Month: May 2020

Pogo Pen

When travel restrictions are eased, if tourists ever get to travel the 7,000 light years to IC 4703, The Eagle Nebula, they’re going to want to take home a souvenir of its bucket-list highlight The Pillars of Creation. So how about this pen, pencil and eraser set?

Frankenstein Pen
pogo pen

The Pogo Pen was inspired by a great niece and nephew’s ongoing attempt to pogo jump the height of Everest, in 9cm increments. I realise that this would be more like a rubber stamp than a pen.

But my favourite pen out of this batch is the Frankenstein Pen, modelled on Boris Karloff’s neck bolt. Like the Apple Pencil, it’s rechargeable . . . if you happen to be on the top of a mountain in Transylvania during a thunderstorm.

Inks

inks
Actual drawing 2.25 x 4 inches, 6 x 10.5 cm.

My pen project continues but I thought that the inks ought to make an appearance today. The ’20 ounce’ bottle of Super Quink red ink was redundant stock that my dad brought back from the office c.1970. It still works fine. The Chinese ink in the attractive blue-and-white bottle was something that I tried when I worked on my monochrome sketchbook published as High Peak Drifter. I made four dilutions at different strengths which I took on my travels to simplify adding the tone.

Daler’s FW Acrylic Artists Ink goes back to my Yorkshire Rock days. I remember buying two shades of blue when I drew an underwater spread of ‘Life on the Reef’ for the Carboniferous Limestone section of the book. This bottle was Sepia, my go-to colour for most of the line work.

The Special Red is Pelikan Drawing Ink, from the 1970s. The one with the blue cap is Winsor and Newton Calligraphy Ink, the Burnt Sienna behind it is Rotring Drawing Ink. Bringing up the rear on the right, are plastic bottles of Stephen’s and Horse stamp pad inks.

The Crime Writer’s Pen

fantasy pens

My latest fantasy pens include a gardener’s pen, complete with dibber and garden twine, a crime writer’s pen which will keep CSI busy for days and a walking pole pen which includes compass, pedometer and even and emergency supply of Kendal Mint Cake.

Pots of Pens

pens

Our first assignment on Mattias Adolfsson’s the online illustration course The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art (see link below) that I’ve just started is to get our pens together. These are a small selection . . .

more pens

Next is to produce a sheet of observational drawings of some of those pens, trying out different techniques as we go. I’m still only halfway down my A3 page but the good news is that, with all those pots of pens, I won’t run out of subject matter.

satirical pens

I’ve already made a start on the next stage of the assignment, which is to take things one stage further and draw a sheet of fantasy pens. It doesn’t matter how silly the idea is.

Link

The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art
A course by Mattias Adolfsson, Illustrator

Published
Categorized as Drawing Tagged

Bee Hotel

bee hotel cartoon

The card shops and National Trust gift shops have yet to reopen so I’m still producing homemade birthday cards, this one celebrating a birthday and a very successful bee hotel. The day our friend John Gardner finished constructing it and put it in place, several solitary bees moved in.

cat cards

Meanwhile the numerous cats who wonder through our back garden provide material for cards, including these two characters. When it came to a showdown, ‘Bear’ through bluster and body language had no trouble seeing off the smaller ‘Wildcat’ tabby.

Cuckoo Flower

sketching flowers

I’ve started a new sketchbook for an online illustration course (more of that later). We’re asked to sign our name on the first page and write the date . . .

flowers

The difficult ones first! I knew it was the 2nd.

I had an idea of how I’d like to draw the unfurling croziers of the male fern, growing by the pond. It didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, probably because I wasn’t close enough to take in the detail I’d intended to add.

But that’s an advantage of a sketchbook, as opposed to a commission, I can relax and move on to the next drawing. Really enjoyed drawing these.

Basil

basil

We should be self-sufficient in pesto this year because our basil seedlings have got off to a good start. We discovered that the ones we’d potted on did better on the kitchen windowsill than in the greenhouse, probably because we had some cool nights.

Published
Categorized as Garden Tagged