To give the gatepost a black and white treatment, I marked the shapes of the shadows – the spot blacks as they’re called in comics – with an ‘x’, then filled in with a Pentel Brush Pen. Drawn using a Lamy nexx with a bold nib.
Gatepost
Category: Drawing
Hilary’s
Looking at Hilary’s cafe from the garden you can guess which was the original cottage and in what order the adjacent cottage, lean-to extensions and extensions of extensions were added.
Haversack
After my practice at cross-hatching using a dip pen on a tilted drawing board, I looked around for an object to draw and went for this Lowe Alpine haversack.
The wind has just changed from mild, from the mid-Atlantic, to cold from the north-east, so I sat with a latte to warm me up as I started this drawing at the Boathouse Cafe at Newmillerdam this morning. I used my Lamy nexx fountain pen but I think, now I’ve scanned them both in ‘text’ mode, pure black and white, that it would be hard to spot the difference between this and the dip pen in the haversack drawing.
The black areas were brushed in later from a photograph I’d taken on my phone, outlined with a Rotring Tikky Graphic pigmented ink pen and filled with a number 10 Prolene series 101 synthetic brush using the Rohrer’s india ink which I used with the dip pen.
Drawing Board
In Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden recommend drawing with your board angled at approximately 60 degrees. My old cast iron letterpress gives me just the right angle to prop the board against, which I’m resting on my knees. My parallel motion drafting board can’t be manoeuvred to that angle.
They also recommend always drawing with arm movements when you’re working in pen, so definitely not my the finger movements that I always go for in my detailed work. I’m going to try some of the exercises they suggest for getting used to working with a dip pen.
It’s going to take a lot of getting used to but I like the feeling of making marks on what feels to me like a near-vertical surface. Bristol board, also recommended in Abel & Madden’s book, doesn’t tear as I scratch away with my dip pen and it gives a crisp line with no bleeding into the fibres of the paper surface.
Link
Drawing Words & Writing Pictures website
Duck-feeders
I stuck to black and white at Newmillerdam this morning – a B-nib Lamy filled with De Atramentis ink and a Pentel brush pen.
When people are wearing bright yellow or blue, it’s tempting to add that as a flat wash but I’m experimenting with black and white for my werewolf comic, to create an inky gothic atmosphere.
Also as an experiment, I scanned these at 600 dpi (dots per inch) in ‘1 bit B/W’, reducing everything to either pure black or white.
Peasants from Flagey
For my werewolves project I need one or two French peasants who claim to have encountered a loup garou, so I’ve taken a look at Courbet’s Peasants from Flagey.
For the werewolf itself, I thought that the lean look of this wolf sculpture from Chatsworth might be the way to go.
Laburnum Stump
This morning I drew what remains of the old laburnum behind the aviaries at the top end of the Fish Pond (now more likely to be referred to as the Duck Pond) at Thornes Park.
Chestnut Stump
This sweet chestnut stump by the Lower Lake in the Pleasure Grounds at Nostell had been cut so that it created a Tolkeinesque throne.
Starting at the top of the drawing, I drew in pen then inked in the dark crevices using a Chinese brush but as I got onto the main trunk, I brushed in the darker areas first, then added the line.
Old Ossett Wall
There’s an old sandstone wall, a possibly reused beam, some handmade bricks and modern brick: this old outbuilding on Station Road, South Ossett, evidently has quite a history. Part of it was formerly a small stable, later a garage.
The old fashioned toilet roll holder still fixed to the modernish brick wall on the left is another clue.
Ash Roots
Ash roots grow over an old quarry face near the ice house at The Menagerie at Nostell.