An Urban Sketching Event at the Burke

4/18/15 Sailor Doyou  and Iroshizuku Kiri-same inks,
Caran d'Ache Museum colored pencil, Canson XL

Urban Sketchers Seattle enjoyed sketching at the Burke Museum so much in March that we went back for more. This time we were invited by the Burke to create an event that would encourage other visitors to sketch at the museum, too. The Burke provided sketching materials and a clothespin line where participants could hang their work. It was tough competing with 65 degrees and sunshine outside, but the museum managed to entice a few visitors indoors.

As usual, I spent most of my time hanging out with the bones – a sabertooth cat, a polar bear skull, and my favorite, the Brazilian Terror Bird. I also captured a girl sketching at a table near our clothesline “exhibit.”

Thanks to all the sketchers who volunteered today, and many thanks to the Burke for inviting us to this event! (For more photos of the event, see my post on the USk Seattle blog.)

4/18/15 Diamine Chocolate Brown and Iroshizuku Kiri-same inks, Museum pencil

4/18/15 Iroshizuku Asa-gao and Iroshizuku Tsukushi inks, Museum pencils

4/18/15 Caran d'Ache Museum pencil,
mix of gray inks

4/18/15 Iroshizuku Take-sumi and Kiri-same inks, colored pencil, copier paper
(I left this sketch of a skull fragment hanging in our "exhibit"!)

Chilly Morning at Fremont Coffee

4/10/15 Platinum brush pen, Iroshizuku Kiri-same ink,
Caran d'Ache Museum colored pencil, Canson XL paper

After yesterday’s delightful teaser of spring, today was a cruel joke. I think all of us who gathered at Fremont Coffee Company this morning for the ad hoc sketch outing were hoping to sketch outdoors, but those of us who tried came back inside pretty quickly. It was a bit cold and blustery.

It had been a year and a half since the last time the Friday sketchers met there, and my first sketch was a redux of the same view of the front counter that I had attempted that time. Previously a house, Fremont Coffee is full of small rooms to hide away in or look through doorways into other rooms – a good view for my second sketch.

Fully nourished by the world’s biggest chocolate croissant, I ventured out to the front porch, which provided enough shelter from the wind to make a quick sketch of a tree on the sidewalk and a potted bamboo plant. (I think the Japanese brush pen I used was made for sketching bamboo leaves! I try not to carry too many single-purpose pens, but it’s hard to resist this one. I guess it just means I have to look for more bamboo trees to sketch.)

4/10/15 Iroshizuku Asa-gao ink, Museum pencil

4/10/15 Sailor Doyou and Iroshizuku Kiri-same inks, Museum pencils

Nearly Topped-Out Tulips on a Cold April Day

4/6/15 watercolor, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

If you live in Seattle, you can drive for an hour in any direction for a sketching adventure. Saturday I went south to sketch with Urban Sketchers Tacoma. Today I went north to sketch the tulip fields with the Anacortes Sketchers!

4/6/15 Sailor Doyou ink, Duke fude pen,
Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Usually at this time of April, the tulips are barely at their peak. (Two years ago when I sketched the tulips with the Anacortes Sketchers, it was two weeks later than this.) But they bloomed so early this year that many fields had already been topped, and the last of them were going to be topped this week. Despite the cold and gloom this morning, I knew it was my last chance. I wanted to get back home before rush hour, though, so I asked Michele if she wanted to meet me an hour earlier than the group. We managed to nab a couple of great parking spots facing the fields – and those spots came in very handy later for in-car sketching after we froze for the first couple of hours!

After a lunch break, Michele and I roamed around Christianson’s Nursery and came upon a couple of llamas and sheep. The llama we both chose to sketch had the worst underbite ever!

On my drive to the fields, I pulled over to catch a glimpse of a huge flock of snow geese that stops over in LaConner each year during their migration. I thought they had gone by now, so it was a special treat. From the distance, they looked like a field of white tulips.

4/6/15 watercolor, Strathmore 400 140 lb. paper

Workers top the remaining tulips in LaConner. We had to sketch fast before
the flowers disappeared!

Snow geese snacking during their migration.

Many thanks to the Anacortes Sketchers for hosting a great outing!

Urban Sk-egg-ing in Tacoma

4/4/15 various inks, colored pencil, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

It had been ages since I visited the Washington State History Museum, so when Urban Sketchers Tacoma invited Seattle sketchers to join them this morning for a group-rate discount, I jumped at the opportunity.

This museum is the kind of place where I felt torn between lingering in the exhibits to take in my native state’s rich cultural and industrial heritage – or sketch. You can probably guess which I chose, but it was a difficult choice. My first sketch was part of an exhibit on Native American culture – an interpretive display of a woman teaching a young girl how to basket-weave. While I sketched, I listened to the audio program about how the craft has been handed down from one generation to the next.

4/4/15 various inks, colored pencils

For my next sketch, I went upstairs to find a view of the main floor gallery’s exhibit of the aerospace industry. That’s when I spotted Stevie – a tiny dot dwarfed by the framework of a plane’s fuselage looming over the space. (The dude at left is not real; I think he represented an airplane manufacturing worker.)

By that time the morning had warmed up a little, so I went out to do two iconic Tacoma sketches from just outside the history museum: Union Station and the Museum of Glass’s conical building. These Urban Sk-eggs took a little planning – namely, I had to bring my support materials in a cooler!

Happy Easter!

4/4/15 Copic Multiliner SP pen and colored pencil on Grade AA egg

4/4/15 Copic Multiliner SP pen on Grade AA egg

Product Review: Duke 209 Fountain Pen with Fude Nib

4/3/15 Sailor Jentle Doyou ink, Duke 209 fude pen, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

A few weeks ago Parka Blogs wrote a comparison video review of no less than nine fountain pens with fude nibs. (Actually it’s only seven pens, since three have the identical nib.) I mentioned in the finale of my Epic Pen Search and Discovery series that I had tried nearly all of the same nibs, and interestingly, Teoh Yi Chie and I had come to opposite conclusions. (To each his own, especially where sketching pens are concerned!)

Duke 209 fountain pen with fude nib

Lines made with Duke 209 fude nib

The one fude nib I had yet to try was from Duke. I wasn’t interested in the humongous Duke 551 Confucius model, which has a range of particularly broad strokes. But the more conventional Duke 209 piqued my curiosity. I didn’t have high expectations; I’d already been disappointed more than once by Chinese fude nib pens. But “completist” that I am, I couldn’t resist trying the Duke, just so that I would know I had used them all. For $9 on e-Bay, the price was right, too.

The pen body’s girth is more slender than I like in a fountain pen – my preference is that of the slightly heavier and stouter Platinum 3776 Century – but it’s nicely balanced. It has a clean matte finish that I like, both in texture and appearance. But after posting the cap only once, the matte surface became a bit scratched and marred. (No telling how bad it will look with regular posting.) The cap does post securely, however, and that’s mission-critical for me.

The Duke fude nib curves gradually . . . 

The first thing visibly noticeable about the nib is that it is gradually curved rather than bent (the way my cheap Sailor “calligraphy” fude nib is). Teoh Yi Chie points out that this makes the Duke smoother and less likely to railroad (which can happen when the Sailor nib is angled too flat, and the feed’s edge hits the paper). I haven’t had the railroading issue with my old Sailor, but I knew from trying out the Sailor with the 21kt gold fude nib, which is similarly curved rather than bent, that the curve does make that transition smoother, so I was very curious about how the Duke would perform. I filled the Duke’s converter with Sailor Jentle Doyou ink and took it to Zoka Coffee for a spin.

. . . while the Sailor "calligraphy" fude nib is bent sharply.

After one sketch, I was already impressed by its smoothness and easy transition from its thinnest to thickest strokes. Turned upside-down, the nib is as fine as my Sailor, but at its broadest, it might be slightly broader – a terrific, versatile range.

By the middle of my second sketch, my heart was thudding: With a nib as good as the Sailor’s – possibly even better because of that gradual curve – and a securely posting cap, could I have ended my Epic Search one pen too soon? Could this $9 Duke ordered on eBay be my real grail? But if it is – what of the 21kt gold Sailor fude already being made for me in Hiroshima? Is my carefully examined investment nothing but a foolish travesty??

With these thoughts spinning through my head, I set the uncapped pen down and paused to sip my coffee and munch a few bites of scone. A moment later, I picked up the pen to continue – and the backside of the tip was dry. I had to scribble around a bit to get the ink flowing again. (Hmmm, that’s odd. . . I put my uncapped pens down for a moment all the time, and they never go dry in such a short time.)

4/3/15 Sailor Jentle Doyou ink, Duke 209 fude pen

By this time, I was ready to put some shading on part of the sketch, so I pulled out my waterbrush. At this stage of a sketch, my habit is to transfer the uncapped pen to my right hand while using the waterbrush with my left, and when I need a bit more ink, I switch back again. I like to keep both instruments handy and uncapped. I do this so routinely with my old Sailor and all my pens that I don’t even think about it. What I discovered about the Duke is that in the short time that I had been applying water, the nib had gone dry again.

A-ha! A flaw – a rather large one. Not a fatal one – I could probably learn to get used to and put up with the quick dry-out if it means using that wonderfully smooth fude nib. But with a flaw like that, it’s definitely not the grail.

Whew!

Incidentally, you know from my other fountain pen reviews that, unlike some bloggers, I don’t discuss or photograph the packaging that a pen comes in. (I guess for some people, the whole presentation is important. I usually couldn’t care less what the box looks like; several recent pen purchases from eBay and Amazon have come in nothing more than bubble wrap.) In the case of this Duke, however, I have to show it because it’s so strange. What does Jackson Pollock have to do with a fude fountain pen? Branding on the box includes the words, “Jackson Pollock USA 1919.” Curious, I Googled those words as well as “Jackson Pollock fountain pen” to see if it was a pen distributor or somehow otherwise related to pens, but nothing came up. Interestingly, the box I received is not the same as the one pictured on eBay of the product I ordered. I’m guessing the box was swapped out by the reseller.

The Duke pen's "Jackson Pollock" box.

P.S. I’ve used Sailor Doyou ink sporadically since I bought it several months ago, but mostly for writing, not sketching. It’s a much darker, cooler brown than Diamine Chocolate Brown, which has been my favorite sketching brown ink for a long time. That may be about to change – I love Sailor Doyou! It goes on nearly black, then washes beautifully to a rich, velvety shade. 

Updated 4/25/15: The Duke 209 seems to have almost no idle-time tolerance at all. After a day or two without using it, it's dry as a bone, and no amount of scribbling can get it going again.

Updated 4/16/16: A year later, I got in the mood to give this pen another chance. Maybe with a different ink, the idle-time and drying-out issues would improve. I'd forgotten about the other reason I had stopped using it the first time: It leaks to high heaven! What a mess! It's going in the trash.

4/3/15 Sailor Jentle Doyou ink, Duke 209 fude pen