I’ve been posting to Pinterest for the past few months, whenever I find an interesting image that I want to save. Pinterest is a great site for finding online inspiration, and I love to browse through other people’s pins. If you use Pinterest, feel free to follow me, and leave a comment so I can follow you.
Above are some small sketches of Katie, and not very good ones at that, done over the course of a few days. Whenever I sketch Katie, or any animal, most of my sketches are no good and only a few really please me. It is such good practice and so much fun that I keep doing it though.
I seem to be having more and more ideas for new projects than ever, but less and less time to work on them. A few days ago I saw this article titled Balancing Parenthood and Your Art Career by Lori McNee, and I felt like “the universe” was reading my mind.
I’m trying to think of ways to do more work, or rather, to finish more work. I feel that I need to work faster, or at least in a less tedious manner. Interestingly, I’ve been feeling like this for a long time now, well before Cate came along.
I was always suspicious when I heard women say that childbirth was their most creative act. In my case, the only creativity involved was making some sketches from my hospital bed while waiting for the contractions to set in.
This is a quick sketch of Katie from a few weeks ago. Katie has become my best buddy these days. I’ve been trying to do as much sketching and painting as possible recently because my due date is fast approaching. I am getting nervous and really excited!
I’ve spent the last couple of days putting a lot of hours into the painting that I’m going to use as my Christmas card. I love sending out a Christmas card with my own artwork on it, but I’ve been procrastinating all year. When I found out about the sale that Moo is offering right now, I didn’t want to miss out. Through tomorrow, they are giving 15% off their holiday cards (with the code CARDSYAY), in addition to the 15% off sale that they are already running. I say this every year, but next year I am going to be more prepared for sure and get my artwork ready ahead of time! I’ll be posting my painting, along with some Work in Progress photos in an upcoming post.
Below is a really nice short film by and Danny Gregory and Tommy Kane that I enjoyed. I thought the music was especially fitting.
Sketching is such a nice “warm up” for the day. Whenever I sketch in the early mornings, I feel like the day is productive, no matter what I end up getting done. I sketched Katie the other day when she was still sleepy and feeling cuddly. In the mornings she loves to get pets and curl up on the couch like a fox.
Recent mental stress has left me in a creative rut, so I have nothing very interesting to post at the moment. What I have been doing is refilling my “creative reservoirs.” Here are some of the things that I have enjoyed recently.
Flipping through old sketchbooks:
Ernest Shepard’s original pen and ink drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Browsing through the portfolio of illustrator Oliver Flores.
Some ten minute sketches of a belt that fell off a sweatshirt of mine. My Noodler’s pen and bulletproof black ink seem to work well in my Moleskine cahiers. The ink dries quickly without feathering or smudging and the pen slides over the surface of the paper.
I may actually find myself filling these books up with sketches! I am not a big fan of the paper in the Moleskine cahiers because it is so tissue thin that drawing on it is uncomfortable for me. It wrinkles easily and it is see through. It is only possible to draw on one side of the page because otherwise, the drawings on both sides will be spoiled.
I have been able to deal with this issue by cutting a piece of Bristol board to insert behind each page so that I can draw without ink bleeding through. I can also scan my drawings without seeing through the pages.
I based this drawing on a blurry photo I took at dusk. It was more of a pen test than anything else, really. This drawing is of a certain place on the shore where geese like to gather. There is a crumbling stone wall and the remnants of an old foundation next to a grassy area. My favorite part about it is the silhouette of the trees against the sky. I might do another version of this some time, except drawing the water differently.
I tried out my new pen on a different sort of paper here. The paper is highly textured, which I wouldn’t ordinarily use for ink, but I thought the pale pink would go nicely with my gray ink. There was a bit of feathering but this paper is very absorbent so I did not have to worry about the ink not drying. When writing or drawing on a paper like this, the most important thing to keep an eye out for is little bits of paper getting stuck in the nib and causing ink spatters or dragging.
One thing I was pleased with was that I thought this pen was nearly out of ink but I was able to make this whole drawing (with hundreds of tiny strokes) and have yet to refill the pen.
As promised in my last post, here are my thoughts on the Noodler’s Inks that I recently purchased. I bought the Lexington Gray and the Bulletproof Black, both of which claim to be waterproof. Here are my conclusions:
I really love the Lexington Gray and think that this will be the main ink that I’m going to be using. It looks almost black, especially when I use a lot of flex, and it is really waterproof.
The Bulletproof Black is advertised to be waterproof on cellulose. Apparently my watercolor moleskine is not the correct paper because the ink did not want to “soak in” or even dry quickly. I actually even smeared some parts when I accidentally dragged my hand through the wet ink (I tried to cover it up).
When I went over it with a watercolor wash after several minutes of drying time, the ink proved to be water-soluble, especially on the parts that had more ink. You can see this on parts of the tree bark in my drawing above. The watercolor moleskine is the only paper that I have tested it on so far, but I have a feeling that any watercolor paper is not going to work with this ink because of the sizing.
I have read similar complaints about this ink elsewhere, so I had my suspicions from the start. People really love Platinum Carbon Black ink, but I was wary because of warnings that it might clog the pen without frequent use and a lot of maintenance. For now, I will only use the Bulletproof Black for drawings not involving watercolor and I will use the Lexington Gray for my pen and wash drawings.
A few weeks ago I ordered the Noodler’s Flex Nib pen after reading a number of reviews online (see reviews from Nina Johansson, Cathy Johnson, and Roz Stendahl). I actually ordered two pens, in Lapis Inferno and Vulcan’s Coral, mainly because I wanted to be able to use two different colored inks. Also, so many people are going gaga over these pens that they are selling out very quickly and I wanted to make sure I got what I wanted.
My main reason for getting this pen is that I wanted something that could replicate the lines that you can get with a dip pen, but portable. As you can see from my sketch (click to enlarge), a large degree of line width is possible, which is really different from the Lamy fountain pen I use for writing. I am still not really used to controlling the flex and I find that I have to concentrate and go slower than normal when I want a thicker line. The pen is also sensitive to the angle at which you hold the pen. To get more flex you need to hold the pen more horizontally to the paper.
I did find the instructions that came with the pen a bit odd. Besides the bizarre drawing of “The Nib Creaper,” the instructions are one solid block of text that I had to reread several times before figuring out how to fill the pen. I had previously watched a video showing the pen assembly, so I was able to figure it out, but I wished there were some kind of diagram as well as the text. I still had some trouble filling the pen the first time (I got mostly air and very little ink), but I had better luck the next time. Once I fill the pen a few times, I think it will be easy for me.
For detailed info on this pen, I recommend the videos that Brian Goulet has posted to his blog Ink Nouveau. I haven’t tried it yet, but the whole pen can be disassembled for cleaning. The nib and feed can also be adjusted to allow for more or less flex and ink flow according to preference.
Some people complained about the smell of the pen (from the resin material that the pen body is made from), but I don’t mind it. It is noticable, but I think it is a pleasant smell, like scented soap or something similar.
I purchased Noodler’s Lexington Gray and Bulletproof Black ink to fill these pens. I will write a seperate blog post about these inks after I test them further. The sketch above is of the two pieces of pottery that I made in my recent workshop and a mini ceramic pitcher that I bought at the Old Deerfield Craft Fair last weekend. I bought the pitcher just because it is cute, and I’m still not sure what I will do with the other two dishes.
