During our recent trip to central New York to celebrate my dad's 90th birthday -- which was quite a celebration! -- we picked up a couple of packages, one of which was a new extra-fine nib for my Lamy fountain pen. When we got back I changed the nib and did two drawings of the same subject, just from slightly different angles, with my favorite fountain pen (top) and with the Lamy (bottom). While I still prefer the flexibility of the Sheaffer nib, I'm quite happy with the Lamy now.
Then I added some watercolor; the fountain pen ink (Skrip cartridge) isn't permanent so you get blurry lines, while the lines drawn with the Lamy and Noodler's Lexington Gray ink retain their crispness. I don't think it's a case of either/or - they're both nice, just different -- do you have a preference?
On another artist's website I read that you can mix inks in an empty fountain pen cartridge to get the color you want -- a great idea that had certainly never occured to me. I'm not going to be putting permanent inks in the valuable pen, though.
Spaking of permanent inks: this bottle of Yasutomo sumi ink, in its characteristic "jade green" container, is one I've had for ages. The most meta thing to do would have been to draw another sketch using a dip pen and the sumi ink...but that's a bit too obsessive, even for me!
For this sketch, my own taste leans to the runny ink one, but without the added yellow and green. And yes, you should totally draw that bottle of sumi ink with the dip pen. Cheers!
Posted by: Andrea M. | December 21, 2014 at 12:52 PM
Had a singular moment with this drawing and it was all to do with the scribbles at the ends of the pens, top right. Touching on the fact that realism can be arrived at by unrealistic means. The scribbles are offhand in a straightforwardly representational drawing. Yet the scribbles work.
Perhaps I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't reached a sub-climax in my present novel: daughter and mother are staring at an impressionistic portrait of the daughter. Close up the skin tones are composed from unlikely combinations of colours, while the structure of the head is built up from interlocking pentagons. Three metres away the portrait becomes something else. The mother describes what she sees, avoiding jargon, abstractions and waffle. I had fun; hope you had fun with those artful scribbles.
Soon, if it hasn't already happened, music will have absorbed you. 'Tis the season. I assume sometime or another you'll have done the Christmas Oratorio. Competing with those glorious drums during the introductory chorus. I was struck this time by the way JS implies both the birth and the resurrection: expectation and triumph
Jauchzet, frohlocket! auf, preiset die Tage,
Shout for joy, exult, rise up, glorify the day,
Rühmet, was heute der Höchste getan!
praise what today the highest has done!
Lasset das Zagen, verbannet die Klage,
Abandon hesitation, banish lamentation,
Stimmet voll Jauchzen und Fröhlichkeit an!
begin to sing with rejoicing and exaltation!
Have a good one.
Posted by: Roderick Robinson | December 23, 2014 at 02:10 AM