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.
Tag: inktober2023
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?
Inktober 2023 Day 4: Red Fish
Diamine Monaco Red is a dark red/maroon like colour that has darkened even more in my Kaweco AC Sport Carbon red fountain pen. The fine nib still shows the significant shading this ink has. Google photos brought up this aquarium photo from Epctot’s “The Seas” aquarium so I decided to sketch it even though it was much better suited for watercolours. The fish in the foreground looked so worried that I thought it was worth a try.
I’m not a fan of red inks, but Diamine Monaco Red seems to be dark enough and well behaved enough for me to enjoy it. There’s also something particularly satisfying with crossing to-do list items with red ink: this thing is DONE.
Inktober 2023 Day 3: Turquoise Pelican
Day 3 of Inktober is for pelicans, and I resisted the urge and didn’t sketch this pelican with a Pelican. Instead I sketched it with a Kaweco Sport in frosted blueberry with a medium nib and a Graf von Faber Castell turquoise ink cartridge.
We have flocks of pelicans passing in the country on their yearly migration, and they are impressively big and impressively loud birds when disturbed. I have a penchant for turquoise and teal inks, so you’ll see quite a lot of this hue during the coming weeks. I like the shade and shading of the Graf von Faber Castell turqoise, so I may yet buy more cartridges once this pack runs out.
Inktober 2023 Day 2: Black Water Buffalo
It’s day 2 of Inktober, and it’s water buffalo time. These are big, impressive and pensive beasts that you don’t want to mess with. They were chewing their cud in the sun, keeping an eye on us as we admired them from a distance when we saw them at Animal Kingdom, Disney World.
I sketched them using a Lamy Safari fine nib and Platinum Carbon ink. Carbon ink lays down a shiny black line that takes forever to dry and so is my least favourite waterproof black fountain pen ink to sketch with (De Atramentis Document Ink is first place, with R&K Sketch Ink Lotte and Noodler’s Bulletproof Black in the middle of the pack). Since I was afraid of smudging the ink, it’s kind of a barebones sketch.
There was a delightful cast member standing nearby, ready to answer questions, and he was a massive Star Wars fan. He clocked my brother and I’s Star Wars Celebration shirts and we started talking Star Wars while standing in front of these guys and gals’ paddock. Of course he got a cast compliment from us (talking to him made our day), and we got to hear about past Star Wars events at the parks from behind the scenes.
The funny thing is that if we would have rushed past their paddock on the way to see the tigers (like everybody else did), we wouldn’t have had this moment and memory, and the tigers everyone was rushing to see decided to hide in the shade anyway.
Inktober 2023 Day 1: Pink Giraffes
It’s October and that means Inktober time. This year I’ve decided to participate in the challenge but to do it a bit differently than I did in previous years:
- It’s still 30 ink sketches in 30 days. I’m using fountain pens for the entire challenge.
- I’ve limited myself to the Traveller’s Notebook airlines edition insert. I’ll post a review of it later this month, but the idea was to deliberately use a notebook that I thought was too precious to use before.
- I’m not following the official prompts (as usual). I never liked them, and this year’s prompts are no different.
- I’m not posting these to social media. At all. I’ll be posting them here and here only.
Now without further ado, here’s Inktober day 1’s sketch:
The giraffes aren’t originally pink, of course, but I sketched them with Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu ink and a Franklin Christoph 03 Iterum Sedona Spa fountain pen with a Nagahara fine cursive italic. It’s a beautiful combo, and fine cursive italics are great for getting interesting line variations while sketching with pen and ink.
Giraffes rarely sit down in the wild, as that’s way to risky for them (it takes to much time to get up and run, should they need to). In captivity they will sit down if they feel safe and comfortable, and it’s quite a sight. We saw these two during a night time safari at Animal Kingdom Lodge in Walt Disney World, Florida. Giraffes are suffering from poaching, from habitat fragmentation and from habitat lost, and many giraffe sub-species have only a few hundred individuals left. If you want to help them, the giraffe conservation fund focuses on these elegant and fascinating creatures: https://giraffeconservation.org
Writing at Large 