Christmas Market, German Colony, Haifa
Drawing with watercolours in the dark is challenging. German Colony Christmas market, Haifa, Israel.
Tag: sketching
Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 15
Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.
Day 15 is perched on a branch and looks a bit like it. I can’t say this enough: I really love the design of this calendar. It’s so well thought out, beautiful and clever.
Day 15’s ink is Diamine Festive Cheer, a deep, royal blue ink with a purple-golden sheen. It offers less shading and less sheen than Diamine Polar Glow.
It’s a beautiful ink, but it’s a little underwhelming when compared to Diamine Polar Glow, and even the lighter Diamine Jack Frost.
This is a saturated colour, so as much as I trust Diamine, I’m hesitant to use it in vintage pens, just from a cleaning out and staining perspective, but it’s still a nice ink that will probably one of the first ones I finish from the set, just because it’s a pretty practical colour.
Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 14
Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.
Day 14 has little twigs and leaves growing out from it! So cute.
Day 14’s ink is Diamine Jack Frost, and like last Sunday’s Gold Star Diamine went all out with this one. It shimmers, it sheens, it shades, it pops – it’s everything an ink could ever do, people.
Look at all that glitter!
This is an ink that you’re going to want to really, really shake before you fill your pen and before every use.
On a Kanso Sasshi 3.5” x 5.5” Tomoe River Paper notebook with what Pelikan laughingly calls a medium nib you can see the sheen immediately. Wherever the ink pools you’ll see a reddish purple halo. There’s so much of it that it obscures a lot of the shading, but there’s still a lot of that going around.
I’m not great at photographing glitter, but believe me the whole drawing was shimmering like the tree in the centre. The particles are silvery blue, and they’re very, very pretty.
I would have liked Diamine Jack Frost to be a turquoise or aqua ink at its base, but it still is a beautiful ink that’s anything but your standard, run-of-the-mill blue.
Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 13
Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.
I like the nib ornament above today’s door. I wasn’t expecting Diamine to go all out on day 13, but I actually think that today’s ink was pretty interesting.
Day 13’s ink is Diamine Mulled Wine, a standard ink that’s a burgundy red with brown elements that remind me a little of Diamine Oxblood.
You really get the wine quality with this ink, but also cinnamon and cloves, which what makes Mulled Wine such a great name for this ink. It’s a perfect winter colour, and it shades beautifully. I’m kind of glad that Diamine let this ink stand on its own and didn’t add shimmer or sheen to it. It’s the most interesting red ink of the bunch so far, and that’s saying a lot for a calendar with so many red inks.
Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 12
Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.
It’s day 12 of the Diamine Inkvent calendar, and a snowman is holding the sign, so it must be good, right?
Day 12’s ink is Diamine Noel, a burgundy red ink with sheen. I liked the colour, as it’s warm and rich and interesting, with a lot of shading, but I was underwhelmed by the sheen, even on Tomoe River paper.
I used a Pelikan Pelikano medium nib for this, and I really laid down a good amount of ink, and I barely saw any sheen. That was so weird that after drawing the outline of the flower, I filled in the petals, and then drew the two baubles below and I still mostly just saw shading. This is not what I expect from an ink marked as a “sheen” ink, but I like the colour enough to not care too much about it.
Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 11
Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.
It’s magical day 11 on the Diamine Inkvent Calendar, and… we’re back to standard inks.
Day 11’s ink is Diamine Elf, a standard green ink that shades nicely and is more bright and cheerful than Diamine Mistletoe.
Even with a Lamy Safari fine nib on Clairefontaine paper you can see the shading. On Tomoe River paper the shading is more pronounced and the green is more vibrant.
I like Diamine Elf because it’s a nice shade of green, but it’s one of the least unique inks in the calendar. Sometimes you need a little calm in the midst of the shiny, shimmering storm.
Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 9
Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.
It’s day 9 of the Diamine Inkvent Calendar, and Diamine has toned back the shimmer and shine and gone back to standard inks for their Monday offering.
Day 9’s ink is Diamine Nutcracker, a slightly warmer, lighter and more interesting brown than Diamine Triple Chocolate.
Diamine Nutcracker shades a lot, and has reddish highlights to it. There’s a slight green sheen to it on Tomoe river paper, as you can see from the closeup below, but most of its charm is from its raw umber to burnt sienna shading.
If this ink would have been waterproof, it would have been a staple in my sketching kit. As it is, I’ll probably use it for ink sketches only, maybe with a slight wash. It’s a versatile and warm brown that I like much better than Diamine Triple Chocolate (even though Triple Chocolate has a better name).
Tel Aviv and London
Drawn with Staedtler fineliners and various markers. The actresses from the wonderful play “The Mystery of the Lost City Guardian (of Doom)”.
You can get a lot done in 15 minutes
A 10 minute sketch of a Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv, and less than 5 minutes of watercolour. This proved to me that I have time to draw even when I’m super busy.
Rotring 800 Drafting Pencil Review
After I reviewed the Waterman Phileas I noticed that I have hardly reviewed the writing/drawing tools that I use most. So I making it a point to start to rectify that, at least a little bit.
The Rotring 800 is Rotring’s high end drafting pencil, and it costs significantly more than its popular counterpart, the Rotring 600. It’s also my preferred drafting pencil, and the one pencil that’s a constant in my drawing kit. While I own the Rotring 600, and I agree that it’s a very good drafting pencil, I’ve abandoned it entirely for it’s more big brother, the Rotring 800.
The Rotring 600 and 800 are both full metal (brass) bodied drafting pencils. This means that they were built for drafting (architectural plans) and sketching, not so much for writing. You can use a drafting pencil for writing, but they’re not built for that (that’s what mechanical pencils are for). Drafting pencils are metal bodied with a knurled grip, a lead grade indicator, and a sleeve that both protects the lead and allows you to more easily use it with rulers and templates, and to get a better view of what you’re drawing.
Herein we get to the problem: both the Rotring 600 and the Rotring 800 are almost perfect drafting pencils. Each one has a significant flaw, which means that you have to decide when purchasing what are you willing to live without.
I think that the Rotring 800 is a slightly more good looking drafting pencil than the Rotring 600, and it weighs more than the 800. That’s nice, but that’s not “$20 more” nice. The reason to buy the Rotring 800 is the retractable tip. That’s it. The Rotring 600’s non-retractable, sharp-yet-delicate tip makes carrying it around an issue. It can bend and it can do damage – piercing through case fabric, clothes, and I wouldn’t carry it in my pocket (ouch!).
I carry my Rotring 800 in a Nock Co Sinclair, together with the rest of my sketching kit, and I really needed the retractable tip. For that I had to pay extra, and I also had to give up on a crucial drafting pencil feature that the Rotring 600 has and the Rotring 800 doesn’t have: the lead grade indicator. This is a basic feature of drafting pencils, and I have no idea why Rotring didn’t add it here. It doesn’t bother me too much as I don’t switch lead grades that often, but it’s still a baffling choice on Rotring’s part.
I love the texture on the pen grip and the pen itself: it’s beautiful and functional at the same time. This is a pencil that will not budge from your hands as you’re working with it. Also, the added weight of the retractable mechanism means that it’s perfectly balanced and you need to apply zero pressure on the lead.
The Rotring 800 is a handsome, heavy and expensive drafting pencil. If you’re just getting to know drafting pencils the Pentel Graph Gear 1000 is what I’d recommend (it’s cheaper, lighter, has a great design, more tip sizes, and a lead indicator), as it really works as an excellent mechanical pencil as well as a drafting pencil. The Rotring is what I use because it aggravates my RSI least (YMMV),the added weight lets me work faster and yet retain control over my line, and I really needed the retractable tip (I ruined a Rotring 600’s tip). If you’re wondering whether to purchase a Rotring 800 (or 600) I highly recommend testing it out first, especially if you have small hands or have a “non-standard” way of holding a pencil, since you may find its weight uncomfortable.
Writing at Large 