coffee: how do you take it?

'actually I feel like every day is coffee day' ... because it is.

Mitchell Copperplate nib (because I wanted to complicate my life), Jorg Hysek fountain pen ink. Note on this ink: it is not waterproof, and it smells like grade school paste. Regardless, I love it. I do wish I had a Jorg Hysek pen to put it in, though, because those things look like props for Star Trek.

page a day: pen tests

(Last entry blurred for personal details. Fun fact: it was written in my mutant Futhark before I blurred it.  If you grew up with a guardian who reads your journals, you'd be paranoid too.)

Main conclusion: Hunt and Speedball nibs = decent; Joseph Gillott = horrible. Except for #303. Don't do it.

Also, I redid the mint tea illustration:

That's better, I think. I've also changed my settings to reflect the proper times of posting, and to enable anon comments (which I'd forgotten I'd disabled--sorry!)

page a day: the (human) stain

 

I'd wanted to experiment with this method of colouring for a while but I didn't get a chance to do the blotchy parts till today. It's pretty hard to control, and I didn't at all expect the way the shellac-infused inks interacted with the water-based ones (see: ugly spots in top illustration). 

I quite like the way the latter two illustrations look, but it still seems lazy to me. This could be my weak Photoshop skills, too. Well, back to work.

the secret life of things

 More catalogue silliness with the pathetically non-solid Cavallini & Co. ink.

The chairs, the chairs of CB2. Lots of pipe legs in watery ink. The fake rattan weave texture was really fun to draw.

And done in the equally shitty sepia ink, my J. Alfred Prufrock tribute. Actually I drew/painted this whole thing oriented vertically, and only noticed it looked a lot better rotated 90% left. (Or, as actually happened, tossed it randomly on the bed and saw it looked better in passing.)

I would love to turn this second one into a postcard, or landscape notebook, or some other item of stationery.

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.

tea cliche poster

Messing about with Photoshop Elements. Hand drawn tea things and ink blotches. Maybe a poster, or a notebook cover?

more tea, vicar?

Ugh, I waited too long and now it's the 4th instead of the third.

Also, why can I not draw a kyuusu.

I swear it's not going to be a whole month of tea, but for the moment I'm going with it. It's quite therapeutic.