Short #inktober update

A short update of my #inktober progress. Mostly just doodles but still more than I want to save for a later update. So above is a quick sketch I made in one of my sketchbooks. I wanted to play with some of my colored pens. So my own take on a flower in a vase with a design on it. Added just a touch of green just because. Black and Red pens were 005 Microns, but the green is a Coptic Fineliner.

Another still life, again this one was done with a dip pen. My arraignment of fruit on a piece of fabric. I have taken to making these still life's during the day while the sun is shining and then photographing them not with my SLR Cannon but with my Samsung tablet. The photos aren't the best but they are good enough for me to use as reference while drawing. With the tablet I don't have to print anything out, and if I want to zoom into an area I can. It does take a bit of getting used to but I think it is going to be a good way to work with reference images. Still I don't think I will entirely give up printing out images, sometimes I just prefer to have paper in hand.

Well, I am getting a good range of values, but some of the marks aren't quite what I would wish. Need to be doing more of this with the dip pen so I can refine how/where to make marks. I used to  use a dip pen for all my pen work, but have gotten out of the habit of using them, Microns or technical pens are more convenient as you don't have to have an open container of ink while working. Dip pen tips also require semi frequent cleaning, but they sure do give a nice line.

Size is 4 inches square on 6 inch square Bristol Board.

Years ago my sister had given me a Parker fountain pen. I stopped using it ages ago but I found it the other day and though I should see if I could get it working and then use it for one of these drawings.

My idea for the month long challenge is to use a range of tools to discover the kind of marks I can make with each one. So above a quick drawing of pumpkins with my now working fountain pen. The nib isn't very flexible so I didn't get a large variation with the line, but it feels different in the hand and marks aren't made quite as easily as I would with a technical pen so the quality of the mark is different. It might be something I want to keep around to make quick sketches with. Will think about this a bit more.

Done in one of my sketchbooks, size is about 4 inches.

I will close with a couple of photographs. Above is a maple tree in my neighborhood. I couldn't resist photographing the red/oranges against that oh so blue sky. This is not Photoshopped, though I did crop the original photo to tighten up the composition.

Since I didn't have a lot of art work today I thought I would post this photo of a yellow rose that I made earlier last week. Roses prefer to bloom in the cooler weather of spring and fall so many bushes around me are in their second bloom cycle.

I think this is a rather nice shot of a yellow rose in full bloom. Just enough shadow to make the petals stand out but also enough light to show off the colors from the darker yellow center to the pale yellow at the edges of the petals. We will likely be getting frost soon, so this is probably one of my last photographs of a rose for this year.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

Again #inktober and a note on the care of brushes

This post is mostly made up of drawings I have done for the #inktober challenge.

For the 7th I wanted to do something with my dip pen and my new ink (Pelikan), so for once in this challenge I just winged it. I started with the snowman and went from there. The resulting landscape is totally out of my imagination. I am not happy with it, but didn't have time or energy to do anything else so I went with it. One thing I did learn from this quick sketch is I need to practice drawing clouds. And yes those are supposed to be clouds in the sky not mountains.

I spent more time with prep work for the drawing for the 8th. This is one of the feral cats my neighbor is feeding. I am off and on trying to get semi good photographs of all of them, and at some point hope to draw them all. I think there are 4 or 5, most of them I have at least one semi good image of, but there is one who is very shy and I have yet to really capture.

This is the grey tabby that I have sketched before. For this image I restored the ear which isn't all there in the real cat.

I used my technical pens for this drawing using mostly the very fine tipped 3X0 pen, though for the stipple work I used the 0 tip. I wasn't in the mood to be stippling forever, and besides the cat was sitting on a concrete step so the courser stipple more reflects the rough surface. I see things now that I am not totally happy with but for the most part I think it came out well.

 

After the cat I wanted to draw something less elaborate for the 9th. And I had been thinking about hauling out one of my brushes and doing something with brush work and ink instead of just pen. For a simple seasonable subject I thought pumpkins. 

I am semi pleased with the result. I like the shadows, but I don't like the all the black lines I used on the pumpkins. I started with those and added the shadows later when I should have done it the other way around, put the in the shadows and then added a few black/dark lines. I think I need to try something else with brush and ink to see if I learned anything from this experiment. 

Oh there are a few pen lines here also, I used a pen to put in the stems and added some lines to the background and foreground after I had done all the brush work. 

One further note on the care of brushes. India Ink has shellac in it which will damage brushes if not washed out. So when I finished with the brush I rinsed it first in clean water until I got  most of the ink out. Then I put a drop of dish washing soap in the palm of one hand and proceeded to rub the wet brush into the soap, pushing bristles around so that the soap was worked thoroughly into the brush, it is amazing how much ink can be cleaned out this way. Then I rinsed the brush in clean water and wiped it on a paper towel to check for ink. If I had seen any I would have redone the soap step. 

A last comment try to not dip the brush too far into the ink, you want to keep ink out of the ferrule if you can. Ink or even paint in that area of the brush can bleed into other colors when the brush is next used. 

After the disaster with the clouds in my pen and ink landscape I thought I should practice drawing clouds so on one of my shopping trips I sketched the above. Not totally happy with it, even though it is pencil and not ink, I think I need more practice.  I can understand why landscape painters in the past did many cloud studies. 

Yesterday instead of going back to the MFA I felt I should visit some different museums so I headed off to Harvard Square and the Peabody and Harvard Natural History museums. I did make some photographs there but won't inflict them on my reader at this point. Instead I have a photograph of Cambridge and some Harvard University buildings to share. Bicycles seem to be the mode of transportation in and around Harvard, so here is one on MA Ave. with some fall foliage in the background.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.