Why is there never enough time to do all the things you want to do? (Let’s not get into petty accusations of poor time management, or someone’s tendency to procrastinate—and there’s certainly no need to bring up all those sneaky time-wasters that so quickly gobble up “just a few minutes” here and there…)
This is shaping up to be a busy month, but if I can just back away from two or three specific websites that seem to make time magically disappear (and usually leave me in a worse mood, to add insult to injury), maybe I’ll still manage to do some of the things I actually want to do.
More Detailed Rolling Hills
Last time I posted photos of a very simplified “rolling hills” scene with white houses and trees scattered over them. I thought I’d try another scene of rolling hills, but with a greater level of detail.
This was inspired not only by that other picture, but also by something I had screenshot on my phone. I think it may have been fabric. In any case, that one used brighter colors, paid even less heed to perspective and scale, and looked like it may have been collage. I prefer it to what I ended up with, so maybe I’ll try something a little more like that, someday… But for now, this is what I ended up doing.
First, I sketched the scene in pencil (and didn’t do a very good job with the hot air balloon, unfortunately):
Here I’ve painted the base layer for the hills, balloon, and water. (I wish I hadn’t added the darker layer to the water. I think it ended up a little too bold, compared to everything else.)
And this is what I ended up with, after adding extra paint for texture, tints to all the trees and structures, and outlines and other details in black fineliner pen:
It’s okay. I don’t love it, for some reason. The road snaking along the distant hills is fun… I like the idea, but I think my slight annoyance with the “wrongness” of the balloon doesn’t help, and the whole thing just feels a little blah to me. But still, it was entertaining, while I was doing it.
One thing that annoys me is that the black details on the barn (and to a lesser extent the sailboat) have stayed shiny. I think it’s because the red paint was too concentrated.
I guess part of the issue might be that I made some things a little too small to be pleasant for painting. (This is in my current spiral-bound sketchbook, which is only 5.5″ x 8.5″.)
Doodle Flowers
I noticed there was a page in my last sketchbook where I’d just painted some rough swatches. It looks like I was experimenting with adding salt to the paint, which didn’t work very well. (Probably waited until the paint was too dry.)
It reminded me that a book I’ve been reading suggests going back to old sketchbook pages (typically ones you’ve abandoned or left partially incomplete, for whatever reason) and adding to them. That’s essentially what I did a blog post or two back, when I put a mouse into the picture of the cat and those three balls of yarn, but this was a bigger change.
Those rectangles of paint looked a lot like the ones I paint specifically to doodle over, only they’re a bit rougher, which made for an interesting change. (I might try that again, intentionally, this time!)
There’s nothing particularly special about the doodles, but they were fun to do, and the page is definitely more interesting now than before I added the flowers.
(I used the Zebra Zensations pen and a white paint pen.)
Watercolor & Dip Pen
I started this one after watching a tutorial where someone painted blobby flowers, then added dip pen details. The paint was still wet in places when they added the ink, which led to some interesting effects, but when I did this, my paint was just drying too quickly for that.
There can be a variety of factors affecting the speed of your paint drying, if I’m not mistaken. Climate (humidity, temperature), consistency of paint, type of paper, size of “blobs”, speed with which you paint, etc. can all play a role. I knew going in to this that my paint tends to dry quickly (maybe partly due to the air conditioning and using this cellulose paper—plus I just tend to paint a bit on the drier side). This time was no different. I could have tried to paint with a juicier brush and switched back and forth between paintbrush and dip pen, but that felt like it would be a pain. Maybe something to try anther time, but on this occasion, I just let it dry and doodled over the whole thing once I was finished.
I also had some trouble with the dip pen nib, this time. It might’ve just been me, but I think it wasn’t very consistent in willingness to make a mark, and I had to keep dipping it more often than I like. I guess it ended up okay, but I was kind of annoyed by it, at the time. Fortunately, I’m usually going for a kind of messy look when I use a dip pen, so false starts aren’t as much of a problem as they would otherwise be.
Trying a Fude Fountain Pen
I have a few more pens I haven’t tried. One is a fountain pen with a fude nib. (“Fude” is pronounced “foo-deh”.) This is a nib that has been bent at an angle (which can vary depending on the pen you choose). Originating in Japan to imitate the effects of traditional calligraphy brushwork, the fude nib allows you to produce a wide range of line thicknesses, depending on the angle at which you hold the pen. Holding it vertically creates a finer line, whereas holding it more and more parallel to the page broadens your line. You can hold it upside down (writing or drawing with the tip of the nib) and make an even thinner mark. If I understand correctly, it was originally intended for Japanese calligraphy, but these days it’s also popular with artists and sketchers.
Anyway, I found a really cheap version that I thought I’d try. You can get a “real” one for not much (less than $13 without a converter), but this one was even cheaper, and I was already placing an order, so I thought I’d see if it was something I like at all before spending more on it. Apparently there’s a learning curve, and some people don’t get along with the fude nib.
Recently I painted something with the intention of adding ink, and I wasn’t feeling particularly protective of it, so I decided this was the time to try the fude nib pen.
Here it is beforehand…
And here’s the cheapo fude nib pen…
As you can see, I didn’t really use much variation in line thickness here. I’m not sure how much of that was the pen and how much was me. I don’t think it’s an especially good fude nib, which isn’t surprising at the price, but it might’ve also been partly due to my inexperience. It’s been a long time since I used any sort of fountain pen, and of course I hadn’t tried the fude nib before. To be honest, I was just impressed that I managed to figure out how to fill the pen’s converter, as I’d never used one of those before, either!
(A converter is a little doo-dad that you use instead of a cartridge. It allows you to use ink straight from the bottle instead of buying individual cartridges pre-filled with ink. I believe you can also use a syringe to refill cartridges with bottled ink.)
All in all, I enjoyed using it. It seemed to flow well, and it was fun to doodle with, and I think it might be worth getting a slightly nicer fude pen, one of these days. I’m trying to decide which one I’d like.
Doodle Flowers (Again)
I wanted something easy, so I just painted another page of blobs using warm and earthy colors. I find myself gravitating toward this palette lately.
The plan was to play around with the fude nib again. (This was the day after the original test run.) However, I found that ink wasn’t flowing from the converter into the nib—I don’t know all the correct terminology of pen parts—so once what was left in the nib area ran out, I had no ink, even though I could see that there was plenty of ink still in the converter.
I ended up taking the back of the pen off and twisting the converter plunger to force the ink toward the nib. That worked, though it was a little annoying. I had to do it two or three times during this one page, and each time, it put a little too much ink into the nib, so I had to wipe it off each time. That wastes ink and interrupts the flow of what you’re doing. It also led to an uneven quality in my lines and the apparent darkness of the ink.
In short, it was a pain in the behind. I did end up filling up the page with doodles, but I don’t like the unevenness of the ink across the page, and because I didn’t even try to create different thicknesses of lines, I might as well have just used a regular ballpoint pen or fineliner.
After I was finished, I did a little research and found that the way I improvised (twisting the converter to force ink into the nib) is basically all you can do, unless you want to empty the nib and clean it. It could be that the nib will work better after cleaning. I think another possibility is that the converter isn’t seated quite right into the nib—but apparently some converters are just like this. (You can also try shaking the pen a bit, but you want to be careful not to make a mess, and I believe I tried that to no effect.)
This was a very cheap pen (that came with its own very cheap converter), but it worked perfectly (as far as ink feed goes) the first time I used it. It hadn’t been sitting long enough to dry out, as it was only the next day when it stopped working. I have to confess that I didn’t clean it before filling the pen with ink. (Impatient!) Maybe that will do the trick. Otherwise, I think I’ll put it down to the natural results of false economy (a.k.a. cheaping out) and just get a decent quality pen to replace this one.
But it can wait. I have a couple other types of pens that I already own and need to try, and between those two, I may not need (or even want) a fude nib pen. At least this experience has taught me how to use a converter—and the importance of actually cleaning the pen before trying it for the first time—and that I probably can figure out how to use a fude nib, if I want to.
