My old Nike trainers draw with an AL-Star with a B nib, filled with De Atramentis black ink.
Nike Trainers
Tag: Lamy Al-Star
Backpacks
Drawn with a Lamy Al-Star pen, De Atramentis ink.
Little Black Journal
I’ve tried all three of my Lamy Safari pens – fine, extra fine and broad – on the 200 gsm acid free paper of my new sketchbook, a pocket-sized Derwent Black Journal, and the one that works best is the Lamy AL-star with the fine nib.
With a Bijou box of Winsor & Newton professional watercolours and a Kuretake water-brush, that’s all I need for my everyday drawing.
This is the sketchbook that I’ll use when I have the odd few minutes, such as before the Nat’s meeting starts or as we’re waiting for the train to set off.
I started off feeling that I should be bold in my sketches but the broad nibbed pen seems out of scale for the size of the page and the absorbent texture of the paper.
I can struggle even when I’m drawing the simplest chair. I started on a small scale as I drew the back of the chair then when I got down to the detail of the legs I found that I couldn’t fit them in. With a finer pen I could have incorporated the detail into the space available.
After the Flood
In mid-January we spent a day in York, which was still in the early stages of recovering from the Boxing Day floods. Crossing the flood plain between Church Fenton and York was like sailing across a lake. Mute swans and ducks had gathered on the downstream bay of the temporary lagoon to the south of the railway.
We walked half the circuit of the medieval walls but decided to leave the full tour until the weather and the paving stones dry up a bit.
It’s the first time that we’ve had lunch at the Georgian Assembly Rooms, now an Ask Italian, where I briefly sketched the plaster bas relief of a harp-playing putto riding on a lion. It’s worth coming back in the evening to see the place candlelit, the waitress told us.
As we walked out of the double glass doors of the Fenwick’s department store, opposite the Merchant Venturer’s Hall, at the Coppergate Centre, we were able to help a woman shopper who was trying to persuade a dunnock to leave.
Whichever of the doors she held open, it flew to the closed one and fluttered against the glass, so with Barbara on one door and the woman on the other, I acted as beater and stalked around the stairs to guide it out onto York’s Piccadilly.
Poinsettia
I drew the banana and poinsettia on a visit to Barbara’s brother’s. I decided that on this paper the brown Noodler’s ink didn’t seem crisp enough, probably because the paper is that bit more absorbent than the cartridge that I’m used to in my regular Pink Pig sketchbooks.
So I’ve come around to using my Lamy AL-Star with the fine nib, loaded with black Noodler’s ink. Whenever I have time, I like to add some suggestion of colour. I did have doubts that I’d be able to mix the grey of Barbara’s bag because of the way the colour picks up reflected light indoors but, when I got the sketch back into a good light, I found that I wasn’t so far out with my colour matching.
In daylight the bag takes on a neutral grey cast.
Crayons
On a walk through powdery snow at Langsett last week I didn’t bother taking my watercolours but, just in case, I put a credit card-sized wallet of children’s crayons in my pocket.
Not the ideal range of colours but better than nothing for giving a suggestion when I drew a bent-wood chair at the Bank View Cafe.
Link
Derwent pencils and sketchbooks
Lamy pens
Ask Italian, York
Drawing with a Lamy AL-star Fountain Pen
I got on well with the Lamy Safari with the extra fine nib that I bought a week or two ago so I’ve decided to go for the aluminium version of the Safari, the AL-star, this time with a slightly thicker Fine nib, to use for both writing and for drawing.
After writing ‘the quick brown fox . . .’ and ‘jackdaws love my sphinx of quartz’ a couple of times on an envelope and doing a couple of doodles I tried it on those perennial subjects, my hands and my feet.
Bulletproof Black
I’ve decided to stick to Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink in this pen. On the strength of these test drawings, I’m intending to use the pen for my Waterton comic strip project. It doesn’t lend itself to the Hergé Claire Ligne (clear line) technique which I so much admire but that’s not my natural style anyway, as I’m not as decisive and clear-thinking as Hergé.
I’m working with two very different comic strip artists on this project but we’re not aiming for a house style that is consistent across the three sections of the story. In fact the more my section looks like my own work the better.
Energy and Eccentricity
I’ve been reading my diary from forty years ago this month, in the summer of 1975, the year of my degree show at the Royal College of Art, and it reminds me of the energy that I used to put into my work. More energy than expertise, I’d say, I was waywardly ambitious, but there’s something charming about that, and the style lends itself to the energetic and eccentric Victorian character whose life I’m trying to evoke. I don’t want it to look like a facsimile Victorian naturalist’s notebook but I’m happy for it to have a rich, loosely cross-hatched ambience.
Links; Lamy pens at Pure Pens who supplied the pen and the Noodler’s ink.
Lamy AL-star pens and propelling pencils