This week, I’m throwing up a collection of head studies and anonymous portraits captured while drawing in public, largely on public transit.
                 Â
Making use of the same tool kit I have worked with over the last few years. Fountain pens such as Pelikan M215 and M250, Faber-Castell Basic Black Leather, Sailor Bent Nib, Lamy Studio, all filled with Platinum Carbon ink. Don’t forget to rinse you fountain pens out on a regular basis, say 2-4 weeks. And, I make use of the full range of F-C Pitt Pens, all colors, all greys, and the whole variety of nib widths. And yes, those are my fingerprints, it’s automatic copyrighting.
As I have for the last dozen years, I rose early to scoot downtown to the Palette & Chisel for their annual New Year’s Day Life Drawing Marathon. Got in at 7:30 am and left for an early supper at 4 pm. Left this year with a few I liked.
On the way in and warming up with a sketch of a gent sleeping it off.
      Â
All drawings in this post were drawn in a ruled journal with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens. While I like the surface and ivory color of the paper, and feel that it has a nice fidelity to the marks, producing a clean edge void of feathered lines, the drying time of the inks is fairly quick so I have next to no time to smudge or dab all but the heaviest and wettest application of ink. Most of the black line work was done with a Pitt Artist Pen with a 1.5 in which produces a strong line with some, though modest, variance of line width. Minimal use was made of a Pelikan M250 Tortoise with a gold B nib that is a dream to draw with but the slight sizing didn’t let me put her thru the gears.
Just a side note, I used to identify the models by their first names sometimes as a way to help catalogue so many drawings, i.e., Pete 1, Pete 2, Mary standing 1, etc. but one of the models who had an unusual name that was also shared by a porn star, started getting harassed by co-workers when one or more of those jackasses discovered the nude drawings of her, downloaded them, and e-mailed them to her colleagues. I had to go back to all those drawings and re-edit and in some cases, delete them from my website.
just another example of the upside/downside to this wonderfully virulent tool.