Tag: tel aviv

Weekly Update: Out Sick

I’ve had a cold this week, which is to show just how well masks and isolation work as it’s the first cold I’ve had in years. I haven’t missed it.

After a rainy week and then a sick week, my running has been suffering and the first race of the year is in two week’s time! I went back to running today, and planned to ease in with a 3k run that ended up being a 5.5k fast run because I was enjoying myself so much. It’s cold outside, but it isn’t raining, and that makes it perfect running weather.

After three days of being cooped inside, I went outside to draw yesterday, and I tried a new kind of composition, which I kind of like:

I finished reading “A Gentleman in Moscow,” and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m focusing on finishing “Erebus” by Michael Palin next before working my way through my kindle backlog and the stack of physical books that I want to read this year.

I’ve written my Lamy Studio Terracotta limited edition filled with Diamine Yule Log dry, and I’m now using a Lamy Safari Charcoal with Diamine Deck the Halls and a Lamy AL Star Charged Green with Diamine Alpine mostly, as they’re the next in line, with a couple of Kaweco sports, to be written dry. I’ve currently got 26(!) pens inked up, and it looks like I’ll be dumping out ink from a few of them, for the sake of my sanity. We’ll see how things go next week.

I’ve been my fountain pens mostly for journalling, on a Stalogy 365 notebook that I’ve started using. Every time my journalling gets into a rut, I switch notebook formats and that generally works to get me journalling again. The Stalogy is smaller than the Moleskine’s that I generally prefer to journal in, but it has fountain pen friendly paper, which is giving me the chance to use my pens. This is not to say that I don’t use fountain pens with my Moleskines (I do. I don’t care that they show through and sometimes bleed, as I have more than enough of them to use just one side of the paper), but that it’s nice to better see the properties of the inks that I use. Drying times aren’t great, and the cover is floppy, which means that I probably won’t be using this format long term. For now it works, as I’ve been journalling regularly, and I can use the Stalogy without looking at the various hour and date notations on the page. They are very feint, and I’ve turned the notebook upside down, so they are completely irrelevant to me.

I’ve been doing a lot of NTC workouts lately, and they’re tough but a lot of fun. If you’re looking for a way to work out more, using the NTC app is a great option. They have a large variety of workouts, workouts that are as long or as short as you need them to be, and workouts that are built for small places and little or no equipment (mostly you’ll just need a mat). It’s all completely free of charge, and has been that way for years. I’ve been using them for over a decade, and the quality and variety has just gone up with time. Even 5-10 minutes of exercise a day is better than nothing, and this is an easy and fun way to get into training.

Have a great and healthy week!

Urban Sketchers Tel Aviv: Atarim Square

Last Friday there was an Urban Sketchers Tel Aviv sketchwalk to Atarim Square, which is right near the beach. The weather was scorching hot for this season, and I hadn’t planned for it (no hat, no sunscreen) so I worked as quickly as possible on this first sketch and then looked for subjects that I could sketch from the shade.

Sketch of the Tel Aviv Marina beach.

There were a lot of boats out and the sea was unbelievably blue and clear. You can see the rocks that make this beach not a bathing beach.

It was noon, which meant that there were very few places in the shade. I found one next to a playground and made a quick sketch of part of the scene there, making sure to obscure the little girl’s face. There was a huge crow prancing around quite fearlessly.

I spent a lot of time looking for places to sketch in the shade, so I ended up having to sketch this scene very quickly (less than 15 minutes), take some reference photos and add the watercolour later. It’s the local bar and reception for the nearby hostel.

What I love about going to Urban Sketcher outings is seeing how everyone finds something different that catches their interest and is worth sketching in the same small area. Seeing all the different sketching styles is also a lot of fun.

Here’s the finished sketch of the bar/reception area from above. They have some wild graffiti on their walls, so this was really fun to paint.

Inktober Day 15: Egyptian Geese

These fellows are fierce warriors, so all the runners know to give them a wide berth. Saw this pair during my weekend long run.
I haven’t played around with brush pens in a while, and I’ve been meaning to give a few of them a spin, so this was sketched with a Tombow Fudenosuke soft brush pen on an A4 Midori MD Cotton notebook. I thought about adding a spot of colour to this sketch, but opted for now to leave it black and white.
P.S. using brush pens right now is intensly difficult, as I can barely feel my fingers. My neuropathy gets worse the colder it is, and right now I’m only vaguely aware that my fingers exist. At least that makes sure that I sketch more from my arm and shoulder than my fingers – so proper technique 🙂

Inktober Day 12: Breast Cancer Awareness Exhibit

It’s breast cancer awareness month, and there’s an educational exhibit in Habima Square in Tel Aviv.

This was sketched using a Platinum 3776 with an UEF nib and Sailor Epinard ink, and a uni-ball Posca paint marker.

Inktober Day 11: Icon Festival

I was at the Israeli comic con, Icon, on Tuesday, but I was too busy to really capture event beyond a haze of stalls in the dark. This was sketched using a Pentel brush pen and a Faber Castell Pitt pen.

Playing with Posca Paint Markers

There were a few Posca paint marker sets on sale while I was in London, so I bought two sets to play with. Here’s a quick sketch of a planter near the Tel Aviv port, done with fine Posca paint markers on a paper bag that held sweet peppers before I reused it.

Inktober Day 10: Sunrise of the Independence Garden

Had an unusual start to the day, with an early morning walk before my usual morning run. I’m embracing the spirit of experimentation with these, so this one was sketched using diluted Sennelier shellac based ink (non fountain pen friendly) in waterbrushes, paired with a fine nibbed TWSBI ECO filled with J. Herbin Emerald of Chivor, and a Diplomat Aero with a fine nib filled with Colorverse Golden Record. The Midori MD Cotton paper does not take nicely to any amount of moisture and there was bleed through (and of course see through) to the other side of the page, but in general it held up much better than I expected.

Independence Garden at Sunrise. Playing about with various kinds of inks.

Here are all the tools used for this quick sketch:

From left to right: waterbrush filled with blue in, waterbrush filled with sepia ink, TWSBI ECO, Diplomat Aero and a waterbrush filled with water.

And here’s the complete page:

Inktober Day 9: Surfers near the Marina

Today’s sketch includes a frame and characters drawn with a Staedtler pigment fineliner 0.1 pen, a sky drawn with a Vertex and kyo no oto Sakuranezumi ink, a sea drawn with a TWSBI ECO filled with J. Herbin Emerald of Chivor, a lighthouse sketch with a Platinum 3776 UEF nib filled with Sailor Epinard, and a beach and breaker sketch done with a Diplomat Aero and Colorverse Golden Record (plus a waterbrush).

Here’s the whole pen lineup used to create this page:

Inktober Day 8: Trash Beach Volleyball

Very, very quick sketch of an exhibit of people playing beach volleyball and lounging on the the beach – all made out of plastic trash recovered from the sea. It’s quite sobering to see it all displayed like that in the Tel Aviv port. We need to be much better stewards of our oceans and planet.
Drawn with a Platinum Plaisir fountain pen on a Midori MD Cotton A4 notebook.

Here is the full page spread together with the infamous Platinum Plaisir:

Inktober Day 7: Succah Exhibit

There’s a wild succah exhibit near the TLV mall in Tel Aviv, and it’s a lot of fun to walk around it and try and guess what everything was originally. This succah is made out of discarded bits of “junk”, you see, and the point is to make a point about recycling and sustainability. In any case it was challenging for a very quick little sketch (I’m working very fast and loose with these), and as I mentioned before, the Platinum Plaisir fountain pen I used here isn’t the most fun pen to use. The Midori MD Cotton paper deserves better.