I’ve been experimenting painting with inks, waterproof inks as underlayers with watercolors (below left) and all sorts of inks on entire pieces of art with no watercolors below right). In these cases I was playing it pretty safe, and using the inks lightly.
Recently, though, I’ve really
pushed the boundaries,
becoming bolder and layering on more and more ink and
watercolor. I thought I was
getting the hang of it, then had DISASTERS. The first were small, like what I thought was a leaky pen
(which it was leaking), above,
then my trusty Platinum Carbon pen saved the feathering to
make it readable when the
ink in my Pilot Parallel pen feathered horribly, right!
I thought it might be that I created a grey-green-brown color using
two different ink brands. Then when I popped the grey on top, I thought it might have pushed the undertones around, and FEATHERED. This happened with the
dark grey in the church arches, above. Maybe, but now I don’t think so.
Then I had a real disaster. I don’t like it and want it to stop.
I decided to see what happens when I saturate a page using all the same inks,
letting them dry in between. Above, the inks behaving nicely, not feathering,
and they are Noodler’s, Super5, and De Atramentis Document ink.
The detail on the right has watercolor added.
And here is the real disaster.
You can see the nice grey field, left, and then I used the Pilot Parallel pen with De Atramentis Document Brown ink. COMPLETELY DRY PAGE. And it feathered into a blob. I first tried adding water to move it out before it dried. It already stained. I let it dry then used Noodler’s Polar Brown in a Preppie to try to disguise it as best I could.
ARGH.
It was fine with the Preppie, but the Pilot may have put down much more ink.
Hard to believe it is the Moleskin . . . But what else? Then, I did the unthinkable.
I have always been someone who just got in and did this or that.
There was the time I decided to mix my own acrylic colors and found a bunch
of unusual ground pigments. Thinking that this might end up being quite like
Golden’s Hematite, I bright them back to the RV (I was on a retreat, painting, with two cats and two dogs) and mixed them in baby jars with screw lids. I went to bed thinking this was going to be so cool to experiment with the next morning.
POP! BAM!
Fortunately everyone was in the back sleeping on the bed with me.
The combinations I used caused an expansive chemical reaction and literally
unscrewed the tops then burst all over the side of the RV.
(This did wonders for our resale value.)
So it was a huge admission of I-don’t-know to go onto Goulet’s site and listen to Brian’s videos on Fountain Pens 101 (a cool series) trying to find the answer. And I think I did.
It IS the Moleskin paper, quite possibly, and it is not that the paper is bad, it is that the paper is thick and absorbent and not intended for fountain pen ink (starts at :53 seconds, below). Why did some perform better than others? Formulas, I think. Some formulas tolerated what I was doing, and some didn’t. Unfortunately I haven’t written down what did and didn’t, so I must try the inks out in a test on a back page of the Moleskin.
When I write about my experiments, I will do a whole post.
In the meantime, I think a good rule to start is to only mix the same brands.
I might also say that in future, I will mix pure colors in a small vial and watch them for
24 hours to see if they react to each other before I add water to make a wash.
I think I need to learn a bit more about my materials,
and not always experiment on a page I kinda like . . .
Listening to the FP 101 series today, and thanking Goulet Pens.
If the video won’t load go here.
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VSW: Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco
The inspiration for this virtual walk came from a Preservation Leadership blog on
Early San Francisco Parking Garages. I love funky old buildings, and these are anonymously designed (in some cases) and I don’t want them torn down!
To see the walk we took, from Haight and Schrader
to Frederick to the Richard Gamble Memorial Dog Park, go here!
I wanted to convey a bit of whimsy,
and to also remember the counter-culture
that I really was not able to experience,
being either too young (teens) or too responsible (I practiced architecture there for IBM).
I was in love with San Francisco as a kid,
when my mom and I would go and explore the wharf, eat crab in front of Alioto’s, dink around in Chinatown and Christmas shop. In my teens and twenties, when it was the city of love, and the culture defined the meaning of colorful.
lost in heaven, then eat at the street vendors in Chinatown.
If I was eating after work I went to the Tadich Grill, where a woman could sit at the bar, talk with others, and it was cool without being weird. Breakfast was at Cafe Trieste
or Buena Vista if I had time and a friend with me. I’d shop across the street at the Pier stores and found my first Mei Fa Stix in the Haight.
I spent many weekends in San Francisco alone, and if my career teaching had taken a different turn might have moved there, but I
ended up teaching at UCLA.
As a Californian Gurl, I also wanted to make sure to include my beloved palms, which are everywhere in the city, and range from scruffy short stubs to majestic anchors.
I did the two-page layout in pencil, and sketched rough guidelines before inking
using a Platinum Carbon Pen for all the black inks except the lettering.
These simple penciled guidelines allow me to remain truer to the perspective,
but also are a way of me getting to know the way the buildings are built.
Do the windows line up? Are the floors level or split level?
Is the street level or going up or down?
I liked the clean inked version of this layout so much I decided not to use
colored inks or watercolors. I’ve always loved inked drawings,
and was never happier than when I was inking a large formal drawing at school.
Plus, it is INKTOBER!
The walk:
Moleskin 8×11 watercolor journal,
Pentalic HB woodless pencil, Platinum Carbon pen.
I started a closed Facebook group page (you must join to view) to allow everyone
to comfortably post their virtual sketches, and also where we will,
from time to time, take virtual sketch walks together.
If you want to know more about what a virtual sketchwalk is review my first post.
I also created an accompanying Flickr group!
Don’t forget you can also post your images on Flickr!
Come join us On Facebook if you are inclined!
There are a few more notes/pointers on our first walk through Laguna Beach, California.
I agree to Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or,
visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms.
My images/blog posts may be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
I'd love it if you shared this; please mention my blog name!