Went to the Friday night life drawing session at The Palette & Chisel to discover that the presumed model was a no-show. So we began by taking turns modeling 10 minute poses, hence the drawing of Peggy, when Kevin said he was a model so off came the clothes and onto the platform. Got the above drawing which is not without it’s problems. Proportions and wimpy feeling arms. My fault, not Kevin’s features. Some of the times I make some cursory measurements, other times I just like to bang it out without all the guide lines and math. Kevin had a little trouble holding poses, and I appreciate how difficult it is to really freeze a pose, but I didn’t accommodate his drift very well in my study.
Headed out to see a show of Goya prints at Northern Illinois University and got the drawings out and back in the row below. The most frequently asked question at my lectures and presentations of my sketchbooks is about being noticed while I’m drawing someone and if that leads to tricky situations. In the drawing of the group below and the subsequent detail where the fellow with ear tunnels, five o’clock shadow and sunglasses faces directly at me, his dark sunglasses prevented me from know if he was in fact looking directly at me, or in my general direction. Can’t say for sure what caught his attention but, I think he took interest in me, may have noticed me drawing or sensed my glances in their direction. I was being subtle and took the challenge to record him. I don’t want all my drawings to just be profiles. Below that row I just threw up a slew of head studies in various inks, Platinum Carbon, Noodler’s Bad Blue Heron, and a new color from Noodler’s – Ottoman Blue, Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo, the white China marker, and Pitt Artist Pens. All the usual suspects I guess. I have a shelf full of various inks and in this ledger book I intend to play around with a grater range. I’ve limited myself not only because I’m looking for inks with which I can get a range of tones but I go out with enough gear on me already so I don’t want to haul around scores of bottles and pens since I’ve no desire to flush any pen out while I’m in the field.
OK, there’s a few repeats, lazy editing on my part. Just trying to catch up with the backlog of studies over the winter. The drawings in the 3rd row across are from a new sketchbook, A Veterinarians Daily Record. The blue pages are in fact that color. The book alternates blue and oat colored sheets every several pages. Odd thing about the blue pages, they barely register a white grease pencil. I thought they had enuff tone for me to pop a highlight but the effect is dismal. The fountain inks look good on the paper and are easy to smudge before they set up.
Getting caught up on posting drawings from the last 4 months. Most of these were drawn at the Palette & Chisel in Chicago, however, the drawings on toned paper of Amanda were drawn at Trapeze studios in Seattle. All drawn with the usual suspects, India ink, Pitt Artist Brush Pens, fountain pens, China Marker for the white highlights. The pink drawing of Jessie is done in Iroshizuku Yama Budo fountain ink. The toned paper is from a recycled, acid free sketch book by Utrecht. And the drawings in the date book are Clairefontain paper in a Quo Vadis planner.
I renewed an interest in fountain pens perhaps a year and a half ago and have been drawing with them about 50% of the time. My first flirtation with them some 25 years ago was discouraging because I didn’t understand their mechanics, and improper care, combined with the wrong ink, bollocksed up a few pens. After trashing a semi-expensive Pelikan I moved on. But I always thought they had an elegance to them and had seen fountain pen script that produced an interesting line. Capable of lines both thicker and thinner than ballpoint, they also produced a wetter, thinner flow that could vary in tonal density from the start to the finish of a line or flourish. There was a noticeable “pooling” of pigment when the speed of the pen stroke slowed significantly or as the nib would come to a full stop. And while they seldom had the flexibility of the tines in a dip pen such as a Copperplate nib, some of the stub nibs had directional variance in line width and by virtue of an ink reservoir called a cartridge or a converter, the fountain pen had the distinct advantage of not being tethered to a bottle of ink. As you may have gathered at this website, I like to draw on buses.
Since it is also evident that I like to draw in previously used ledger books, I was always encountering numbers and script done in various medium. After looking at what was evidently fountain pen ink, I decided to give it another go. One frequent visitor to BND, who had been complimentary in past viewings expressed unvarnished disdain for my use of the fountain pen. Apparently tormented as a youth in school by the required tool, they had no love for the boring line produced by this writing instrument. I’ll note here that I got similar responses 35 years ago when I traded in my pencils and charcoal for a ballpoint. And having tried all the beasts on the shelves in art & craft & writing stores I often found myself struggling with an instrument I hadn’t mastered or by it’s very nature was ill suited to sketchbooks and ledger books. Often, that was the point. To see what would come of a new tool and to take some of the control and predictable flourish away from my hand. So just as I contend there are no bad poses, I don’t like blame coming to exclusive rest with the materials. Attributes can be found in unsuspecting places if you’re alert, no? A ballpoint that bled like a stuck pig and would most likely find itself in a waste basket, gave me a wide and juicy line as distinct from the brittle line produced by the well behaved accountants’ Bic fine point.
The very watery nature that is integral with fountain ink allows me to dab it while still wet and stamp ambient marks and smear the ink to get swaths and hazes that expand the vocabulary of the tool’s signature.
