Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 3

Day 3’s ink is Diamine Carousel. It’s a red pigment ink – which should mean that it’s waterproof, something that I will test later on.

Carousel is an orangey/coral red ink that flowed well in my Lamy Safari medium nib. There’s a bit of shading with this ink, which surprised me. I wasn’t expecting any shading because it’s a pigmented ink, and from my experience they tend to be “flatter”. In any case Carousel is a bright and cheerful colour, perfect for the season.

I had to check if Diamine Carousel is waterproof, so I sketched one of the beaches near my apartment. I then waited for the ink to completely dry, and painted over it with watercolours. It worked perfectly, as you can see, and I actually like the effect of sketching with such a peculiar colour of ink.

Today’s bear is Lialu, and he’s a Dean’s bear, and another one of the few blue bears that I own. Look what a serious little fellow he is:

Today’s bear – very dignified and distinguished

Diamine Carousel is a fun ink that’s completely waterproof when dry, and a joy to sketch with. I will certainly enjoy sketching with it, and time will tell if I’ll be adding it to my waterproof ink collection later next year. For scenes with lots of greens I think it would work particularly well, as it makes greens pop.

Do you see yourself sketching with this ink?

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: Mars Yard 3.0

My Tom Sachs Nikecraft Mars Yard 3.0 sneakers arrived! I worked so hard to earn these and they were so expensive that for a moment I wondered if I’d ever wear them. But then I saw the bottom of the box:

The box is so well designed:

There are even hidden ten bullets:

There are two sets of sockliners that come with these shoes, one made of cork and one made of mesh:

And here are the shoes themselves:

Yes, I am wearing them, and yes, they are very comfortable. They aren’t in any way loud or attention grabbing, but that’s part of why I like them so much.

I’m nearing the end of reading “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie. It’s a powerful narrative, but I think that “With the Old Breed” packed more punch. I also went to the Pelikan Hubs 2025 and you can read all about that here. I’ve now only got Pelikans inked up (and one Platinum Preppy), which is an interesting experience.

I sketched a new barista at my favourite cafe. The customers kept cutting off the view so I gave up on sketching the rest of the counter at some point. I was using my arttoolkit palette, which is ultra portable and contains a different set of paints than what I’m used to using. The notebook is a Stillman and Birn pocket Beta:

I went to develop film last week, and also went to an artist’s open house and splurged on a new painting. Have good art on your walls. It makes a difference.

Have a great week!

Paris London 2025 Part 4

In September I traveled to Paris and London. See part 1 of my travelogue here, part 2 here and part 3 here.

Another visit to the Phoenix garden resulted in this sketch in my Etchr lab sketchbook. I love the paper so much – even a super quick sketch pops on it.

I had a coffee at the Monmouth Coffee Company. I love their coffee, but the place was both packed and super hot and stuffy so I made this quick sketch in my Pith Kabosu sketchbook and didn’t bother to add watercolour to it. It’s the first time I tried a POV sketch, and you can see the weird way I oftentimes hold my pen. I got to talk to a super nice young South Korean woman, as I shared the table with her and a young Japanese father and his 4 year old son.

POV sketch of the Monmouth Coffee Company table

Lunch was at Wagamama again. I tried their pho for first time (it’s new on the menu) and really liked it.

In the evening we went to see My Neighbour Totoro. It’s a lovely play, very well considered and beautifully acted and puppeteered.

On Sunday my family went to Greenwich and I went to the Saucony Run Shoreditch 10k race. It was bright and cold, perfect running weather, and the route was pretty flat – but chock full of speed bumps, which really hampered the race flow and caused a few nasty spills.

Here’s the route:

And the starting line:

And some of the entertainment on the way:

We ran a lot of loops, mostly through pretty dull residential streets. Only in the final kilometre or so did we get to see a bit of Shoreditch high street etc.

Overall the race was fairly well organized, and not overly crowded (about 6,000 runners), but I didn’t enjoy the route mostly due to the speed bumps. They seem to have taken the worst out of the local runners, as people pushed, jostled and shoved to avoid running over them (I just started running over them from around the 3rd kilometre or so).

Here’s the medal:

After the race I went for a celebratory meal at Wagamama. I hadn’t had breakfast and I was parched so I had a ton to drink and tried one of their new curries. Jesna, my server, was really curious about the sketches and we got to talk a bit.

On Monday my dad and I went to Tate Modern to see a Picasso and the Theatre exhibition. We arrived early so we sat at Paul’s and sketched.

I also sketched the statue and part of the modern building across the street.

The “Theatre Picasso” exhibition was hands down one of the biggest disappointments of the trip. Never have I felt my intelligence or interest in art more insulted than in this exhibition, and I left after about 20 minutes.

Here’s a Picasso dove to relax for a bit:

I was in a bad mood when I left and I didn’t know what to do with myself so I made my way to Green Park and sat and sketched there for a while:

The final sketch:

Thankfully the best exhibition was still ahead of me – Marie Antoinette Style at Victoria and Alberts. The thought, curation, staging, flow, items – everything about this exhibition was perfection. You saw Marie Antoinette as a style icon, as a woman trapped in a role, as a doomed queen, as a harried and slandered victim, and as a larger than life figure. Her foibles, her eye for fashion, her courage, her very flawed life and her terrible death made her immortal in a way she likely could never have imagined.

We don’t have robins here, so it was nice to get to see a few of them at Hyde park during my morning runs and at the Phoenix garden.

There were surprisingly few Halloween decorations out but the Christmas shops were on full blast in all the big stores. Of course I had to buy this red fountain pen ornament from Liberty:

Pencils, pink pearl erasers, fountain pens and palette ornaments at Liberty London.

We then got to see Penn and Teller’s 50th anniversary show (and first West End tour). They were funny, surprising, and wonderful, and it was an overall delightful and very memorable evening. I even got a signed poster of their show!

On one of the last days of the trip I went to see the new Victoria and Albert East Storehouse museum. It’s a unique experience, and it’s worth the visit – but I recommend planning to go there well ahead of time and ordering items to interact with. It’s not a standard museum by any stretch of the imagination – it’s more of a museum about museums and how they handle their collections.

While I found many of the explanations to be overly politicized, it nevertheless is a place that I’d return to – provided I manage to book a “meeting” with an item (Order and Object at the study centre). It’s also interesting to see what other people ordered and how they interact with their chosen objects.

I had lunch at the nearby Wagamama for the last time, and sketched my lunch for the last time:

And then went for my last coffee at Monmouth Coffee Company:

In the evening we went to see “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Stephen Fry was excellent as Lady Bracknell, but I didn’t like the director’s interpretation of the play (Algernon is gay, Jack is gay, Cecily is gay, Gwendolen is gay), and the two main actors weren’t very good. For the life of me I don’t understand the director’s need to try and outsmart Oscar Wilde. Wilde’s work is polished to a mirror finish – there really is no need to be clever with it. It packs enough punch as it is.

Stephen Fry and the cast of The Importance of Being Earnest

On the last day of the trip I went to the Phoenix garden for a last sketch:

I got to talk to a lady that works in the garden, and it was nice showing her all of my various sketches of the place.

And we went to The Parlour at Fortnum and Mason for celebratory Sundaes before the flight.

Tres Leches sundae – Coffee, Bickfield Milk and Fior de Leche & Chocolate
Biscuit Ice Cream and Pumpkin Seed Praline

Overall it was a great trip even though I was sick during its first leg. I’ve never sketched so much during a trip before, largely thanks to some recently acquired sketchbooks and watercolour palettes, and some skills I learned during USK Poznan. I got a ton of watercolours, pens, pencils, inks and art supplies that I can’t wait to try out, and I got a nice stack of books to peruse over the coming months. Hopefully this was fun to read, and perhaps you got some inspiration for your next trip to Paris or London.

Paris London 2025 Part 3

In September I traveled to Paris and London. See part 1 of my travelogue here and part 2 here.

I met up with a dear friend for a pre-theatre tasting meal at Chotto-Matte, a trendy restaurant that combines Mexican and Japanese cuisines. I am not a foodie, and I will now confess that this was the first time that I’ve had sushi (I hate the smell and taste of fish and seaweed and everything that comes from the sea and so I’ve avoided it), and I really enjoyed it. It was the best meal that I had in London, and the company, the weird design and the very attentive service added to it.

I had the vegetarian pre-theatre menu, which meant that mine had no fish, seafood, meat or chicken in it. It was phenomenal.

On the right is the Edamame, which we shared and was good, and in the centre is Truffled Avocado Roll – Cucumber, sesame seeds, yuzu truffle soy. It was light and refreshing.

Lychee Ceviche – Leche de tigre, chive oil, sweet potato, Peruvian corn, coriander. One of the biggest surprises of the meal. Delicious, zingy and the textures were phenomenal.

Yasai Miso Crispy Sushi – Picante miso vegetables, takuan, shiso cress. Sticky but very good.

Nasu Miso – Aubergine miso, apricot, puffed soba, sesame seeds. Aubergine like I’ve never tasted it before. Again, a lot of great textures here and a ton of deep flavours.

King Oyster Mushroom Tostada – Pulled mushroom, smoked aji panca chilli, guacamole, lime, coriander. I’m not normally a mushroom fan, but this was smoky, “meaty” and satisfying.

Truffled Mushroom Rice – Sweet corn & queso fresco dip, jalapeño, coriander, corn tostadas. This was a rice heavy meal, and at this point I could eat no longer. I had about three spoonfuls and no more. It was a good dish, but it lacked the depth of flavour and the uniqueness of the rest of the dishes.

Milk Soft Serve Ice Cream with toasted almonds, chocolate sauce. It’s ice cream, it was good, but we had to rush to the theatre so we didn’t get to finish it. It wasn’t a particularly interesting desert though.

This is definitely a place that I’d return to for a special occasion.

We then went to see the classic musical, “The Producers”, and it was excellent. The cast was brilliant, and it’s a very good musical with some great (if disturbing) songs. Mel Brooks is a comedy genius, and this musical still packs a punch.

We also went to Spitalfields market, which meant that I could sketch this guy:

Sketch of a statue of a goat in Spitalfields market.

This was my very first sketch in the new Pith Kabosu sketchbook that I purchased at Cass Art. I debated whether to buy this sketchbook or not, as it had smooth, 200gsm paper and it opened flat, but I wasn’t sure it would work with watercolours. The great sellers at Cass Art told me it would, as they use it themselves, and they were right. It’s now my “daily driver” having replaced the Stillman and Birn pocket beta. The beta has thicker and more textured paper but the Pith Kabosu is slightly larger, has a more durable cover, and opens flat much better than the Stillman and Birn does. I later returned and purchased two more of these sketchbooks, they were so good.

I later sketched this seller in his stall, after purchasing an old set of folding rulers from his stall. I decided to paint him and the flag but left the rest of the stall as line drawings.

The Pith Kabosu is also cheaper than the Stillman and Birn and as it has smoother paper, works better for ink sketches and dry medium (pencils of various kinds, for example). It means that I’m more inclined to bring it out and make quick sketches in it, even if I don’t get to adding watercolour to them.

We then went to the second play at The Globe – Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. We arrived early so I sat in the Starbucks across the entrance and sketched the place:

I originally didn’t have time to add colour to this. I just bashed out this 5 minute sketch and then added watercolour later, from reference photos.

I later added colour to the sketch. In hindsight I would have gone for a looser sketch, but I was still unsure what this paper could and couldn’t do. The answer is – practically everything. Only very heavy washes make the page buckle.

This was a regular Shakespeare play, and so there was some set design. this is the stage:

And in the yard where the groundlings are you can see another bit of the stage that isn’t normally there, but was used to represent the beach and other locales in the play.

I enjoyed the play a lot, and would recommend seeing plays at the Globe if you can tolerate the extremely uncomfortable seats (yes, even with the cushions).

We went to the Cartier exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum. The exhibition is sold out, and it’s well considered, but we found it a bit dull compared to the Marie Antoinette exhibition at the same museum.

This is the Patiala necklace that was part of the exhibition. It was made by Jacques Cartier for the Maharaja of Nawanagar in 1928. He also made the Maharaja of Nawanagar’s necklace, later named the Jeanne Toussaint in the “Ocean’s 8” movie (it was a recreation made by Cartier for the movie).

My favourite parts were the film where they showed how a Cartier leopard is made, and the famous mystery clocks. There was a whole room dedicated to them, and it was fabulous.

Next post will be the last in the series. You can read it here.

Paris London 2025 Part 2

In September I traveled to Paris and London. See part 1 of my travelogue here.

I went to see two plays in The Globe theatre in London. The first was a one night only performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream that was a reenactment of how the actors in Shakespeare’s time would have performed a play. The actors didn’t rehearse the play beforehand, and they didn’t have the full text of the play to work with, just their lines and their cues and staging directions. They practiced the dances alone, and they had no idea what their fellow actors would do during the performance. Now this is Midsummer Night’s Dream so all the actors and everyone in the audience knew exactly how the story unfolds, but the lack of rehearsals made this a very live performance.

The play was sold out in minutes and I’m glad that I managed to get tickets at all. It was an amazing experience. As this was a one night performance the stage was the bare Globe stage – nowhere to hide as the audience surrounds the actors practically from all sides. There was a lady on stage in period costume, sitting with the full text and helping actors in the very few times that they fumbled. The energy was beyond description. It was the most electric staging of Shakespeare that I have ever seen. Everybody was “on” all the time because they weren’t entirely sure what would come next.

It was a raw performance – I later saw another, standard Shakespeare play there and it was much more polished because it was clearly rehearsed and performed several times before we saw it. Yet that was what made this performance so special – the actors’ reaction to their fellow actors was genuine and unvarnished. They were having fun, improvising, owning the text in a way they normally never do. The highlight was the play within the play at the end – seeing the actors laugh to the point where they had trouble saying their lines because Bottom was so very, very hilariously over the top was amazing.

One of my favourite places in London is the Phoenix community garden. I spent a lot of time there, and sketched it several times. This was my first and longest sketch of the garden, done on the wonderful Etchr Lab cold pressed watercolour sketchbook:

Fineliner sketch – no pencil underdrawing.

We went to see Disney’s Hercules – a new musical in West End. I wasn’t expecting much as I’m not a fan of the movie, but the musical was one of the best that we saw in the London. The production is stunning, the music is great, the actors were talented – particularly Megara – and the only minus is that Hades was a bit over the top even by the movie standards. They would do better to cut down on the amount of his jokes because they lose their impact otherwise. The Disney merch machine was out in full force that night, and I was one of only a handful that didn’t leave with something from their store.

We spent a day in York, and I started it with a sketch of the York Museum grounds, also in my Etchr Labs watercolour sketchbook:

York is full of wonderful bits of history that are just layered freely on each other:

I did a very quick sketch of this scene later on, on an Exacompta Bristol card:

I also bought a decent amount of watercolour paints – enough to build out two new palettes that I want to try.

This post is getting long and photo heavy, so I will be completing this trip journal in two additional posts.

Edit: you can read part 3 here.

Sea Daffodils

The sea daffodils are in bloom, so I made a quick watercolour sketch of them during my Yom Kippur walk.

Paris London 2025 Trip Part 1

I recently returned from a pretty long trip to Paris and London with my family. I ended up sketching a lot more than I normally do during trips, largely thanks to things that I learned during the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznan (more on that in a later post). Here is part 1 of some highlights from my trip.

Quick sketch in a Stillman & Birn pocket beta while I was waiting for my flight

Centre Pompidou, my favourite museum in the world, was closing down until 2030 (!) so I went to pay it a last visit. Already parts of the colourful outside facade have been repainted white, and I’ve never seen the area around the museum so deserted.

The library was the only area still accessible, and it had been turned into a giant project playground for German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans to work with. It was something that only Pompidou could do, and it was breathtaking, thought provoking, fun, interesting, and unique. I wish I could have spent hours there, but at this point in my trip I became badly ill and for the entire Paris leg of the trip I was struggling.

I ended up largely not eating in Paris, but this was my first meal there – in the fantastic Patisserie Viennoise in the Latin Quarter.

Stillman and Birn pocket alpha watercolour sketch

We also went to a new museum, the Bourse de Commerce and I saw this great artwork on the way there:

The museum was in between putting up exhibitions, so while a large part of it was closed we managed to view some great and moving art pieces with relatively few crowds and at a discounted price. I did a VERY quick sketch while I was there:

This is the artwork that I was sketching.

And this little fellow is also part of the art exhibits there:

We then took the Eurostar to London. This is where I switched sketchbooks – this sketch of a boy and his father having lunch at a table across from me at Wagamama is the last sketch I created in my Stillman and Birn pocket beta. The beta has decent watercolour paper but it’s not half as good as the paper in my Etchr labs watercolour sketchbook, and the glued in pages make it a struggle to create full page spread sketches, as you can see here:

Last trip sketch in the Stillman and Birn pocket beta.

I created my first sketch in an Etchr lab cold pressed watercolour notebook while in the Greenwich Park herb garden and the paper is astonishingly good. Here’s the ink sketch (my tree sketches have gotten so much better thanks to a workshop I took in Poznan):

And here is the watercolour:

The paper not only makes the colours pop, it actually allowed me ample time and space to work with the washes, adding layers of well blended colours that gave depth and life to the scene. Never have I ever seen the importance of good quality watercolour paper demonstrated so well. I have about half a dozen sketches of this garden throughout the years and this is by far the best one.

That’s it for part 1, I’ll try and upload part 2 later this week.

Edit: part 2 can be found here.

Urban Sketching – Girl with Dog

Quick watercolour sketch in the park today.

Pen sketch before watercolours:

I’ve been travelling and sick hence the delay in posts, but I have a few posts drafted already so hopefully more to come soon…

Morning barista sketch

Went on a 5k run and then went to my favourite cafe and did a quick sketch of the barista. Had more time this morning than last time so this sketch is more detailed.

Writing at Large

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