De Atramentis Document Inks & Doodling

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Larry Marshall

De Atramentis, the Austrian ink company, has been releasing a growing line of fountain-pen friendly, waterproof inks for a while now. Buying them in North America, however, has been nearly impossible. Goulet Pens finally got them back in stock, I ordered, and within a couple hours people were reporting that they were out of them. Hopefully distribution will get worked out over time.

These inks are a wonderful addition to my arsenal and become the ones I use most often, I think. Not only are basic blue, black and brown available but they sell an equivalent of the CMYK (cyan/magenta/yellow/black) set that is used to generate color in offset printing. And they’re mixable. Jane Blundell has done a series of blog posts on mixing them.

The black ink makes my Pilot Falcon very happy. Like Platinum Carbon Black, it causes the pens to write a bit finer than they normally would.

Same thing for the Pilot Prera.

I’ve just started doodling with them. I’ve mixed up a gray but otherwise I’ve been working with the colors straight out of the bottle. They are very similar to Platinum Carbon Black in use, though for some reason they feel smoother to me, maybe a bit wetter. So far I have them in Pilot Prera and Falcon pens and a Noodler’s Creaper. As is typical of the Creaper, there is a bit of start up problem but otherwise all these pens seem to like it. Time will tell.

I did some hatching practice with a Pilot Prera filled with De Atramentis Document Brown. The color is a rich brown, leaning towards a burnt sienna. I really like it, though I can always adjust the color by mixing. That’s the great thing about these inks.

Coffee Shop Sketching With Friends

Posted on December 24, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Sometimes it’s fun to meet with friends and at this time of year it’s fairly common for me to have coffee with a friend to wish them a Merry Christmas and to chat. But there’s something special about doing that with sketcher friends and that’s just what we did Monday. Fernande, Claudette and I met at a large coffee shop, thinking it would give us more sketching opportunities than some of the smaller shops.

I think our plan would have been sound at other times of the year but this is the Christmas season and the shop was packed to the gills with people, decorations, stuff for sale and, well, it too crowded for relaxed sketching. Still, we had lots of fun chatting about sketchbooks, brush pens and life in general. And we sketched. Fernande and Claudette were more productive than I was; they always are. I get wrapped up in whatever sketch I’m doing and spend too much time on it, I fear. My way of saving paper, I guess.

Here is my Christmas sketch for 2014 – I’ve never been much for drawing Christmas ornaments for some reason, but a huge poinsettia and balloons? Yeah…that’s more my style. Merry Christmas everyone.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6x8), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

Stillman & Birn Delta (6×8), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Larry Marshall

I love trains and I was lucky to be a kid when trains were a very important part of our landscape. I’m also lucky enough to have lived long enough that we’re now wishing we had those trains we discarded because our ‘modern’ mechanisms for moving people and goods are becoming economically and environmentally untenable.

I also love my daughter, but she rudely grew taller and taller until, one day, she ran away to college. But it’s the holidays and she was coming home – on a train. Trains, daughter and me, all in the same place. What more could an old man want?

I arrived at the train station about 15 minutes before the train was to arrive and found that her train was going to be about 10 minutes late. Figuring I’d have about 20 minutes before I had to move to the arrival gate, I sat down in the main hall to draw.

I love our train station. It’s something of a shell of its original footprint, with only a few trains and far fewer passengers moving through it’s cavernous insides. Fewer passengers means more room available and in recent years they’ve built a couple smallish restaurants along one wall of the main hall.

I drew one of them (resto can be seen in the interior photo above) in a Stillman & Birn Beta (6×8) with De Atramentis Docu Black. Not having a lot of time, the sketch is a bit on the wonky side but it was fun and I finished up in time to watch the train arrive. Did I mention that I like trains? Oh…and my daughter too.

Happy holidays everyone! — Larry

Stillman & Birn Beta (6x8), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Docu Black

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×8), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Docu Black

I’m A Little Teapot, Short And Stout…

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Larry Marshall

I’m a little teapot, short and stout,
here is my handle and here is my spout.

That’s what sketching is all about. You find a subject and you put the pieces in their proper locations. Then you’re done. Easy peasy, so what’s the big deal?

I’m having a ball in Liz Steel’s Foundations class. She’s showing us different ways of organizing drawings and the various ways of getting those parts in the right places. This week was “climb out on a thin limb and draw without measuring anything, no set up, no nothing.” This is where eraser users do a lot of scrubbing as “oops…it should be just a bit to the right” or “eek…that’s too long” start being uttered in less than muffled tones.

And so I was at the museum, wandering around looking for something to draw. I’m sort of getting tired of drawing statues of Greek gods and so I found myself in the Quebec history exhibit. It’s an exhibit where you’d think Quebecers lived in caves in the past was the exhibit exists in near darkness, making it hard to sketch anything. Heck, some of the stuff is downright hard to see. Not sure what’s going on there.

But as I was in Liz’s course (she being the patron saint of teacup sketching), and as I was staring at some tea cups, saucers and teapots, I figured I’d found my subject for the class. The only problem was that these items were scattered around a case, not clustered together as in a still life.

But with a bit of mental sliding items around, and a few pen marks to indicate location, I created the arrangement depicted here and went to town with my Namiki Falcon. Here is my handle, here is my spout. I’m really enjoying the De Atramentis document inks and sure hope that Goulet Pens gets some of the other colors back in stock real soon. This sketch took me about 20 minutes, maybe a couple more. It was fun.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (10x7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black, watercolor pencils

Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black, watercolor pencils

Sketching A Door

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Larry Marshall

One of the exercises for this week’s Liz Steel Foundations class was to draw a door. This was supposed to be our “outdoor” exercise.

There is nothing I’d rather do than draw outdoors but I’m afraid that weather dictates that I won’t be able to do that until at least April and that’s being optimistic. Not wanting to wait quite that long to do the assignment, I found an alternative. As I was leaving the museum I noticed that if I sat down just inside the rear entrance, I could see the door across the street. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

The door leads into the Hotel Saint Pierre but the door has a far richer history as it served as the main entrance of the “Quebec Assurance Building,” and the interesting thing is that this is carved, in English, in the upper reaches of the building – a remnant of times past as it’s fairly rare to find English written anywhere in Quebec City.

The exercise goal was to ‘set up by measurement’ and thus the principle goal was “..to be as accurate as possible.” I can’t say that I was (sorry Liz) but I did it in my typical cartoony style and in spite of what it looks like, I did measure, with my thumb stuck up in the air and everything. I really enjoyed sketching something that wasn’t a statue and I think I need to look around for some more doors to look out of.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Black

I’m a little teapot, short and stout, here is my handle and here is my spout.

I’m a little teapot, short and stout,
here is my handle and here is my spout.