Category: Art

And Even More Pen and Ink

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Still fascinated with fountain pens and filling the pages of my sketchbook.

I love artwork that captures a little world, and I’m trying to incorporate that more in my sketches. This female red-winged blackboard was moving from branch to branch, shaking the grasses around her as she searched for bugs. I watched her for quite awhile, but I only snapped a few pictures.

I stuck with a limited palette of green, red, black, and gray.

But there’s nothing wrong with a good, old fashioned sketch of two horses waiting for treats, so I did one of those, too.

I’ve been sketching in a different sketchbook before I sketch the final sketch in my Stillman and Birn sketchbook, if that makes any sense. I sometimes try multiple ideas before I find one I like. It’s far easier to sketch something for a second time, even if the first was lightning fast.

Categories: Art Ink Pen

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Fountain Pen Palette

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It took indigo, blue, burnt sienna, maroon, yellow, a touch of green, and plenty of black and white to sketch this young steer.

I now have eight TWSBI Go fountain pens, all filled with various mixes of de Atramentis Document inks. So far, my palette consists of grays, blues, dark red, yellow ochre, and one mellow green. I also keep one pen just for black, and a refillable marker for white as I’ve found white doesn’t really work that well in a pen, especially because I use it heavily.

I feel especially pleased with the feeder on the right.

These two sketches are my fourteenth and fifteenth in my Stillman and Birn Zeta sketchbook. Even though they tend toward neutral colors, I actually use a lot of all eight colors in my palette.

I can’t categorize this type of drawing or painting style in this sketchbook. Is it simply called illustration?

I put some ink in eye dropper bottles so I have the same size drops while mixing. It makes it easier to create accurate ratios.

Document inks are pigmented, lightfast, archival, and mixable. I have fuchsia, blue, yellow, cyan, black, white, and urban grey. I decided on getting the blue as well as cyan because I love blues and cyan is cool, like a phthalo blue, while the one simply called blue is warm, like ultramarine. The mix together beautifully and also make different greens and purples. I love the de Atramentis dilution solution, too.

Categories: Art Ink Pen

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