it. This all happened in a matter of seconds before I could say a thing. Learned my lesson there, always have a spare pen on hand lol.

There is indeed an art to writing with a fountain pen, just as there is an art to writing. Patience has a lot to do with it.

I have never used a fountain pen.  Could you guys post pictures of your writing/sketching?  It could be neat to see what is so amazing about them.

i like the papermate flair.  it's not technically a fountain pen, but has a nice clean consistent line weight until it starts dieing.  it tends to not scratch the surface it's writing on, and tends to be quite reliable even with a variety of pressures applied to the tip.  it doesn't generally bleed through the writing surface either.  it doesn't blot or smear (unless water is applied).  not great for the environment since it's disposable and non-refillable and it doesn't take water well, but still a very good pen when you need to mark stuff on a surface with a pen.

If you want to practice with a disposable fountain pen, the Itoya Blade is probably the best one.