Sun Break

12/22/15 inks

Despite dire warnings of more rain due this afternoon (and the possibility of snow by Christmas), I daresay I saw blue sky early this morning between the gray clouds! Our thermometer read 39 F, so I cranked up the heat in the car (including the seat heater) and drove up the hill to the Crown Hill neighborhood, where I’d spotted this tree last week on my way to Swanson’s. After I turn off the engine, my tiny car stays comfortable for about 15 minutes – just long enough for this sketch.

More Selfies

12/12/15 brush pen

12/16/15 Autodesk Sketchbook

It’s been self-portrait weather almost continually the past couple weeks. I’ll spare you the really scary ones, but here are a couple, including my first digital selfie. 

Product Review: Sailor 1911 with Cross Point Nib

11/24/15 The Sailor 1911 with Cross Point nib.

I’ve been back from Japan for four weeks now, and I’m finally ready to reveal my one extravagant splurge (which I alluded to discreetly in my Tokyo shopping post . . . did you catch it?): the Sailor 1911 with a Cross Point nib!

You may recall that I attended the L.A. International Pen Show last February, where I spent quite a bit of time at John Mottishaw’s (Nibs.com) booth trying out Sailor’s specialty nibs. I was 95 percent sure I wanted the Sailor Naginata fude, which I had been thinking about for a long time. But I wanted to try all the other Sailor nibs anyway, just in case something else turned my crank.

Line-width variation of the Cross Point compared to the fude. (Stillman & Birn
Epsilon paper)

Indeed, a few other nibs caught my attention, and one in particular was a strong contender to the fude: Sailor’s Cross Point. While similar to the fude in operation, which requires tilting at various angles to the paper to achieve a varying line width, the Cross Point doesn’t have to be tilted at quite the extreme angles as the fude – but also doesn’t have quite as wide a line range. Its finest point isn’t as fine as the fude’s, but turned upside-down, it’s comparable. What attracted me the most, though? The Cross Point was even smoother than the fude! In fact, John’s sample fude seemed downright scratchy by comparison. (The fude I ended up purchasing, however, was as smooth as glass.)

Ultimately, the Naginata fude’s remarkable line range still impressed me more, and that’s the pen I finally bought from Nibs.com a few week later. But I never forgot about that Cross Point.

Itoya's fountain pen store.

Fast-forward to several months later when we began planning our fall trip to Japan. I contacted sketcher Mike Daikubara (my original fude inspiration) to find out where I’d have the best luck shopping for Sailors in Tokyo. (Check out his recent blog post about his own Sailor shopping adventures! Have a drool at all the pens he got to test!) He recommended Itoya, an elegant, 12-story stationery and design store in Tokyo’s Ginza shopping district. Fountain pens are such an important part of Itoya’s inventory that they were recently moved to a separate building around the corner. My pulse already raced – and I still had several months to wait before our trip!

As I waited, the Sailor Cross Point was still on my mind. At Itoya, I intended to try out several other nibs, but the one I really wanted to re-test was the Cross Point. Would it still strike me as a special nib? Or had that been nothing more than a momentary distraction in the fervor of the L.A. Pen Show?

Sometimes when I think about something I want (or might want) for too long, once I get my hands on it, I can’t test it objectively – I’ve already decided I’m going to buy it. Fortunately, in this case, despite the very favorable yen/dollar exchange rate, the Cross Point’s price made it a serious purchase, so I was still thinking fairly clearly. In addition, my life got so busy in the ensuing months that I nearly forgot about the pen (I said nearly, not completely).

Jewelry does nothing for me. . .but this pen case at Itoya?
Be still my heart!

Testing the Cross Point.

By the time I got to Tokyo’s Ginza shopping district in November, I was excited about the prospect of seeing all those pens at Itoya, but I felt I was objective enough to make a sound decision. I tested the Cross Point at the counter in several ways – writing, scribbles and especially a few quick sketches – and it quickened my pulse as much as it had in L.A. I think it’s the combination of smoothness along with line variation – the two attributes in any fountain pen that get my attention – that makes it special.

My camera wasn't able to capture the color accurately.
It's not black -- it's burgundy red.

The pen body is the 1911 “full size” – exactly the same body as my Naginata fude, except in a shiny burgundy red color instead of matte black. A matching leather pen case came with it, but I don’t baby any of my pens, so I dropped the naked pen into my bag right next to all the rest of my pens on the trip.

The nib’s face is attractive enough, but it’s not until you turn it to its profile that you see what makes it distinctive and unique. Unlike the fude, which is curved on both the top and bottom, the Cross Point is flat on top but anvil-shaped on the surface that meets the paper.  

Top of Cross Point nib

The Cross Point's distinctive profile

Inked with a blue-black Sailor cartridge that also came with the pen, it got a good workout at Ueno Park the next day and sporadically the rest of the trip. After I got home, I put it to work at Drawing Jam. Like the Naginata fude, the Cross Point puts out a heavy stream of ink, so I especially like using it with water-soluble ink that I intend to wash for shading. And as I had intended all along, the nib’s variable line is especially conducive to sketching people, animals and other subject matter with more fluid, organic lines. That said, it also gave me a strong, inorganic line on the utility pole I sketched in the Asakusa neighborhood.

A tiny bag from the Itoya store!

During my “honeymoon” with the new Cross Point, I started wondering if I love this nib even more than the fude. But then I’ll use the fude, and I realize that each has different, unique attributes. You can’t ask me to choose which child I love more.

12/3/15 inks, Stillman & Birn Epsilon (from photo)

12/5/15 ink, 140 lb. watercolor paper

11/27/15 ink, 140 lb. watercolor paper

12/5/15 ink, 140 lb. watercolor paper

11/11/15 ink, colored pencils, 140 lb. watercolor paper

11/10/15 inks, colored pencil, 140 lb. watercolor paper

11/11/15 inks, colored pencil, 140 lb. watercolor paper

Swanson’s Nursery and Record-Breaking Santa

12/18/15 ink, colored pencil

12/18/15 ink, colored pencil

Spreading out our sketchbooks to share this afternoon, I remarked to some of the other Friday sketchers that an innocent viewer looking at our sketches would be hard-pressed to guess where we were. Reindeer? Diners in a café with huge ferns and palms? A camel? A koi pond? Santa? A troll? Not to mention model trains (which I never even got to today). Swanson’s Nursery has something for everyone, and that’s why Urban Sketchers Seattle has returned there every holiday season.

As I have in the past, I began the morning outside with Blitzen and Dasher, the two reindeer who take up residence at Swanson’s for the holiday season each year, and their buddy Curley, the camel. Although I’ve sketched all three of them every year (see 2014, 2013 and 2012), I still struggle with getting the scale of the reindeers’ antlers right. They are so enormous that I sometimes end up sketching them right off the page.

By the time I finished them, I was chilled to the bone, so I went into the café to warm up. Even without the eggnog latte, I would have been warmed by the café’s tall palm fronds and other tropical plants that evoke a sunny climate.

12/18/15 ink, colored pencils

All of that alone would have made for a perfectly fun sketch outing. What could have possibly improved on it? Santa! As I was finishing up my café sketch, I heard him ho-ho-ho-ing as he made his way to his photo station. A short time later, I followed him in. Unlike at the malls, Santa’s station at Swanson’s was set up with chairs for viewers, so I had a comfy seat as I chatted with “Santa Sean,” who wasn’t too busy yet. (He told me stories about his many clients – witty ones as well as eardrum-shattering screamers.) As usual, I sketched most of Santa first, leaving space on his lap for his next customer. You can imagine how delighted I was when the client turned out to have four legs – a Labrador pup named Zuzu (no, his ear wasn’t really pink – that was my colored pencil smearing). A double score, I’d say!

So that’s a record-breaking fourth Santa for the season! (I’m going to have a hard time besting myself next year.)

12/18/15 Zebra brush pen, colored pencils

12/18/15 ink, colored pencils

Third Santa: Score!

12/17/15 inks, colored pencils

Despite getting a late start on the season, this afternoon I scored my third Santa!

After meeting friends for lunch at Southcenter, I knew I should be getting back to Seattle pronto if I wanted to beat rush-hour traffic (which starts about mid-afternoon), but I couldn’t resist a quick dash through the mall to find Santa. Little brother started bawling and jumped off the big guy’s lap almost immediately. His older sister, however, was happy to have Santa to herself, reciting a long list of gift ideas.

I paid for that sketch with a long, crawling commute, but Santa was worth it.

There’s still a week yet before Christmas . . . last year by this time, I had scored three Santas, too. Think I can go for a record-breaking fourth?

Going Digital

12/14/15 Sketchbook Express

I’ve seen digital sketches online for a long time, but just recently, a few of my friends have been sketching on their iPads. Although I’ve had a few sketching apps on my Android tablet for a while, I hadn’t made any actual sketches with them – just messed around with the stylus and the various options to see what they do.

After seeing recent sketches by Gabi Campanario on his blog, Facebook and his Seattle Sketcher column, I got more motivated to give it a try. There’s definitely something to be said for such a small and thin sketch kit (as long as the battery is charged). I also really like some sketches he did at night – subject matter with a mostly dark background seems ideal for digital sketching (I actually had plans to use my tablet to sketch the lunar eclipse a few months ago, but I’d forgotten how to use the apps!). And you can’t beat that undo key. J

Anyway, this morning as I was heading out to my usual meeting in Shoreline, I grabbed my tablet and stylus. I didn’t bring my sketchbook because I was afraid I’d chicken out and use what’s familiar. What you see here is my first attempt. Compared to all my favorite fountain pens, the stylus felt clumsy and strange, but it was fun to experiment with the various tools. I don’t much care for Sketchbook Express, though. (If you’ve used a good Android sketching app, I’m all ears.) For one thing, the free version I have doesn’t enable easy sharing – so I had to e-mail the image to myself to get it out of the tablet. Though bizarre and bass-ackward, I used my phone to take a trophy shot to upload it on the spot!

I can tell you right now that tablet sketching will never, ever replace my beloved pens, inks and paper. But it’s still fun to mess around with. It’s like any other new medium I’ve tried – some are just novelties that disappear from my attention after a while; others stay around. We’ll see how long this one lasts.

I couldn't figure out how to upload directly from the tablet so I shared on
Facebook the old-fashioned way!

Cliché in Red

12/14/15 water-soluble colored pencils

When I first glanced at the cardinal on the cover of one of the hundreds of catalogs we’ve received in the mail so far this season, it seemed like such a holiday cliché. But the more I looked at it, the more I appreciated the beautiful photo, and when I looked carefully at the bird’s red feathers, I realized “red” was an enormous over-simplification. The color is actually a complex blend of many shades of red, orange and even a little dark purple, blue and yellow. Suddenly it transformed from a catalog cliché to ideal colored pencil practice material.

In case you haven’t guessed by now, I have a lot of colored pencils – mostly the water-soluble kind, but also quite a few of the regular kind. I pulled out about 20 versions of red, red-orange and orange, as well as a few other colors, to try to get the right mix. I used water only on the beak, the eye and the berries, plus a few brush strokes to bring out the wing feathers and shadows. For most of the feathers, though, I preferred the pencil strokes showing.

By the way, if you’re not familiar with the work of Australian urban sketcher Alissa Duke, please check out her Flickr photostream. She’s my urban sketching colored pencil guru – I admire the delicacy of her exquisite drawings as well as her skill with water-soluble colored pencils. 

I have quite a few colored pencils. . . 

. . . OK, I have a LOT. You can't even see the ones UNDER the desk. . .