Category: Traditional Art (page 7 of 8)

I’m trying out the Hero M86 pen today as a sketching pen. It can make a variable width line depending on how you hold it. A steep angle makes a very thin line. A low angle makes a thick line. This is because the nib has a unique swoop on the end of it.

I bought the pen for $10 ($6 shipping) from isellpens.com. It’s made in China. It’s a remakable pen for $10 – well made, heavy, and comes with a piston feed, but it also can use cartidges. I filled it with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink. It flows very nicely unless you let it sit unused for several days. You can easily get it started again by dipping the nib in water.

It takes some practice to draw with this pen as you have to change the angle as you draw to vary the line width. This takes some getting used to, but I like it. One refillable pen gives me unlimited line width.

I did this sketch standing in the greenhouse. Total time was less than 20 minutes. Later I added the sketch of the pen and it’s nib.

Here’s a cellphone photo of the plant. I took it after I was done sketching.

And here’s my two page journal spread with my notes.

Moleskine watercolor journal, Hero M86 pen with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink, Lucas tube watercolors – Light Yellow, Cobalt Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Payne’s Grey.

Jim

Pen first, then watercolor. This was a self assignment. I wanted to sketch in pen without doing any pre-planning or pencil layout first. Just draw what’s in front of you with no photo reference. Jump right in, start drawing in pen, and fill the page. So, that’s what I did. I started with the large redwood container in the lower left corner, worked my way up the left hand side of the page and then across to the table leg in the center and down to the pots. I then sketched the ladder, the window, the items on top of the table, and then the watering can in the lower right corner and the rest of the items on the right.

Once the pen work ws done, I painted with watercolors. I started with the light greens and then the browns. I then did the dark areas to judge the contrast range and then the grey ladder and concrete floor. All this was done with a flat waterbrush. I then switched to a small round waterbrush to add the reds, do some touch up, and finish some detail. It took about an hour.

Here’s a photo of what I saw.

And here’s my journal with my notes.

I think I did a pretty good job of capturing the scene. I got the values and colors, major shapes and perspective right. I purposely picked a chaotic subject with lots of detail. I drew one thing at a time paying attention to angles and relative sizes and then I moved on to the next shape until I reached the edge of the page. I was surprised to discover when I finished the drawing that it turned out as well as it did.

Moleskine watercolor journal, Mars 500 pen (0.5 nib) with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink , Lucas tube paints – Alizarin Crimson, Cobalt Blue, Light Yellow, Sap Green, Burnt Sienna, and Payne’s Grey.

Jim

The Thomas Kay Mill was one of the last water driven mills in Oregon. It is now a museum.

Trying pen and watercolor in my journal. I worked from a reference photo I took last summer.

I used my iPad to reverse the photo and change it to black and white and size it for my journal.

I then traced the image onto tracing paper with a soft pencil and transferred it to my journal by rubbing the back of the tracing with the smooth round end of a pen. This transferred the pencil marks to the page.

Next I used a Micron 02 pen to create a pen and ink sketch over the tracing and erased the pencil.

About a week later I added watercolor. I looked at the original photo on my iPad as a reference while I painted.

Moleskine watercolor journal, Micron 02 pen, Lucas tube paints – Alizarin Crimson, Cobalt Blue, Light Yellow, Sap Green, Burnt Sienna, Viridian, Paynes Grey.

Jim

I got a new #8 Round Princeton Art watercolor brush for Christmas. I like it. It does nice washes as well as detail. This painting is about 6 x 8 inches. I used a photo reference. I took this photo of the Oregon Gardens last Spring.

I’ve tried a number of ways to use the iPad as an aid to drawing and painting. On this painting I used a grid system. It’s easy to overlay a grid on a photo on the iPad. I used the Inkpad app. Notice the grid is in one layer and the photo is in another and that the grid lines are one inch apart. I lowered the photo’s opacity to 61 % to make the grid lines show up better.

I used a colored grid to make it easier to identify and track particular squares. Here’s the full image that I used on the iPad as a reference for the drawing.

I made a 6 x 8 inch grid out of matte board and colored thread that I clipped to my sketchbook. I placed the iPad below the sketchbook while I worked and lined them up vertically so that it was easy to glance up and down and keep track of where I was while drawing with a pencil. Here’s the setup on my lapdesk.

The threaded grid is a great innovation. You don’t have to draw and later erase the grid on your piece of paper. The thread has enough “give” to it that you can draw underneath the lines. Roughing in the basic shapes and perspective goes quickly. It’s faster than other methods (like using transfer paper) because you only have to draw the scene once. It’s more convenient than a projection system because you can use it in full light and it doesn’t require power. Also, it’s lightweight so you can carry it for use on location.

Usually I remove the grid and clean up the drawing a bit before painting. In this case I just needed a quick drawing to test out the new brush. So, I didn’t bother. Here’s a close up of the pencil drawing with and without the grid.

I also used the iPad as a reference while painting. I set it up on a tripod mount, positioned it in front of me, and displayed the original photo.

I did the painting in one sitting. It took about an hour. I let it dry over night and then scanned it to my iPad and used Photogene to rotate, crop, set the white balance, sharpen, and resize the image for display on the web.

Jim

This morning I painted this test image using Faber-Castell watercolor pencils. In the past I drew with the pencils first and then added water with a brush smudging out the color on the page. This time I applied a wet waterbrush to the tip of the pencil to pick up pigment and brush it on the page. It works much better.

I didn’t have anything in mind when I started. I just wanted to test the technique. So I didn’t do a pencil sketch first to lay out a composition. I began at the top using Prussian Blue. It turned into sky. It worked so well that I tried adding some Light Chrome Yellow to the waterbrush to see if I could get a green. I painted the hills. I picked up some more yellow and painted beneath the hills. I went from there down the page experimenting with various colors and mixes. After it dried, I then went back in and added some detail. I wanted to see how fine a line I could get with the petit waterbrush. I did the trees and brushes. I did the splatters by flicking the brush against the tip of the Ultramarine pencil close to the paper.

Finally I used the pencils to draw some fine lines. I did the grass in the foreground and lined the far shore of the river with a Dark Sepia pencil.

I worked on a lap desk. Here’s the setup from my point of view.

The lap desk is a white plastic one with a bean bag on the back. I used drafting tape to hold the corners of the paper down. The brush is a Kuretake Waterbrush Pen – Petit. It used only about a quarter of its water reserve to do this painting. The paper is 6 x 9 inches. I cut a half sheet from a 9 x 12 inch pad of Strathmore Bristol vellum, 100 lb. I used a piece of paper towel to clean the brush. You just squeeze out some water and wipe the brush on the paper towel to clean.

I’m right handed. I found it convenient to hold the pencils in my left hand with the tips pointing up. I could easily pick up color with the waterbrush in my right hand and then paint. It was like holding a palette of colors in my left hand, but without a mixing pan. It occurs to me that I could hold the case and tuck a piece of paper in the front of the case to test colors and mixes. By the way, I made that self standing case from a piece of card stock. I patterned it after the original pencil box, but pared it down to fit 12 pencils instead of 24.

Jim

I tried the Zebra disposable first. It has a nice fine tip. You can also use it on its side for a broad stroke. I touched the Kuretake Petit waterbrush to the tip of the Zebra and found that it deposited some black ink to the brush so I could do an ink wash. Worked great.

Next I touched the Kuretake Sepia pen and found it did the same thing and that I could do nice brown tone washes. The waterbrush draws most of the ink off the tip of the ink pen. So, you have to tap the brush on a hard surface to get ink to flow again in the pen.

Next I wrote a note on the right hand side with the Kuretake sepia pen. Notice how it gets faint about half way into the note. That’s because I did another wash and drew more ink off the tip and discovered that I had to tap the pen to get the ink going again.

I tried some watercolor with both waterbrush pens. I used the Grumbacher paints in my larger travel palette. I also tried Portfolio Series water soluble oil pastels. It’s the light blue down in the lower right hand corner. Water hardly smudged the pastel at all. So, that’s a disappointment.

I found I could do splatters by flicking the waterbrush across the tip of the ink pen.

Finally I used a white gel pen to make some fine lines across the watercolor. It works but you have to do it in single strokes. If you scribble back and forth it gets muddy because the gel ink is water soluble. It picks up the underlying color.

I wrote my artist’s notes in Notability on my iPad. You can export your notes as a PDF. Here’s the PDF file in case you want to download a copy and open it in iBooks on your iPad.

New Pen Tests.pdf (285K)

Jim

I was in Walmart the other day when I stumbled into a Daler-Rawney Watercolor set. I think it was $12. I couldn’t pass it up. It’s a small set of 12 student grade watercolors in a convenient pocket size palette. It’s about 5 3/4 inches (14 cm) long. The colors are in individual half pans which can be replaced easily with professional paints, but before I did that, I thought I’d test out the colors and see what they could do.

I used a Niji flat waterbrush to lay down each color. I then did a few blends and mixes. Finally I did a little sketch to see how the colors worked together and how easily they could be lifted by blotting or brushing.

They’re not bad. It’s a nice combination of colors in a handy size. There’s not much pigment in the paints, but that’s to be expected.