How My Work Looks Before It Is Done: First Stage of the Falcon

This is the first in a series of posts which will show the pro­gres­sion of a pen and ink draw­ing on my draw­ing table. I intend to upload a scan each day, although I will like­ly skip days on this piece while I show oth­er work being done. This scan in par­tic­u­lar was made about two weeks ago. For some days I have mul­ti­ple scans to show steps of  the process, so this will not be seen in real time, but I’ll try to get clos­er to real time once I’m caught up and the draw­ing is completed.

After I’m pret­ty much sat­is­fied with the pen­cil draw­ing I begin by block­ing out areas and lay­ing down lay­ers of hatch­ing. Though this first lay­er looks fair­ly hairy due to the rows of par­al­lel lines, the tran­si­tions between the rows of lines should become invis­i­ble as sub­se­quent lay­ers go over, cross­ing those lines in oth­er direc­tions. That’s the the­o­ry anyway.

The sub­ject is a Pilot Cus­tom 742 foun­tain pen nib. It is the FA or «Fal­con» style, with a unique shape. The cutouts on either side make the nib more flex­i­ble, which makes for vari­a­tion in line width. While this mod­el is not quite flex­i­ble enough for advanced cal­lig­ra­phy, it makes delight­ful lines for every­day writ­ing and draw­ing. The pen­cil work was done with­out ref­er­ence pho­tog­ra­phy. Instead, I used a loupe and held the nib about an inch and a half from my eye.