Green Pepper

I’m drawing this with a scratchy dip pen with an F. Collins & Co. Tower Pen brass nib, made in Manchester. The elegant pen holder, which I bought in France, has a satisfyingly robust brass ferule at the business end and a dangerously sharp point at the end that is nearest your eye.

Tower Pen handwriting

I’m using Rohrer’s Black which, of course, isn’t as free-flowing as the inks that I use in my Lamy fountain pens but it has a dense ‘inky blackness’.

green pepper

It felt awkward drawing the pepper, as if I was drawing everything overhand. Perhaps if I’d been drawing it facing the other way, the curves would have felt more natural to draw: they might have sloped more naturally, like the slope of cursive handwriting.

Home-grown

But the scratchy line suited the wayward growth of the plant. I grew it from the seeds of a pepper from the supermarket, using our own home-made compost.

We’ve had only two peppers and we’ve used them green as they were showing no sign of turning yellow or red. They’re not as fleshy as the supermarket variety, but they’ve got more of a fresh crunch to them.

We grew peppers last year from seeds that a neighbour gave us. This year’s have a better flavour: last year’s were rather bitter, perhaps because of the weather or the variety.

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