It was writing my Christmas cards that made me realise that my handwriting needed some attention, so I’ve been reading Teach Yourself Improve Your Handwriting by Rosemary Sassoon and Gunnlaugur SE Briem, and I’ve taken their advice to try another pen.
The Lamy nexx M94 is a bit larger than the regular Lamy Safari that I’m used to, with a rubber grip, which makes it particularly suitable for someone like me with large hands. I’ve gone for an F, fine, nib because I felt a larger size would make my writing a bit larger than I’m aiming for. The F nib will also be more suitable for drawing details in my sketchbook.
While I was ordering the pen and its filler from The Writing Desk, I went for a bottle of De Atramentis Document Ink in Brown. I’ve been using De Atramentis Black ink in all my pens recently, so going back to brown is intended to be a way of getting back into the habit of drawing from nature. The woodland subjects that I have in mind should work well drawn in brown.
Squirrel, Jay and Fieldfares
There’s no better time than the present to get started, so on our new regular walk around the Woodland Trail at Earnshaw’s Timber Yard at the top end of Coxley Valley, I got Barbara to buy the takeaway lattes and tiffins while I drew the view from the picnic table in one of the garden shelters in the displays there. As you can see, the De Atramentis Ink soon dries enough to allow me to add a quick watercolour wash.
I didn’t have time to add the watercolour wash to the sketch of the sycamore in the Cluntergate car park in Horbury, so I photographed the tree with my iPhone an added the colour later.
This morning as we entered the Woodland Trail, a sleek-looking grey squirrel dashed across the path in front of us, no doubt well-fed on the bumper crop of acorns we had this year. At the diagonally opposite corner at the top end of the wood, a jay flew to the top of the tallest oak, acorn in its beak, before flying off deeper into the wood.
Amongst the hollies which form the most conspicuous part of the shrub layer, great tits were checking out the branches, while blue tits, in the same mixed flock, worked the bare branches of the oaks above. Three brown birds shot out from the lower branches of the next group of hollies which we think were redwings, although we didn’t get enough of a look of them to be sure. I miss a lot of bird calls but Barbara heard a rattly ‘chack-chack-chack-chack’ call, like, as she described it, ‘like running a pencil along the corrugations of a wash-board’, so they might have been fieldfares.
Links
The Writing Desk fountain pen specialists
Gunnlaugur SE Briem design, handwriting, lettering.
Free Books by Gunnlaugur SE Briem on Operina