Day 5 of War and Inktober 2023 Day 11

After being cooped up at home since Saturday (apart from quick runs for supplies to the supermarket next door), my depression hit such a state that I decided I needed to walk outside for a bit, before my PTSD gets completely out of hand. The streets were deserted, the local pool dried out and closed, the marina abandoned.

The weather was perfect and the sea calm, but the beach was empty and no lifeguards were around.

The busy Independence Garden was deserted — no runners, no cyclers, the only person I saw was a grandpa walking his dog.

I’ve never seen it like this — there are people in this area at all times of day and night.

Today was marked by a lot of scares of attacks from Hizballah in the Lebanon, and a human error that sent all the country (including myself) to the shelters for several minutes as we thought that a swarm of explosive laden drones was about to crash land into buildings. These once sci-fi thriller scenarios are now our reality. The neighbors brought food and water into the shelter, and we had several nearby rocket falls (imagine a loud “boom!” and the building shaking around you).

I also learned that the 17-year-old boy that I regularly saw selling flowers at the local farmer’s market was murdered as he went surfing on Saturday with a friend. Just like the paramedic who chose to remain with the wounded in the kibbuz clinic instead of saving herself and was butchered, or the two middle-aged bike riders that were murdered because they couldn’t outride gunshots, or the children that were bound and shot point blank with their parents.

The number of dead is now at around the 1,200 mark, with hundreds more wounded, and hundreds taken hostage into Gaza. The morgues are overwhelmed with the number of the dead, doctors and nurses are overwhelmed with the number of the wounded, and everyone is bracing for what is yet to come.

I sketched the empty Gordon pool.

Inktober 2023 Day 10 and war update

It’s 21:00 here and Tel Aviv is dead quiet as everyone is waiting for the rocket barrage the Islamist Jihad promised at 21:00. We already had two rocket barrages today, and everybody’s nerves are starting to wear thin. The neighbors are nice and everyone is kind, and tries to remain calm and cheerful as there are little kids with us in the shelter, but you can see how tired everybody is. Nobody has slept well since Saturday morning, when this whole thing started.

Supermarket shelves are empty and there’s rationing. The issue is a terrible amalgamation of people buying supplies to send south, to where the fighting is going on, and the home front spokesman causing widespread panic when he told people to hoard 72 hours worth of food and water. Couple that with the fact that there aren’t enough delivery drivers and that produce isn’t coming in from the south anymore, and you get supermarkets with no dairy, eggs, fruits, vegetables, bottled water, etc.

People are still looking for ways to help, which means 1,500 stood in line for hours to donate blood in Tel Aviv today, and people are opening their homes to refugees and survivors from the attacks on the southern, (and now also the northern) border.

Everyone who can is working from home, shops and restaurants are closed, and school is still cancelled, though classes are resuming remotely, like they did in Covid times. Parents now also face the challenge of making sure their kids don’t see videos and pictures of the slaughter that happened in the south.

At work things have slowed to a crawl — a lot of people are on reserve duty, others are out helping the situation in every way they can, and the rest of us are finding it hard to concentrate on work when the torrent of bad news keeps pouring in: so many kidnapped, missing, wounded, dead. Entire kibbutzs wiped off the face of the earth in a few short hours. My mind still finds it hard to accept this new reality, and I find myself reviewing the events from Saturday onward again and again, trying to make sense of it all.

This is today’s sketch. It’s the best I could do under the circumstances.

Inktober 2023 Day 8 and 9 and war update

The bad news, the dead and the wounded keep piling up. Today also added the first shortages in groceries, medication rationing and another spike in wild rumours — and also in civic attempts to help each other out. There is still hope, there are still good people in the world.

Sketched these yesterday and today in between endlessly refreshing the news.

These are cosplayers from the local chapter of the 501st Legion cosplaying at the Icon convention last week. I sketched this to remember better days. (De Atramentis Document Ink Green Grey with a TWSBI ECO 1.1 nib)

Today’s was a bearded iris, sketched with my beat up Lamy 2000 and Diamine Safari ink.

Day two at war and no inktober post for today

Last night Hamas launched hundreds of rockets on Tel Aviv. One of them landed on a car 600 meters from my house, and the entire building shook from the impact. The same rocket barrage hit the building next door to my friend’s house and seriously damaged his apartment (shattered glass, torn concrete, debris everywhere). Thankfully he wasn’t there at the time.

Today was weird. I took care of my neighbours’ cats after they were stuck abroad and unable to return to the country because their flight back was cancelled and there weren’t any other flights. The streets were deserted and the city eerily quiet except for ambulance sirens and helicopters bringing in the wounded from the south to hospitals in the centre, and moving commanders from place to place. Shops and restaurants were closed, there were no buses as most of the drivers were recruited by the army to move soldiers around. You can feel war in the air, with the few people around glued to the news on their phones or messaging their friends and families.

I went with a friend to the local shopping mall, Dizengoff Centre, so that he could donate blood. The stores were all closed but the place was packed with hundreds of people waiting patiently in line (a tough challenge for Israelis) for over four hours to donate blood. We left because there wasn’t a chance that he could donate today, and we’ll try again later this week. On the way back we saw a large group of volunteers collecting food and supplies to send south to the soldiers and the families in the area who are largely under siege. We stopped at the local supermarket with dozens of people standing patiently in line, all buying supplies to send south through the volunteers outside. We bought 8 loaves of bread and added them to the growing pile of food, diapers, baby food, toiletries, phone chargers, toys, etc.

People waiting to donate blood. The line snakes onward.

The news throughout the day grew worse and worse. 700 dead. Thousands wounded. Over 100 kidnapped, including grandmas and grandpas, young children, whole families. The rave victims were butchered, as were people from kibbutz Nir Oz. Terrorist burnt down their houses while they were inside to force them out and shoot or kidnap them. The sights and stories are horrific.

There was supposed to be an Inktober post today. There won’t be one. I can’t bring myself to draw right now. Go hug your loved ones while they’re there.

What it feels like to live in Israel right now

At around 6:30 this morning I was getting ready to go to the pool for a swim, when my phone lit up with rocket alerts. I thought it was a mistake. It was Saturday morning on a holiday (Sukkot) and there had been none of the usual round of posturing and threats that precedes a rocket barrage. I live in Tel Aviv, Israel, and we have these rounds of rockets launched from Gaza onto the city every two years or so, and we always know when they’re coming.

I stared at my phone as more and more alerts poured in, and I started to hear the distant thunder of exploding rockets. This wasn’t a mistake. Then there was the dreaded rocket siren, rising and falling, loud and clear and I got another alert on the phone, this time for my area.

Now imagine that it’s 6:30 on a Saturday morning of a national holiday, and you have a minute and half, 90 seconds, to get out of bed, get some clothes and some sort of footwear on you, and reach the nearest shelter — which in our case is the building’s basement.

I got there at the nick of time, and I was the only one there. The other people in the building didn’t get out of bed in time. The attack was perfectly planned to catch as many people as possible unprepared, and it succeeded. My parents were having an early swim in the sea when they were evicted and sent home. I stood alone in the basement, surrounded by dead cockroaches (we had exterminators come in a few weeks ago), and couldn’t reach my family by phone because they were too busy trying to get to safety to answer me. I was also wracked with guilt about leaving my cats back at the apartment (they hid under the bed and there was no way I was going to be able to get them into their cat carrier and down to the basement in time). I also had no idea what was going on.

By the second rocket barrage, about an hour later, the terrible news had started to pile up. It was a surprise attack by Hamas, 50 years and a day after the surprise attack on 1973, and executed with deadly efficiency. Thousands to rockets were launched throughout the morning and noon, hundreds of terrorist crossed the border killing everyone that crossed their path, and taking civilians and soldiers hostage, transferring some of them to Gaza. Cities and kibutzes in the south were overrun by Hamas militants with automatic rifles, placing them under siege for hours. Some of them are still under siege as I write these lines. First aiders and firefighters trying to get to them to help were shot and killed, leaving people waiting for hours to be evacuated to the nearest hospital.

The hospitals themselves were overrun, with close to a thousand wounded pouring in in a few short hours during a holiday weekend. Medical personnel were called in, everyone who could be discharged was discharged, and calls went out to people to donate blood. People rushed by their hundreds to donate, waiting for hours to give blood, some turned away once the donation places were overwhelmed. My faith in humanity started to get restored.

I have a bakery right below my apartment, and they had baked all night with plans to open for a busy day today. The closed down and instead of throwing out the baked goods, an ambulance stopped by on the way to the local hospital and they piled it up with food to give to the medical personnel and people donating blood.

The house next door to a colleague’s house was hit by a rocket, as was the house next door to one of my friends. The occupants were in the safe rooms, and so weren’t hurt, and luckily nothing caught on fire. There isn’t enough information about what’s going on, so WhatsApp groups are filled with wild rumours and sci-fi like scenarios to a point where the army needs to issue a statement to get everyone to stop forwarding this junk.

The streets were empty all day, the few shops that are open during the weekend closed their doors, and everyone sat at their phones and refreshed to see the news or tried to find out if everyone they knew was OK. Groups organized to get people from the south to safer homes in the centre and up north, and other groups organized to help figure out who was missing. Masses of people were conscripted, and I saw most of the men in the synagogue next door leave the Simchat Tora prayers to drive (on a Shabbat, yes, religious people drove) to join the fighting in the south.

The situation right now is bleak. There are over a hundred dead, and close to a thousand wounded. There are people missing, some of them kidnapped to Gaza. Hospitals are strained to the max, school has been cancelled throughout the country and nobody knows what tomorrow will look like — but tonight will likely include another wave of rockets, likely more than one.

Inktober 2023 Day 7: Pink Antelopes

I wasn’t in the mood to sketch these, but I decided to sketch them anyway. Pelikan Souverän M600 vintage Tortoise Shell brown fine nib with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama Budo.

Rockets on Tel Aviv

Woke up at 6:30 to rocket sirens. Multiple barrages, terrorists breached the fence, dead and wounded on the morning of the Sukkot holiday. Sketched this between barrages.

Schmincke Super Granulation Volcano Watercolour Trio Review

If you use watercolours you usually find yourself in one of two camps: those who want as much control of their painting as possible and so hate granulating watercolours, and those who love the magic of granulating pigments, and the unexpected effects they create. For the first few years that I was using watercolours I hated the “cauliflower” and “graininess” of granulating watercolours and so I actively avoided those pigments. Nowadays I have several granulating watercolours on my palette (and two super granulating ones) and I enjoy the watercolour magic and pigment parties that they create.

A few years ago Schmincke started issuing “super granulation” watercolours, which are watercolours with extra pronounced granulation effects and two different pigments in the same paint – something that created a dual colour effect and added tons of texture to any painting they were used in.

I reviewed the first of those paints here, and since then Schmincke have come out with three more series of super granulation paints: Shire, Desert and Volcano. Of the three the Volcano interested me the most as it seemed to fill in a gap that the very blue and green leaning previous sets were missing: warm, red hues. As Schmincke watercolours aren’t cheap, and the full volcano set came out to more than I was willing to pay for just to experiment with, I purchased a trio box of 5ml tubes to try out.

The trio I got contained 913 Volcano Red, 914 Volcano Violet and 915 Volcano Brown. The one that I was most interested in was the volcano red. The one that I ended liking the most is the one that I had the least expectation for: volcano brown.

I filled three half pans with paint and let them dry out for 24 hours (Schmincke watercolours are much easier to pan fill than Daniel Smith as they come out of the tube better and they dry quicker). I then did a colour swab for each, and a paint test with three paint consistencies (honey, milk, tea as Marc Taro Holmes calls them): the first with very little water, the second with more pigment than water and the third with very little pigment. In the case of the volcano brown I overdid the water in the tea swab, so it’s much lighter than the rest.

Volcano red is semi-transparent and semi-staining, volcano violet is semi-opaque and semi-staining, and volcano brown is semi-opaque and staining. The opacity-transparency spectrum in watercolours is important if you mix watercolours, as the more opaque a paint is the less well it mixes and the more chance you’ll get a “muddy” mixture out it. It is also important for layering, as opaque paints will not layer as well as transparent ones. For this reason I use opaque and semi-opaque paints sparingly, and usually only during the final stages of my painting.

Staining is a measure of how easy it is to “lift” the paint off the page with water or by dabbing it off, should you need to. The more staining the paint, the harder it is to lift without leaving a stain behind (this also depends on the paper you use, of course).

Looking at the paints, the volcano brown shows dual brown and red pigments, the volcano violet shows red and purple pigments, and the red shows red and maybe orange pigments, but it’s hard to tell. The volcano brown is the most dramatic and interesting of the three, though the volcano red is by far the most granulating of them.

I tried to create a sketch using only these paints (on 100% cotton watercolour paper) and boy do they show their super granulating properties. while the volcano red by itself isn’t impressive, it does layer spectacularly well on the other two paints, and the volcano brown adds a lot of interest and drama to the painting. Of the three I’m likely to add the volcano brown into the rotation, and perhaps, for certain effects, the volcano red. The violet would come in handy if I was working on portraits maybe, but otherwise it reminds me of potter pink: a pigment that is too washed out to be of any regular use in my palette, and not worth the space when it comes to keeping it around for mixing purposes.

If you’re just building your watercolour palette, these paints are not for you. However, if you have an established palette and a certain style of painting that favours texture and layering, I’d recommend giving at least some of the Schmincke super granulation watercolours a try. They are bound to result in something interesting and unexpected.

Inktober 2023 Day 6: Grey Elephant

I enjoy sketching with grey inks, so I oftentimes have a pen filled with a grey ink of some kind or another. Today’s selection is the Pelikan Souverän M605 Stresemann with a medium nib (which as it’s a gold nibbed Pelikan, verges on the broad) filled with Diamine Silver Fox. Silver Fox is from Diamine’s 150th anniversary collection (one of the original ones they issued), and is a slightly warmish medium grey with fantastic shading.

African elephants are pretty fun to sketch, so I may be tempted to sketch another one of them later this month.

If you’re looking for a grey ink that’s well behaved, offers a lot of shading, is readable even in fine nibs and is slightly on the warmer side of the grey spectrum, then I recommend giving Diamine Silver Fox a try.

Inktober 2023 Day 5: Teal Rhino

I like inks that are on the teal/turquoise range so I almost always have a pen inked up with something in that shade (I currently have three – this Robert Oster Peppermint, Robert Oster Fire and Ice and a Graf von Faber Castell Turquoise). I sketched this white rhino without considering the background — which was just plain rock face, and so something that I should have changed up.

The pen body is from Woodshed Pens, and the nib is a Franklin Christoph fine. I like this combination, as it allows some sheen and shading to appear and yet is still relatively quick drying.

Can you guess what the next sketch will be?

Writing at Large

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Month: October 2023