Neighborhood Hatching

5/11/15 Iroshizuku Take-sumi and Fuyu-syogun inks, Pilot
Falcon fountain pen, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

I have to miss two ink-drawing classes while I’m traveling, so I wanted to practice one more hatched sketch before class tomorrow. Between errands, I stopped in my neighborhood where a very tall and graceful fir tree stands. I didn’t hatch quite as thoroughly as Van Gogh would have, but the size of the sketch (6 by 9 inches) was small enough that it took me only a little longer than my typical ink and wash/watercolor sketches do. The only place I couldn’t resist using a wash was the sky (which is dark gray and overcast today, on the verge of busting open), because I don’t like the way Van Gogh hatches clouds. (By the way, that car in the driveway isn’t mummified; it’s covered with a tarp.)

Hatching is really growing on me. It occurs to me that if I could get into shading with only hatching instead of having to wash the ink with a waterbrush, I could probably use just about any commercial notebook (as long as the paper didn’t bleed or feather too badly) and be liberated from making my own small catch-all notebooks. (Hmmm. . . can you hear my wheels turning?)