Pink Vernal Equinox

3/20/15 Platinum sable brush pen, watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum colored pencils, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Rain was predicted all day. I’d planned to leave my car for servicing in the U-District and then look around at the Henry Art Gallery while I waited. As I walked to the gallery, though, the rain hadn’t yet started. I made a quick change of plans: the Quad’s cherry trees!

In full bloom, the Quad on the University of Washington campus makes you feel like you’re walking under a field of clouds made of huge fluffy blossoms. Two years ago when a freaky warm Saturday brought out crowds of hundreds to see the cherries, I remember wearing flip-flops as I sketched. Last year it was much colder – I shivered through my sketch and dashed through hail back to the car. 

This year I noticed something new: Signs asking visitors to help protect the venerable old trees by refraining from climbing them and shaking their branches. Moss covers their huge, knotty trunks.

Today the sky was overcast, but the temperature was mild. Pale pink petals snowed all around me. Eventually it did begin to rain, but not before I finished my sketch on this first day of spring.

Mossy

3/19/15 DeAtramentis Document Brown and Iroshizuku Fuyu-syogun inks,
watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum colored pencils, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Since an errand had brought me to the Capitol Hill neighborhood this afternoon, my intention afterwards was to head for Lake View Cemetery, where some large cherry trees stand. But on my way, I was stopped short by a whole block of trees that looked like this – cut off into multi-pronged stumps and covered with moss. I’ve occasionally seen trees like this in other areas, though usually not so many together. But Capitol Hill is home to some of Seattle’s oldest trees, so it’s not surprising to find some that have suffered disease. Whatever befell them, they are now a thriving habitat for moss, so it’s nice that they weren’t cut down all the way.

By the time I got to the cemetery, the clouds had turned dark and foreboding, and sure enough, it began to rain. 

A Top-Down Ride to Dibble

3/18/15 DeAtramentis Document Brown ink, watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencils, watercolor,
Zig markers, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

After sketching the cherries on Sunset Hill, I still had one more place I wanted to catch before the wind and rain blew the blossoms away – Dibble Avenue Northwest in the Greenwood neighborhood. About a block and a half of that street is illuminated with pale pink trees. Much younger than the ones on Sunset Hill, these trees have trunks that aren’t nearly as stout, but the branches are fuller, spreading all the way across the street.

The morning looked like rain, but by afternoon, the sun came out, and I knew it might be my only opportunity. I bundled up in two layers of Polartec and took the top down as I drove to Dibble. Most of the trees there had dodged utility wire butchering, but then I found this one, still glorious in its fleeting beauty.

When I returned to my car, the seats and floor were covered with petals from the trees I had parked under. Fleeting, indeed.

Fiber Optics is Coming to Maple Leaf

3/17/15 various inks, watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble
colored pencils, Zig marker, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

For the past several weeks, we’ve been seeing a lot of cherry-picker trucks and linemen in our neighborhood. No matter which way we turn, workers are blocking the way, diverting traffic or otherwise slowing things down. Greg finally walked over to one of the linemen last week to find out what’s going on, and apparently Centurylink is finally putting fiber optics in the area.

Coming home from a meeting this morning, I saw this crew at work on the Northeast 82^nd block of Fifth Northeast – and a parking spot on the cross street with an almost perfect view. Whenever these crews are in the way, they seem to take a long, long time, but today, while I was frantically trying to finish this sketch, they worked remarkably fast! Too fast, in fact, for me to get the details on the truck.

Oh, well – at least you heard it here first: Fiber optics is coming to Maple Leaf!

A Week Early

3/16/15 DeAtramentis Document Brown ink, watercolor, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Last year I waited until March 24 to sketch the cherry trees that line both sides of a street in the Sunset Hill neighborhood, making the block look like a pink fairyland. I remember the trees being very close to peak that day. I might have done better to wait another week, but since rain and overcast skies are predicted for the foreseeable future (in my world, that’s weather.com’s five-day forecast), and another high wind like last Saturday’s might take all the petals down overnight, I decided that I’d take my chances on this afternoon, especially since the sun was out.

Today, many trees still had buds nestled within the huge clusters of blossoms, but that didn’t take away from the amazing show these trees put on for such a short time each year. As a Japanese American, I’m generally not very Japanese, but seeing cherry blossoms does evoke the bittersweetness of their brevity – and that does make me feel Japanese.

A Rainy Morning at the Burke

3/15/15 Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored
pencils, Iroshizuku Asa-gao ink, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Planning a sketch outing in March is always iffy. Chances are good that it will rain, so scheduling an outdoor location would be pushing our luck. But chances are just as good that it will be warm and dry enough to sketch outdoors. At the Burke Museum on the University of Washington campus, we could hedge our bets: If the sun shone, the cherry blossoms on the Quad would be irresistible. If it rained, the Burke would be full of sketchable treasures.

I can safely say that all 20+ (maybe close to 30?) Seattle Urban Sketchers chose to sketch inside the Burke this morning, resulting in many delightful sketches of dinosaurs and human history artifacts.

By now I think I’ve sketched all of the Burke’s complete animal skeletons in the regular exhibits (someday I’ll finish every skull, femur and other individual bones), including the enormous mastodon. The first time I sketched it was nearly two years ago (which, according to my blog that day, was one of the first sketches made with my now-favorite Sailor fude pen). About a year ago, I sketched just its head and amazing tusks.

3/15/15 Caran d'Ache Museum pencils, Iroshizuku Asa-gao ink

Today I spent the bulk of my time sketching a slightly different angle of the mastodon, and instead of my favorite pen, I tried colored pencils. As usual, I didn’t scale my sketch accurately, so I ran out of room for its feet! Like the time I sketched the stegosaurus and had to put its tail tip on a separate page, I decided to start a new sketch and give the mastodon’s feet equal time.

To kill the last 20 minutes before our sharing time, I went out to the main reception area to sketch a long view of the Paraphysornis brasilienis. It may be one of my favorite prehistoric skeletons at the Burke; with a nickname like “Terror Bird of Brazil,” who could resist?

Many thanks to the Burke Museum for sponsoring Seattle Urban Sketchers’ visit today!

3/15/15 Diamine Sargasso Sea ink, Caran d'Ache Museum pencil

Epic Pen Search and Discovery, Part 8: Sailor 1911 Profit with Zoom Nib

1/21/15 Platinum Carbon ink, Van Gogh watercolors,Stillman & Birn
Alpha sketchbook

(This is part of a multi-post series about my ongoing search for the ultimate variable-line-width fountain pen. To read other posts in the series, choose “Epic Pen Search” in the label cloud at right, below.) 

The Sailor zoom nib is a strange animal. It’s not temperamental like the Sailor music nib I reviewed last week, nor is it as bold and elegant as the Platinum music nib from the week before. As close to the Sailor fude nib as anything I’ve used, in both line variation and operation, the nib can make a hair-fine line when held nearly perpendicular to the paper that widens gradually as the angle to the paper is narrowed. At my normal writing angle, the line stroke isn’t quite as broad as the Platinum music nib; it’s probably closer to the Sailor’s music (see the skull of Kennewick man, sketched from a photo in the Smithsonian magazine, below). By contrast, the fude held at a normal writing angle renders a slightly finer stroke. At its broadest, it’s close to the fude’s widest line.

1/21/15 Private Reserve Velvet Black ink, S&B Alpha

Although the motion that the nib requires to change its angle and therefore its line width is somewhat intuitive to me (since I’ve grown accustomed to the fude), it looks more like a “normal” nib (unlike the fude’s dramatically bent tip), so sometimes I forget that I can change its angle while using it. I’m not in love with it, but it’s definitely growing on me. I especially like using it to sketch bare trees, below (see a larger version of this sketch).

One thing I noticed right away is that – unlike the fude or most of the other nibs I’ve tried recently – the zoom’s upside-down stroke is scratchy and unreliable. It seems to be saying, “Don’t hold me upside-down, you idiot – don’t you know how to use a fountain pen properly?” If a nib talks to me, I listen; I don’t use this one upside-down.

Writing samples made with Sailor zoom nib.

On the other hand, I don’t have to. When held in the nearly perpendicular position, the nib produces a very fine line that’s even finer than the fude’s finest upside-down stroke. You can see the finest strokes in the whiskers and hairs on the arctic fox cub sketched from a calendar photo and the man’s hair, below (see a larger version of him at Zoka Coffee).

Here’s the tricky part, though: While the fude’s finest stroke (right-side up or upside-down) is smoothest when going side to side, the zoom’s finest stroke is most pleasantly made on the downstroke. I’m finding that switching from the fude to the zoom is something like getting a new purse: They both work for all the same functions, but I keep forgetting which pocket holds the keys. I’m sure I’d have better results if I stuck with one or the other. (Nearly impossible for a fickle sketcher like me.)

2/11/15 Platinum Carbon ink, Sailor zoom nib,
Fabriano 140 lb. hot press paper

I was pleased to discover that, unlike the Pilot Falcon nib, the zoom seems to put out a normal flow (rather than a fire hose stream), so when I use it with Platinum Carbon ink, I don’t have to worry that it won’t dry by the time I’m ready to use watercolor.

Worth mentioning about the pen’s body: Some call the Sailor 1911 Profit Standard’s cigar-shaped style “classic.” I call it “plain black fountain pen.” It’s clean and sleek, but there’s nothing distinctive about it, and it looks like the plain black fountain pen with a cigar shape that nearly every pen manufacturer has a model of. I didn’t know it before I started this Epic Search, but it turns out that I prefer a slightly larger and heavier pen body, such as the Platinum 3776 (see that review for more comments on this subject). 

2/12/15 Platinum Carbon ink, Sailor zoom nib

My Epic Search so far has included the Pilot Falcon, Platinum music, Sailor music and now Sailor zoom nibs. These are all nibs I researched carefully and at length before purchasing. Although I began the series with the statement, “Impulse buying is not something I’m known for,” at some point in my quest, I took a more spontaneous as well as adventurous turn. A few chance threads in the Fountain Pen Network Facebook group opened up a whole new world of “Frankenpen” modifications that began with an incredibly low-priced Jinhao . . . (stay tuned next week).

(Just in case it’s not obvious, unlike many blogs that review fountain pens, my blog has no sponsors or affiliates. Every pen I mention here was purchased by me at retail price.)

2/9/15 Sailor Tokiwa-matsu ink, Sailor zoom nib pen, Baron Fig
notebook (from a Smithsonian magazine photo)

2/9/15 Sailor Tokiwa-matsu ink, S&B Alpha
(from calendar photo)

1/24/15 Sailor Tokiwa-matsu ink, Sailor zoom nib pen, Baron Fig notebook
(from calendar photo)

1/24/15 Sailor Tokiwa-matsu ink, Sailor zoom nib pen,
Clairefontaine notebook (from calendar photo)