I’m not a big holiday celebration kind of guy but when I was out walking I saw this small cluster of pumpkins, put on a doorstep in honor of Halloween. So, here’s my attempt at being in the Halloween spirit.
This sketch was fun to do in a Stillman & Birn Zeta (6×9) with a Pilot Prera and Platinum Carbon Black.
By most accounts, the Pilot Metropolitan is a pen that provides a lot of bang for the buck. It writes smoothly, feels good in the hand, and it’s simply the best looking $15-20 pen I’ve seen. It’s a metal-bodied pen which allows it to resemble a more expensive pen.
There’s one problem with it. You can only buy it with a medium nib. It’s unclear why as Pilot typically provides the fine and medium options for their pens and you can even get a stub italic Prera.
Metro above, 78G below
While the Pilot medium is finer than most European medium nibs, it’s not fine enough for my sketching needs. It occurred to me that there might be a solution to this in the form of the Pilot 78G, which can be had via eBay for almost no money and it’s sold with fine, medium, or broad nibs. And guess what? These nibs are compatible with the Metropolitan feed, right down to the little indexing pin. All you have to do is pull the 78G nib out and put it in the Metropolitan and, voila, a Metro with a fine nib.
Note the gold, 78G, fine nib
So, why not just use the 78G? There’s nothing wrong with the 78G that a better, heavier plastic wouldn’t cure. But I can’t help shake the feeling that I’m using a really cheap pen when I’m using them.
It was sort of cold when I headed out to sketch a couple days ago. I’d nearly froze to death the day before while sketching a small restaurant. So, I decided that I should find some place indoors to sketch and I headed downtown. When I got there I wandered around a bit and then went into the Second Cup, a chain of Starbucks look-alikes.
It was not very busy so I decided this was the place for me. I got a cup of coffee and sat at a high table near the periphery of the shop. I got out my pad of Patrick-paper (a sketchbook sent to me by Patrick, hence the name) and started sketching. I started with the one person in the scene, drew a few lines to identify some major horizontals and then just started adding stuff. And then I added more stuff.
When I finished the ink work I paused to drink some of my coffee. It was still warm. I added the color, took a breath, and drank some more coffee. It wasn’t very warm. I guess I’m going to have to acquire a taste for cold coffee as I’ve certainly acquired a taste for sketching in coffee shops.
I think this may be my last outdoor sketch of the year. I was out this morning. The temperature was 3-4 C and it was windy. I did the basics of this sketch as quickly as my slow hand allowed. It’s a tiny, old ‘casse-croute’ (typically this means they sell fries and poutine) on Dorchester street.
By the time I had the structure drawn, I was frozen so I headed to the library, which was nearby. I’d snapped a photo of the building and used it to add details and color. I think this marks the beginning of indoor season for me.
Stillman & Birn Zeta (6×9) sketchbook, Pilot Prera, Platinum Carbon Black
We held our fall sketchcrawl last Saturday and I reported on it on Monday. The post was getting so packed with graphics that I decided not to post the sketches I did during the sketchcrawl.
I did do a couple, however. Being a fan of mundane urban accessories, I decided to draw one of a dying breed of accessory, the phone booth. It was convenient as it was situated at the meeting place for the sketchcrawl so I could sketch and still meet people as they arrived. I learned this trick from my buddy Yvan. I did it in a Stillman & Birn Zeta (6×9) using a Pilot Prera and Platinum Carbon Black ink. I found that I’d forgotten my watercolors so I did the color with Faber-Castell “Albrecht-Durer watercolor pencils. I like these as a substitute for watercolors because I can completely eliminate the lines made by the pencil.
In front of the Farmer’s Market was a large pile of pumpkins, stacked on hay bales. I drew a portion of those in my Singapore special toned-brown sketchbook that was sent to me by Patrick Ng. I’m still learning how to work with this paper but I’m really enjoying it. I used the Pilot Prera and watercolor pencils on this one as well.
I thought I’d throw in a couple other sketches I’ve done recently. The garage sits at the end of a little park I sit in while waiting for a study group I run to convene. I don’t think I ever posted it. It was done in a 3×5 Moleskine watercolor book.
When I was doing that sketch, they were tearing up the street in front of the park. By the next week they were ready to re-pave it and they’d just finished laying new curbing along its length. To do that, it seems, they had to remove the fire hydrant, which was hanging from a mechanized shovel. I’m a fire hydrant afficionado and this was akin to a bird-watcher seeing a rare bird. I had to sketch this and so I did, in my Stillman & Birn Zeta (6×9) with my Pilot Prera. This was the tenth fire hydrant sketch I’ve done and certainly the most unique.
Hope you enjoy these. I sure had fun creating them. — Larry