Into the Sun

2/23/16 brush pen, inks

Early yesterday morning, frost coated the windshields, but by noon it was warm enough to stand on the sidewalk for a sketch. Today the day began with no frost at all, and as I stood in Puetz Golf Shop’s parking lot this afternoon to sketch its vintage sign, it felt downright balmy. In both cases, I had to face the sun to get the compositions I wanted, which is obviously not ideal for sketching, but you know what? It felt so good to feel the sun that I didn’t care at all.

2/24/16 inks, colored pencils

49th World Wide SketchCrawl at Gates Foundation

10/24/15 inks

For the 49^th quarterly World Wide SketchCrawl, Urban Sketchers Seattle met at the Gates Foundation Visitors Center. This was my second visit there, and as I was last time, I was impressed by the varied ways in which the foundation is improving people’s lives around the world. So many things we take for granted, like having a flushing toilet, clean drinking water and contraception, are not easily accessible to many, many people. I always learn interesting things there, like the fact that smelly socks are used to trap and kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes!

10/24/15 colored pencils, watercolor, inks

Although the foundation is inspiring in many ways, I admit that I wasn’t particularly visually inspired for sketching subjects. After wandering around for a while, I settled on the Iron Lung, which also attracted several other sketchers. According to the video loop playing nearby (which, unfortunately, we sketchers all had to hear many times and probably memorized by the time our sketches were done!), a polio patient would have to spend two to three weeks inside the Iron Lung until they recovered enough to breathe on their own. A stand was attached so that the patient could read a book, but someone else would have to turn the pages. A mirror allowed them to “see the world around them.”

After that sketch, I found a window facing Fifth Avenue North and sketched several maples shedding leaves on the sidewalk. I also had fun using the selfie machine, which automatically projects the images onto the wall, with Michele and with my first sketch.

This Time, Color

10/22/15 inks, Zig marker

Eighth Northwest between Crown Hill and Ballard is the same street where I spotted and sketched my first urban couch just about a month ago. That time, I had gone there looking for some fall color but didn’t see much.

Today the trees didn’t disappoint. Most still have quite a bit of green, but they are certainly turning. Of course, this time of year, another sight is also certain: campaign signs.

By the way, what do you think of this photograph of my sketch taken onsite instead of my usual scanned images? Since I’ve been participating in Inktober, I’ve been shooting my daily ink sketches onsite so that I can upload them to social media easily and immediately. The images aren’t as clear as scans, but sometimes I like showing my subject in the background. Do you like this? Or would you prefer a scan?

Beating the System

10/19/15 Inks

When I drive down this street in my neighborhood during the summer, these five maple trees all look similar. Today each showed unique coloring patterns.

I’m no longer frustrated about having to limit my use of color for Inktober; I figured out how to beat the system. As I learned on Saturday, all it takes is having lots of pens and inks (both of which are in ample supply at my house.) Yes, this sketch would have been easier to do with watercolors, but getting all my color from inks is challenging (and fun) in a different way.

Rainy Craven Farms

10/18/15 ink, colored pencils

I’m starting to associate pumpkin farms with inclement weather. Three years ago Urban Sketchers Seattle met at Fall City Farms to sketch in the pouring rain. The year after, we met at Craven Pumpkin Farms in Snohomish, where I dressed in down jacket and tights and still shivered in the foggy cold.

This morning, again at Craven Farms, I was thinking we were finally going to break our streak of pumpkin farm bad weather luck. It had drizzled a bit on my way east out of Seattle, but by the time I set up my stool in front of an old truck surrounded by pumpkins (below), the rain had stopped and the temperature was mild. But no sooner had I started putting paint on, the rain began again – and this time it was solid rain, not drizzle. I stayed in denial a while longer – long enough for my watercolor technique to be called wet-on-wet.

10/18/15 Inks, colored pencils

I ducked into various shelters around the farm, including a hand-washing station tent filled with sketchers. I wasn’t too excited by the tree and gourd stands I could see from my spot in a leaky corner of the tent, so I moved on.

Thankfully, I wound up in the animal barn, where I wouldn’t have minded sketching a few goats and kittens, but I found something better: Dutch, the face painter. With a pumpkin-orange Mohawk, Dutch painted elaborately flourished butterflies, jack-o-lanterns and other images on the faces of young clients. He’s so fast that he finished several kids in the time it took me to do one sketch of him. I had so much fun that I moved around to the other side to do a second sketch.

Despite the weather, we had a good showing of USk Seattle, who aren’t daunted by a little rain. (We complain, but we aren’t daunted.)

10/18/15 ink, watercolor

10/18/15 inks, colored pencil

These warty pumpkins make my skin crawl!

Stone House Café

10/16/15 inks, watercolor, colored pencils

Tucked against the southern shore of Lake Washington is the Stone House Café, which is as literal an interpretation of its name as any café can be. Even the restroom incorporates the original stonework of a former service station built in the ‘20s. With indoor and outdoor seating decked out for Halloween, a full-service restaurant and a bakery, the Friday Urban Sketchers had plenty of choices this morning. First choice for most of us was coffee and some form of decadence from the bakery (I chose a pumpkin scone, but I drooled as cinnamon rolls, sticky buns and Danish passed by).

Suitably fortified, I warmed up with a sketch of the hacked-up tree across the street (below) – an ideal subject for #inktober and my Pilot Parallel pen. Despite the hack job, this tree seems to express a certain insouciance that I tried to capture.

By then the morning had warmed up along with my hand, so I settled in for the Big Kahuna: the Stone House Café building itself. Sue and I both liked the shadows on the north side of the building that highlighted the stone contours and the building’s high peaks (although looking into the sun for an hour wasn’t much fun).

Our thanks to the café staff for making us feel at home! For both indoor and outdoor sketching, the Stone House is a keeper.

10/16/15 inks

The Undead Live On in Maple Leaf

10/13/15 inks, colored pencils

To my relief and delight, I was wrong about the house on 80^th! Usually it’s all dressed up for Halloween by Oct. 1, but I guess the owner was just a little late this year. I walked by today, and several undead had taken up residence overnight. In past years, the decorations had been over the top with a few too many themes going on at once – aliens and movie monsters alongside witches, ghosts and skeletons. This time the yard was pared down to a select few on each side of the stairway. These two were my favorites. (Looking at my sketches, someone on Flickr once observed that everyone seems to wear hoodies in Seattle. It’s true – even the undead.)

Product Review: Pilot Waverly Nib

10/7/15 Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo ink, 140 lb. Fabriano
Studio cold-press paper (sketched from photo)

Several months ago I reviewed the Pilot Posting nib – a nib that doesn’t get much ink in the fountain pen blogosphere and, in my opinion, is highly under-rated. I’ve been happily using the amazingly fine yet smooth nib ever since. Filled with my favorite Platinum Carbon Black waterproof ink, it’s my go-to pen when I’m planning to use watercolor and want an unobtrusive, fine line. Heck, it’s been my go-to pen whenever I want the finest line possible for anything (filling out government forms with teeny, tiny spaces, for example).

Shortly before I started traveling so much in August, I had picked up a small tablet of Fabriano Studio 140-pound cold-press paper to try. It was easy to see that its surface has a much courser texture than the Canson XL cold press I’m used to. Stitching up a couple of signatures of it, I took the paper with me to San Francisco. While I enjoyed the course texture the paper imparts to both watercolor and colored pencils, what I didn’t like at all was how it felt to draw on it with a fountain pen. Even my Pilot Posting nib, smooth on every other paper, felt scratchy and sometimes stumbled over the surface. (I even started worrying that the paper’s texture would eventually damage the nib.) After I filled the signatures I’d stitched, I decided I didn’t like Fabriano Studio cold press enough to keep using it. I like using my fountain pens too much to let them fight with the paper each time I sketch.

10/7/15 ink, Stillman & Birn Epsilon sketchbook (Pilot Custom Heritage 912
with Waverly nib)

Somewhere around that time, I started thinking about the Pilot Waverly (coded WA in Pilot product codes) nib – yet another in Pilot’s amazingly wide selection of standard nibs. As with the Posting nib, I had first heard about the Waverly a long time ago, but I didn’t pay any attention to it because it is designed for use on course, bumpy or uneven paper. Since I had no intention of sketching on such paper, it wasn’t of interest. But I couldn’t help wondering, why in the world are people using fountain pens to write on course, bumpy paper? (An aside: The Posting nib was designed to be used on cheap, thin newsprint without feathering. While the rest of us scream and shout for notebook manufacturers to use fountain-pen-friendly paper, the Japanese simply redesign their fountain pen nibs to accommodate the crappiest, most unfriendly papers imaginable!)

That’s when my light bulb turned on: That Fabriano Studio cold press I had tried certainly qualified for course and bumpy (at least from a fountain pen’s perspective). Hmmm. . . maybe I had a use for a Waverly nib after all. With the current favorable US dollar/yen exchange rate, I found a Pilot Custom Heritage 912 with a Waverly nib from the vendor Bunkidou (which, by the way, continually impresses me with its fast service and carefully wrapped packages) on Rakuten for the best price I’ve seen.

10/7/15 Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo ink, Stillman & Birn Epsilon
(sketched from photo)

I’ve been using the Waverly for only a couple of weeks, but it’s fast becoming a new favorite. Why? Because it’s even smoother than the Posting nib, and almost as fine. My initial test sketches were on Stillman & Birn Epsilon paper, which is so smooth and pleasant that any fountain pen would skate over its surface, so that was hardly a test. But then I pulled out the paper that was as course and bumpy as any I would use – the Fabriano Studio cold press – and the Waverly skated right over that, too!

For line-width sizing, I compared it with my Pilot/Namiki Falcon/Elabo soft extra-fine (the finest nib I own) and my Pilot Posting nib (arguably just as fine as the Falcon). As you can see, the Waverly is a bit broader than either of them, so I still might choose the Posting nib or Falcon to fill out miniscule government forms. But the Waverly is certainly fine enough for my sketching needs, even for the cross-hatching I did on the tree frogs or the fine hairs on the young cheetah (both sketches at bottom of page). Turned upside-down, it’s definitely as fine as the Falcon, but then it gets uncomfortably scratchy, so I wouldn’t want to use it that way.

Unlike the Posting nib, which is as hard as the proverbial nail, the Waverly has some flex – not as much as the Falcon, but just enough to act as a shock absorber, I guess, as it goes over all those bumps in the road.

Waverly nib - front view

Waverly nib - side view

Seen from the side, the Waverly nib has a very slight curve away from the paper – exactly the opposite of the Posting nib, which hooks toward the paper like a claw. Maybe the curve’s rounded surface gives it just enough additional contact with the paper to keep it gliding smoothly. (Surprisingly, those two apparently opposite shapes – one curved away from the paper, the other curved toward it – both make extremely smooth contact with the paper.) I don’t know enough about nib mechanics to understand how the Waverly’s curve affects performance, but I guess I won’t care – it’s one heck of a design that apparently fulfills its intended purpose.

My only complaint about the Waverly? The same thing I complained about with the Posting nib: It’s hard to find one on any other body but the Pilot Custom Heritage 912, so that’s what I got – yet another black one (my third now). I don’t have anything against the pen body, which is comfortable and attractive enough. But it means that if I carry any two of them together in my bag (let alone three!), I can’t tell them apart. For now, I’ve peeled off the WA sticker that was on the side of the pen and stuck it to the top of the cap so that I can identify it easily – but that’s an esthetically distasteful solution. I’ll work on a better one.

10/7/15 (Pilot Waverly nib)

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the Waverly – a lot. Of the pen manufacturers I’m familiar with, Sailor easily takes the prize for having a huge line of innovative specialty nibs – but most are designed for stylish Asian calligraphy (and variable-line geeks like me), not for “normal” writing. For that, I have to hand it to Pilot for offering a wide variety of nibs useful to common writers – even ones that favor crappy, bumpy paper – which also benefit fountain pen sketchers like me.

Another black Pilot Custom Heritage 912 pen body -- identical to the two
I already own.

10/10/15 Platinum Carbon ink, 140 lb. Fabriano Studio cold-press paper
(sketched from photo)

10/7/15 Tsuki-yo ink, 140 lb. Fabriano Studio cold-press paper
(sketched from photo)

10/10/15 Platinum Carbon Black ink, colored pencil, 140 lb. Fabriano hot-press paper
(sketched from photo)

What Pens Have Taught Me

10/10/15 ink, colored pencil

Yesterday I complained that Inktober was making me crave color. Nothing in Inktober’s rules says that color can’t be added to an ink drawing, but using only ink in drawings I tag with #inktober is a self-imposed rule to keep myself from doing the same ol’ thing of making a line drawing and then adding color. (Actually, I’ve already broken that rule by adding colored pencils a couple of times. No point in having self-imposed rules if I’m not going to break them! 😀)

I have to say, though, that despite the color complaint, I am genuinely enjoying the challenge of focusing on ink this month. Although ink can be applied with a brush (and I’ve done that, too, a couple of times), the easiest way to use it is with a pen, and a pen by its very nature emphasizes line work over shape or color. I’ve known for a long time that drawing and line work are the elements that interest and engage me most when I’m sketching. I’m a draw-er more than a painter, so even when I miss color, I’m not necessarily missing paint.

10/9/15 ink

It will come to no surprise to you when I say I have plenty of pens to choose from, and I’ve inked up an entire arsenal of fountain pens for Inktober. My favorite Sailor fude pens are working as hard as ever, and now so are the Pilot Parallels. I’m also trying a pen with a new-to-me nib (no spoilers here – review coming soon!) that is quickly becoming a favorite.

I’m dusting off some techniques this month, too. For example, after my ink-drawing class ended in June, outdoor sketching weather began, and I couldn’t see myself hatching on location, so I haven’t done any since. But hatching is ideal for a rainy day like today, so I gave it a shot with the red-eyed tree frogs, above (from a calendar photo). My technique is rusty, but I haven’t forgotten how much I enjoy that kind of seemingly tedious work.

10/9/15 ink

During my first couple years of sketching, I thought that making a line drawing was only the preliminary step to ultimately painting or adding some other color medium. Yet many times I felt that I had ruined a relatively good drawing by adding mediocre watercolors; I should have left well enough alone!

The past year or two I’ve gradually come to realize that a drawing isn’t always a preliminary to something; if it’s strong, it can and possibly should stand alone. (In fact, a weak drawing will not be improved by the addition of color.) Of course, all I have to do is look at the drawings of Frank Ching, Paul Heaston, Don Colley, Van Gogh, Raphael and many, many other masters to know this, but somehow this plain truth hasn’t always been apparent to me, especially about my own work.

10/9/15 ink

While sketching pine and fir trees with paint has been an ongoing struggle for me, with a pen (especially those funky Parallels), it’s much easier to express the graceful (even if asymmetrical!) delicacy of their branches. For me, a pen is the right tool for that job.

When sketching people, I’ve long avoided adding more than spots of token color to hats or other clothing. That’s because early on I discovered that the more time I spend trying to get accurate skin tones with watercolor, the less I pay attention to drawing well and getting delicate facial and other contours right. And it didn’t take me long to realize that I wanted to focus on drawing people well, not painting them. Again, a pen is simply a better tool for what I want to express when I sketch a person.

10/8/15 inks, colored pencil

None of this is to say that I can live by pen alone (didn’t I start this blog post with a complaint about craving color?). It’s just my homage to a tool I’ve come to understand, use and respect more over time as it has helped me to express certain things I can’t express with other media. It’s not the only tool, but for me, it’s often exactly the right tool.

10/9/15 ink

10/9/15 ink

10/9/15 ink

10/3/15 ink

10/9/15 ink

Jonesin’

10/9/15 ink, watercolor

It’s Day 9 of Inktober, and I’m having lots of fun using this challenge as an opportunity to experiment with my vast collection of pens and inks (more on that in a future post). But October, with all of our trees in full color now, is a difficult time for using ink only. (Maybe I should initiate changing it to Inkcember or Inkuary when there’s no color to be seen J.)

After spending the morning at Zoka Coffee inking fellow coffee drinkers, I drove home jonesin’ for some color. I could have pulled over on just about any street for a fix; this is the one I chose. The two aspens in front had already dropped as many leaves as they were still hanging onto.

And so begins in-car sketching season!