Tag: Chinese brush

Inky Workings Out

pen, chinese ink and brush

I’m experimenting with pen and ink and Chinese ink and brush, partly to free up my drawing but also because there’s a possibility of an inky project coming up over the next few months.

Werewolves

It involves Victorian werewolves, so a pen with a Victorian nib would be appropriate and Chinese ink is unpredictable enough, especially in my hands, to add some gothic texture and mystery to the drawings.

werewolves

I can’t work out how a werewolf could wear a top hat but I don’t think a character like the sly fox Honest John in Disney’s Pinocchio is the way to go. I’ve been reading Isabel Greenberg’s Glass Town and The One Hundred Nights of Hero and I think something more in the realm of graphic illustration and European folk tales would suit the subject but I’ve also been reading up on Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit so I’m not discounting something more homely.

Pen, ink and brush drawing my Vivo Barefoot shoes.

The Water Margin

brush drawing

I’m reading James A. Michener’s The Hokusai Sketchbooks, so this morning at Newmillerdam, as a change from pen and watercolour, I’ve gone for Chinese brush and Noodler’s Black Ink.

Noodler's Ink and Chinese brushes

Lying in the lakeside mud beside me, was a freshwater mussel shell, so I used that as a suitably oriental-looking palette to mix my grey ink wash. I dipped my cup in the water and, as I started to paint, realised that I’d caught two small water creatures – water beetles perhaps – which I released unharmed at the end of my session.

close-up of brush drawing

I wonder if the granular quality of the wash is a characteristic of Noodler’s, or whether it was debris in the water.

drawing by the lake

In England, our school holidays have now started and the lakeside path was a bit busier than usual however, in this willowy backwater, I had this corner of floating world to myself. Just me and a few passing mallards and a coot that came ashore within a few feet of me, apparently oblivious of me until I moved.

It’s there in the bottom right-hand corner of my drawing.

Maris Peer

chitted potatoes

We left it too late to buy our Maris Peer second early potatoes last year, so we took no chances this year and got these on the back bedroom windowsill chitting two weeks ago.

Chinese brush chitting potatoes
Telephone Pen box

I found the Telephone Pen nib that I used scratchy and blotty, but that’s fine as I wanted an inky effect. Controlling my usual urge to add cross-hatching, I used a Chinese writing set to add the ink wash. The brush is made of goat’s tail hair.

It’s been a bad day for the local goats: they’re serving goat curry at the takeaway at the end of the road. It smelt delicious, but we haven’t been brave enough to try it yet.