It’s Fountain Pen Day

11-3-16 inks, colored pencils

With my month-long focus on markers and brush pens during InkTober, I’ve been neglecting my beloved fountain pens, and I’ve missed them. In anticipation of today, international Fountain Pen Day, here are a couple of sketches I’ve done this week with my favorite Sailor Naginata fude pen (plus a few touches of dark orange leaves applied with a Pilot Parallel).

11-2-16 ink, colored pencil

In my sketchbook, the trees of each season seem best suited for a certain medium: spring and summer’s lushness seem to cry out for watercolors; this fall I reveled in colored pencils. The balding trees of winter, bleak as they may seem, take on new life when I can observe and appreciate their complex branching structures and elegant shapes with a fountain pen.