Tag: Lamy Safari

Pen Pots

pen pots

A bit of practice before I go out drawing figures on location next week. I want the speed of drawing I can get by drawing in fountain pen rather than with an Apple Pencil on the iPad.

Lamy Safari fountain pen

I’m using a Lamy Safari filled with a Lamy Black cartridge, which I find flows slightly more freely than the waterproof De Atramentis. But the Lamy Black doesn’t dry waterproof, so I’m adding colour to the scanned drawing in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad.

Flat colour isn’t as subtle as watercolour but in this case that’s not what I’m after; it’s supposed to be a simpler graphic element – along the lines of a lino cut – to contrast with the busy-ness of the pen line.

Those scribbled initials are my colour notes, which I’m leaving in place to give a bit of animation to the drawing.

Basildon Bond

It’s that time of the month again, when I put together my Wild Yorkshire sketchbook spread for the Dalesman magazine. I’m pleased with the way that the illustrations have come together but, for the lettering, I’m going for a slightly different technique.

Last month, I found that the Noodler’s ink that I use, which is waterproof when dry, was taking a surprisingly long time to dry on layout paper.

Even when I came back to my work after a break, there was still a danger that I’d smear a carefully hand-lettered heading or paragraph

I’ve switched to ordinary, non-waterproof Lamy fountain pen ink, which usually dries in minutes and instead of layout paper I’ve gone for a classic letter-writing paper, Basildon Bond, which is a pleasure to use: after all that is what it was designed for. It’s more substantial than layout paper, which gives me a feeling of confidence, something that I need when I attempt my neatest lettering with my waywardly shaky hand.

Once I get into the rhythm of lettering, I enjoy it. It just when I’m getting started that I’m a bit stuttery.

The pad comes with a pre-ruled backing sheet with lines that are at just the right spacing when I write with a Lamy Safari with a medium nib.

Links

Lamy Safari

Basildon Bond

Dalesman magazine

 

Walking Sandals

sandalsYesterday was the hottest of the year so far, a chance to wear sandals again.

Drawn with my Lamy Safari fountain pen with the broad nib, as I wanted a bold inky line. I went for an A4 sketchbook, larger than the sketchbooks that I normally take on location because I didn’t want to start putting in detail, and consequently tending to work larger, and then find that I was running off the edge of the page.

Lamy Safari with Z24 converter and broad nib, filled with Noodler's Black ink.
Lamy Safari with Z24 converter and broad nib, filled with Noodler’s Black ink.

I was going to add colour but then decided that I like the line just as it is. The everyday but for me rather challenging subject brings back memories of art homework from school days: going back to the rudiments of drawing.

Little Black Journal

black journalI’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.black journal

 

chairWith 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.

Leeds station 13116I 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

From the train near York

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.

gulls over the floodputtoIt’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.
dunnockWhichever 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

poinsettiapepperpotI 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.

bannana

labrador

canvas bagSo 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.

charity box

Crayons

bent-wood chairiPadOn 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.

crayonsNot 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

Black Freighter, Yellow Pen

poachers, Lamy Safari penfisticuffsBlack humour, everyday characters but real menace; that’s just the atmosphere that I’m looking for in my battle with poachers scene for the Waterton comic. This morning I’m getting a bit of inspiration from Radio 3; Lotte Lenya singing Pirate Jenny from Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, lyrics by Bertolt Brecht. Jenny, the much put upon maid in a ‘crummy hotel’ conjures up a ‘Black Freighter’ with 50 long cannons and a pirate crew running into hundreds to reek her dreadful revenge on the entire town, with the exception of her ‘crummy hotel’.

fight sceneIt’s funny but chilling and there’s a mischievous, improvised quality to the performance. I feel that I can learn from it by aiming to build a feeling of menace in a situation that has an underlying ridiculousness. Hitchcock did that so well. The poachers episode of the Waterton story has elements of the petty villainy of Bill Sykes but also of Laurel and Hardy slapstick. Not to mention Brecht’s Mack the Knife.

In these eight panels of the comic strip, Charles Waterton risks being shot, stabbed and strangled but, at the end of the tussle, he and the poacher end up with each other’s hats. Which is what really happened.

Lamy Safari Broad Nib

Lamy Safari with Z24 converter and broad nib, filled with Noodler's Black ink.
Lamy Safari with Z24 converter and broad nib, filled with Noodler’s Black ink.

I ordered a yellow pen so that I don’t confuse my new Lamy Safari with the three Safaris and the AlStar that I’m already using. I’ve gone for a broad nib because I feel that the foreground figures need to stand out more.

lamy fine and broad nibs
As you’d expect, the broad nib is freer flowing than the fine.

I like the bolder look so much that I use it for the whole scene. In my first attempt at adding the shadows to one of the frames I went for a traditional woodcut look in which is areas of black are surrounded by hatching (below, left). But I’m not totally comfortable with this style as I don’t have a background in printmaking.

Woodcut versus Hatching

Hatching and cross-hatching.
Hatching and cross-hatching.
Woodcut effect.
Woodcut effect.

What I’m used to is sketchbook drawings which involve no forward planning, other than deciding where to start on the page. I like to pick up a pen start making marks. This may produce a fussy effect that the preplanned graphic crispness of the woodcut style, but it can also give a more improvised look.

It’s a rather naive way of working, one which reminds me of Glen Baxter’s parodies of literal Boys Own Paper style drawings of unlikely misadventures. That seems appropriate for Charles Waterton’s Quixotic adventures, provided that I can keep a hint of menace running through it.

Too Long a Winter

trainersEVERYONE IS getting fed up about the winter. It might not have been the worst but it seems to have gone on for so long, especially as it stretches back to merge almost imperceptibly with a long wet summer.

walletBut it doesn’t have to stop me drawing. I grab the nearest pen, the Lamy Safari that I like to write with and draw whatever happens to be around me. The only thing that I rearrange is my pair of trainers, taking them out from under the coffee table and setting them at what for a human sitter you’d call three-quarter face.

It’s surprising how fascinating familiar objects can be when you really look at them. Different types of trainers seem to have different expressions. Tongues, eyes and a hint of a smile give them an individual character that you’ve got to draw with as much care as you would a face. They even have a sole.

bowlThis is the first drawing that I started this evening. As you can see it took me a while to get into drawing. To me this looks rather stilted and awkward but perhaps that’s because the bowls and the vase are standing around like the guests at a party that hasn’t quite got off the ground yet.

I soon realised that the cartridge was running out so popped upstairs for a refill.

bookshelfAccording to a Horizon documentary that I watched last week the optimal way to increase your creativity is to take on a task which is moderately demanding. Sitting there doing nothing doesn’t free up the creative side of your brain as you might think it would do and nor does getting involved in a task that demands all your concentration.

So drawing a bookshelf, with those repetitive but slightly different shapes, must put you in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone for creativity when you’re drawing. Not too demanding but sufficiently engaging to get the creative parts of your brain ticking over.