I went out for 45 minutes after work and sketched all of these as fast as I could. I only stopped when it got too dark outside. Yesterday’s sketches were done with a Staedtler 0.5 pigment liner on a Field Notes sketchbook. Today’s sketches were done on a pocket Moleskine watercolour sketchbook using a 0.3 Staedtler pigment liner, a water brush and watercolour.
First batch when it was still light outside
People moved by in the street so I had seconds to capture each figure (the more detailed ones stopped for a minute or two). As this is what normally happens when you urban sketch, I found this exercise to be very useful.
Earlier this week I went to a standup gig – a NY comedian was trying out new material, and it was an interesting (and funny) experience to see him work. Before the show I had about 5 minutes to sketch the people in a nearby cafe, so I sketched this couple using a Staedtler 0.5 Pigment Liner.
In terms of fountain pens the Parker Vacumatic is out of rotation, though I may give Diamine Writer’s Blood a try in another pen soon enough. I decided that I want to have the nib tuned on it, in terms of flow, though I don’t know who I’ll be able to find to do the tuning for me.
I also dumped out the Pilot Iroshizuku Yama Budo out of my Parker 51 as I couldn’t get it to not bleed and feather on practically any paper. I cleaned out the pen and refilled it with Waterman (Tender) Purple ink and it’s been wonderful to use since. Waterman inks are not only fantastically well behaved, beautiful, cheap and very, very easy to clean out of pens, they’re also dry inks. As Parker 51 generally have a generous ink flow, and this one is no different, a dry ink serves particularly well with this pen.
I’ve been reading Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (the British novelist, not the famous actress) and it’s a wonderful study of character, age and aging.
Next week is the Tel Aviv marathon, which is sold out for the very first time. There were no big local running events last year, and there’s clearly a hunger for them.
This week has been crushing from both a personal and a national perspective. I’ve taken solace in friends and in reading, but there have been times where it’s been a struggle. It’s at times like this when I need to remind myself to stop, take a breath, allow myself to feel what I need to feel, and only then pick myself up and move on.
Be kind to yourself and others, and have a great week.
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!
10 minute pose.10 minute pose.10 minute pose.10 minute pose – the hardest pose to draw because of the angle of the head. Had a false start on this one, so had only about 8 minutes for this. 10 minute pose – Staedtler 0.5 pigment liner10 minute pose10 minute pose10 minute poseThe three models. The pose started with just the two top models, and then the third one joined, and it was a 10 minute pose.A challenging composition, 20 minute pose10 minute pose. I like the composition on this one – I placed her on the side of the page to give her room for thought. Final pose, 20 minutes
I haven’t done a watercolour sketch in a while, so I broke out the trusty Moleskine Watercolour sketchbook, my Staedtler Pigment Liners (0.3 and 0.5) and my Schmincke and Daniel Smith watercolours and made this quick sketch:
Prickly pear watercolour sketch
It was fun and it took me less time than I thought, so I should do it more often.
This was a big ink week, as I wrote many of my Inkvent fountain pens dry: Wishing Tree, Snow Globe, Winterberry, Salted Caramel, Pine Needle, Nutmeg, and Wilted Rose. I also dumped Sleigh Ride as I found the ink colour depressing. This leaves me with 9 Inkvent inks still inked in my pens, with most of them half or quarter full. I doubt that I’ll be able to write them all dry by the end of the month, but hopefully I’ll get as close to that as possible. In any case I’ll reassess in the beginning of February if I want to keep using my Diamine Inkvent inks or if I’ll just dump out and clean up whatever I still have inked at the time and start fresh.
I finished reading “The New York Trilogy” and it’s a very Paul Auster book. Next week I’ll start on “The Last Kashmiri Rose” by Barbara Cleverly and finish “The Comfort Crisis” by Michael Easter.
Have a great week full of pens, books and good news.
Inspired by Gabi Campanario I’ve taken some waterbrushes and filled them with diluted shellac based ink from Sennelier. At first I only had Burnt Sienna ink that I bought years ago from Cornelissen and Son (one of my favourite art supply shops in London), but I purchased a bottle of Prussian Blue and Cobalt Blue to add to it. The bottles have pipettes which make using them to fill a waterbrush convenient, unless the brush has a valve on the body, in which case you’ll need to dip it inside the bottle, and you’ll have issues filling it fully.
Here are some sketches done with the Burnt Sienna. The first one was done with a fountain pen and a single waterbrush filled with pretty diluted Burnt Sienna and was drawn on a Stillman and Birn Pocket Alpha. This was when I discovered that the ink dried lighter than I thought, and that layering it on this paper isn’t really an option. I didn’t get enough of a gradient, and it didn’t take long for the paper to start to disintegrate from the ink. Note also that the ink dries fast, and getting perfect washes with a waterbrush is practically impossible, even in such a small format. But I liked the result enough to experiment with it some more.
First try with ink in a waterbrush.
I then filled another waterbrush with a much less diluted Burn Sienna and water solution. Here’s the same Stillman and Birn Pocket notebook but a sketch with a little more gradient because I used two different ink/water ratios. I like the result better, especially on the trunk.
Second try, more contrast.
Then I got the Sennelier Prussian Blue that I ordered, and I filled two brushes with it, one diluted with water at about a 50/50 ratio, and another practically undiluted. I had enough of the Alpha paper, so I switched to 300 gsm cold press watercolour paper from Clairefontaine. Here’s the sketch, done with a Staedtler 0.1 pigment liner (I didn’t want the lines to distract from the wash):
Sketch done with Staedtler pigment liner of a fisherman in the sea.
And here is the result with the ink washes applied:
Result with ink wash.
I used the dark blue for the shadows on the rocks, and this time I could actually work with the ink (due to the quality of the paper) and blend between the Burnt Sienna and the Prussian Blue.
I loved this result enough to give these ink washes more tries. I will say that there have been some issues with them so far:
Many of my waterbrushes (most of my Pentel ones) didn’t allow the ink to flow to the brush bristles.
Some of my brushes leaked, and so I won’t be carrying them around in my bag without a ziploc bag to protect my bag contents from them.
The Cobalt Blue ink that I bought contains copper. It came with a warning label, and I’m not going to use it before I make sure I have a leak proof brush for it.
The behaviour of the ink is entirely dependent on the quality of the paper, more than any medium I’ve used before (including watercolour).
Waterbrush bristles deteriorate pretty quickly, and make fine detail work and brush control more difficult.
All that being said, I enjoyed using them enough in my sketches to continue using them for a while, and I recommend giving shellac (calligraphy) ink in a waterbrush a spin.
PS – these inks are NOT FOUNTAIN PEN FRIENDLY! If you put them in your fountain pen they will ruin it.
I somehow managed to not review my favourite pigment/fine liner, despite it being one of the sketching tools that I use the most. While I know that the pigment liner from Sakura is more popular is stationery blogger circles, and Copic is thought to be the elite offering (it sure is in terms of price), Staedler’s pigment liners have been my go to pigment liners since I was a teenager, and they have always been the ones I compare all others to.
Pigment liner set bought at Cass Art in London
All pigment liners are expensive to purchase here, and Staedler is no different, which means that I always stock up on them when I go to Cass Art in London. This 6 pen set is always on sale, and you get a useful selection of pen widths. However, if you are just starting out, don’t buy a set – buy a 0.3 and a 0.5 and if you want to splurge add the 0.1 and the 0.8.
The full set: Calligraphy, 0.8, 0.5, 0.3, 0.1, 0.05
Whether you use Staedler pigment liners or ones from another brand (Sakura, Faber Castell, Copic, Uni-ball, etc), the 0.3 or 0.5 will likely be your base, bread and butter pen. I generally use the 0.3, unless I’m feeling shaky, I’m in a hurry and want to churn out sketches/illustrations, or I want to go for a dramatic effect, in which case I go for the 0.5 or the 0.8. The 0.1 is a pen that I use for the opposite effect – when I plan to use watercolour or an ink wash and I want the colour or wash to take precedent. The 0.05 is a pen that I used to use when I was younger and drew comics (it’s excellent for fine details), but I hardly ever reach for it now, unless it’s to work in small format with a colour wash of some sort following. It’s a fragile pen, so if you tend to lean on your pens, this one is not for you. How can you tell if you put a lot of pressure on your pens? Write a page with a gel ink pen and check the back of the page. Does it feel like braille lettering? Does your wrist hurt? Then you’re putting to much pressure to use this pen without ruining the tip, and you may have issues with the 0.1 tip as well. I used to write like that and it took some practice for me to be able to use these ultra fine tipped pens.
Line samples on a Moleskine pocket sketchpad.
So, why do I love the Staedtler pigment liner so much?
It puts down a consistent, black line. This seems obvious, but I’ve tried more than one pigment liner that puts down a dark grey or washed out black line and it’s always disappointing.
It’s a rock solid pen that won’t dry out, and has a robust tip. I’ve had terrible luck with Faber Castel and other makers where a capped (mind you, capped) pigment liner stopped writing reliably after a month or two. This has never happened with my Staedler’s, and I’ve had some for years.
The pen body. This is what makes the Staedler’s the best of the best in my personal opinion.
The Staedtler pigment liner’s pen body.
So, what makes the Staedler pen body so great? It’s a whole lot of small things that just add up. It’s light weight but doesn’t feel flimsy, and it has a matte finish with a subtle lined texture all around, so its easy to grip. It’s also a bit wider than many of its competitors, and unlike many of them, it has the pen width clearly marked on both the pen body and the pen cap. It also doesn’t have any sharp edges, which you’d think would be an obvious in pen design, but sadly isn’t. Finally, it caps and posts and uncaps with a solid click, and without having to apply a lot of pressure. You know the pen is capped and the pen is uncapped when you need it. And if you so care to uncap it with one hand, you can.
Here’s the 0.1 Staedtler in action. There’s a photo of the sketch I made after applying an ink wash (Sennelier Burn Sienna India Ink diluted in water and applied with a brush pen), and one of the same sketch after I applied blue watercolour.
Staedtler 0.1 pigment liner, and ink wash.Staedtler pigment liner 0.1, ink wash and watercolour.
During a private tour of Nazareth last year (a present from my wonderful family in between chemo treatments), I met the guide’s young boy. His father told me that he wanted to be a clothing designer when he grew up, so I broke out my sketching kit and gave him every Staedler pigment liner that I had on me. His eyes lit up once his father explained what these pens were. If you have a budding artist, designer, sketcher, doodler in your life and you’re wondering which gift to give them, two or three Staedler pigment liners will always be welcome.
I went on a walk this morning, and as the wind was up, the surfers were out in full force. I decided to take a quick break and sketch them in my pocket Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook, and I used a Staedler 0.05 fineliner for a change. I used to love the 0.05 for the fine line it gave, but I haven’t used it for years, and while my neuropathy was bad I couldn’t have used it. As my neuropathy is improving with the weather, I decided to give the 0.05 a spin. This was sketched on location and painted later on.
A drawing of a decrepit, old building in central Tel Aviv. Painted only using the new Schmincke super-granulating watercolours (Galaxy, Glacier, Deep Sea, Forest and Tundra). The only exception is the yellow, which doesn’t exist in this range.
My review of these colours will probably be up this weekend.
I decided not to take part in Inktober this year. Instead I’ll be drawing at least one page a day in my Stillman and Birn Pocket Alphas. You can see days 1-5 here, days 6-10 here and days 11-15 here.
I drew the first four of these days as scheduled and then the last drawing took much more time than I planned, so I decided to invest a little more time in it. While I was working on that I had an opportunity to submit a short story to a collection that doesn’t usually accept submissions. The deadline was tight, but I decided to go for it, which meant putting this challenge on hold. As I’m refocusing my energy on my writing I’m going to stretch this challenge to December (more on that in a later post). So far it has worked to get me more comfortable with working directly with ink and with a pared down palette and brush selection, so I’m happy with that.
All these were drawn on a Stillman and Birn Pocket Alpha with a 0.3 Staedtler fineliner and Schminke Horadam watercolours.
Birds of the Yarkon Park. A two page spread that took me two days to complete. Big Thunder Mountain in Disneyland Paris. I miss going to the park, and participating in the runDisney weekend.Daniel Rowing Centre, Yarkon Park. Not happy with the perspective on this one, but you learn from your mistakes.Covent Garden Market, which I miss a lot, a lot. This was done with no underdrawing and I’m super proud of how it came out.
Writing at Large 