Topic: Writing instruments

On Foun­tain Pen Net­work there is a top­ic start­ed by the user watch_art (also known as the print­mak­er Shawn New­ton) who called for draw­ings of cof­fee mugs. The one rule he stat­ed was that the draw­ing be done with each per­son­’s favorite pen.

Well, I’m not real­ly sure which pen is my favorite, but I know which foun­tain pens I’ve most enjoyed draw­ing with so I opened up my sketch­book and set myself up with my Philz Cof­fee… Read the rest

Some of you have seen this fin­ished piece, but as I’m open­ing up my in-progress scans for pub­lic con­sump­tion, this is one that grabs me for a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent rea­sons. First, I’m very proud that the first lay­er of hatch­ing was all arcs to sug­gest the shape of the pen. Hav­ing that down first helped me move for­ward with a sense of dimen­sion that I don’t always have when I’m putting lay­er over lay­er of cross­ing lines down on paper.… Read the rest

At this stage, I’m not nec­es­sar­i­ly done with the nib, but I’ve pro­gressed far enough to be real­ly cau­tious about doing any more that I already have. It’s time for me to turn my atten­tions to oth­er areas. The end of the sec­tion is going to take a lot of ink, and I’m start­ing to have to get real seri­ous about final­iz­ing my com­po­si­tion. I have the basics in mind, but I’m weigh­ing out some deci­sions and solu­tions that are … Read the rest

Jump­ing ahead sev­er­al lay­ers, now there’s more tone and the appear­ance of con­tour. The nib of the pen still needs more con­trast to make it look shiny. By now, I’ve stopped using the 0.13mm pen exclu­sive­ly and have begun mak­ing some lay­ers with the 0.18mm pen.

There are two issues with con­tin­u­ing to use the fin­er pen. First is the fact that the more ink goes down on the page, the less blank space … Read the rest

These are now past­ed into my sketch­book, but are not actu­al­ly sketch­book work, but drafts. I’ve men­tioned this before, but often what I do when I’m not cer­tain how to pro­ceed with a draw­ing is to place vel­lum over the pen­cil draw­ing and take dif­fer­ent approach­es at ren­der­ing the sec­tion in ink. Some­times these come out as almost ful­ly-real­ized draw­ings and oth­er times I’ll work only on one the area of the draw­ing. Some­times I’ll rough out some ideas crude­ly … Read the rest

Here you can see that after addi­tion­al lay­ers the hatch­ing begins to take on a smoother appear­ance. I’m deep­en­ing up some areas to give shape, but it’s a process that will have to devel­op over time. The blown-out high­light areas still look like paint­ed-on stripes and there’s lit­tle reflec­tive detail, but you can see where it’s going. The main sur­face of the nib still has only two lay­ers of hatching.… Read the rest

Here’s a pen from my sketch­book, drawn at least par­tial­ly with a brush. It’s a lousy pho­to, but basi­cal­ly I’m still at work as mid­night approach­es. I made a com­mit­ment to post a draw­ing every day, so at 11:59pm a dig­i­tal pho­to of an old pen from my sketch­book will have to do!… Read the rest