Weekly Update – Sketches, Film Photography and a 10K Race

A hectic week but an interesting one.

I went to see a local production of Singer, a play by Peter Flannery. It was phenomenal but it kept me up at night, which meant that the following morning I headed straight to my local cafe. I sketched the barista but something didn’t work in terms of getting her face right – she turned out sadder than she is. Sketching tired is rough.

Here’s the rather messy pencil and pen sketch. I can tell just by the line quality that I was very, very tired.

A day later I went to sketch at the nearby park and you can see the difference in the line quality in this sketch:

Initial sketch:

Later that week the film photographs that I’d had developed were returned to me. Here are a few of my favourites:

The local community cat that I feed twice a day coming to say hi

I love the atmosphere that the film gives this simple photo:

All of these photos are unedited. I’ll likely clean them up later on.

Bridge over water at a nature reserve near Haifa

There was a fire on the roof of a nearby hotel. I took this photo a day after the fire, and you can see the damage:

Cat failing to hunt a crow:

A stall at the local farmer’s market:

A stall at the local farmer’s market. You can see the see in the background.

I was supposed to run at a 10k night race on Wednesday, but I wasn’t feeling too good and I was apprehensive about dealing with the crowds so I ran the distance by myself a few hours before the official race start. It was a good decision as I was really struggling during the first 3k – but I did manage to finish, and finish strong.

I finished reading “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie (a powerful narrative, but not as punchy as “With the Old Breed”), read “Death of a Nurse” by M.C. Beaton as a palate cleanser, and I’ve now started “The Shattering Peace”, John Scalzi’s long awaited sequel to his Old Man’s War series.

I’ve been overwhelmed with the responses to my Pelikan Hubs post. Thank you all for your kindness and for the thought and effort you put into your comments. I read them all, I just wasn’t able to respond to all of them this week.

Speaking of the Hubs, all of my pre-hubs inked pens have been written dry, which means that I currently have a 100% Pelikan rotation, plus some Platinum Preppy’s that I use for sketching.

Have a great week!

Weekly Update: Model Sketches Take 2

It’s nice to have new pens and inks in rotation. I’m enjoying Diamine’s Writer’s Blood more than I expected, Diamine Autumn Oak is fantastic with a Waterman superflex nib, and Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo is becoming one of my favourite inks.

Liz Steel and Marc Taro Holmes are hosting the OneWeek100People challenge again this year, and I intend to participate again. The challenge starts on the 3rd of March and officially lasts 5 days. I normally sketch from photos, but this time I want to see if I can do the entire challenge from observation only. It may take me more than 5 days, but I’m OK with that. Are you planning on joining the challenge?

I went to the local art museum again this week, to sketch models in the museum. This was the last time this event was run, and the place was packed with sketchers. I didn’t have the best of locations, but I made the most of it. I sketched with Faber Castell 9000 2B and 3B pencils mostly, and added a touch of colour with Faber Castell Polychromos. The ink sketches were done with a Staedtler Pigment Liner 0.5. The sketchbook I used was once again the French Pascale Éditions. The models did fewer 20 minute poses and more 10 minute ones, which meant scrambling a lot. I wanted to visit the museum after the event, but I was so tired from 3 hours of non-stop sketching that I just went home.

Harman Photo just came out with a brand new colour film, Harman Red. It’s a red-scale film, and I’m curious enough to try and buy a roll or two and test them out. I love the wild, wild results I got with Harman Phoenix and the Harman Red is basically Phoenix pushed even more into red-scale.

Here are the sketches from today, and I hope that you have a great week!