objectification

Going through my aunt's junk mail is like living a fantasy life in which I'm a character from Revenge or Gossip Girl. West Elm, J. Crew, Athleta, the MoMA Store...where I'm from, catalogues are almost unheard of, so it's like having free magazines dropped off at your doorstep every day.

Today all my stuff arrived from the US, so I spent the day going through it. You've guessed why I'm posting about it here: sketchblogging!

I don't know what it is about West Elm catalogues that makes me want to draw inanimate objects till my vision blurs. I shouldn't question it, I guess.

 The dearth of dip pens in this country forced my to try and work with one of my weird skinny crow quills and forgo my usual death grip near the point. That and the fragility of the nib itself means a lot of variation in the line and a slight unpredictability.

Also, one of the inks I brought back is 'black' ink from Cavallini and Co. Black my foot! Look at those tea drawings! There's a 'sepia' which isn't much better...both inks are watery, with grainy, uneven pigment in the thicker lines. I ended up liking the effect. I think I can play with colourising in Photoshop to get various illustration effects with these inks.

This other ink, which just arrived today, is Visconti and seems to be a much better colour and consistency. You can see the difference. I'm still using my Noodler's Bulletproof Black for my book project though--it's sticky and takes a while to dry, but it's the most gorgeous black I've ever seen in an ink.

So today was an adventure in 'working with what you've got'. It was unexpectedly productive and fun though; I'll work on spending more days like this.