I’ve been periodically dipping into my considerable stash of vintage pen points and trying them out. The vast majority of these nibs were designed for writing. And while they will also work well for drawing, I’ve been in search of the “perfect” dip pen point, the one (or two) that excel for the spontaneous line I use when drawing and sketching. All of the points illustrated here came packaged in the small Spencerian box as an assortment, ca. 1870. They are in remarkably good condition and write well – and honestly, for a guy whose handwriting is much worse than the worst doctor on the planet, it’s a real pleasure and surprise to see my lettering go down on the page as nicely as it does with these.
Those trees! So gnarly and twisted and overgrown! I want to go back and draw them some more! Hell, I want to live in that little cottage, surrounded by those trees!
It was Spring Break, and for once it actually felt like Spring! I took my fixed wheel road bike out onto the trails around Smithville Lake and cycled 44 miles. The objective had been to jump off the trail and continue onward for a total of 66 miles – a metric century – but I kept stopping to sketch. And frankly, that was just fine with me.
I forgot my water bottle and lost my pricey frame pump, but the sun was out, the breeze was nice, and all was good.
I am trying out a new nib, a Zebra Comic G model. It has lots of flexibility, the ink flows nicely, and you can draw from pretty much any direction – even moving upwards, against the point. My criticism is that I can’t get the nice thick lines that I prefer. If I continue to use this point I’ll probably have to combine it with a brush or a brush pen, so I’m not certain how I feel about that aspect. #newpen#bw#diner#sketching
This pen point does slow me down, which forces me to work with a little greater precision. That’s actually a downside for me, to be honest. I’d prefer to be a bit sloppier, to work with more energy rather than more deliberation. It’s going to take a bit more testing to see if I can generate the sort of spontaneity I prefer.
One question I get on social media more than any other is “how’d ya do that?” To be honest, I’m never quite certain what is being asked. How’d I come up with that drawing idea? How’d I find that location or subject? How’d I draw it? I kind of assume the latter is most relevant, and the simplest answer is that I start with one simple line.
I’m right hand dominant, so I begin at the left hand margin and trace an edge that runs from one side of the page to the other. It’s almost always going to be the horizontal edge that separates the positive from the negative shapes.
A sketch will begin with the most general, moving very gradually to the specific. But I want to establish the rough silhouette first. This helps me to better understand the design. If the design sucks I may abandon the sketch very early in the drawing. It’s got to hold my interest for me to put energy into it.
Once the silhouette has been established I’ll start to block in some broad details. With architecture, that is almost always going to be the “holes” – windows, archways, etc. It’s the things that make the shape start to take on meaning. However, I’m also always keenly aware of simplicity: too much “stuff” gets distracting for me, so I look for “stuff” to leave out.
Up until this point, I’ve concentrated on the middle ground, which tends to be where the main area of interest lies. With the middle ground established, it’s important to draft a few background details. Background, for me, tends to be a tool I use to both ground the image as well as to create spatial contrast.
My illustrations rely heavily on the two-dimensionality of line and shape. I don’t mind the lines overlapping and allowing other parts of the drawing to show. To me, those overlapping lines have a dynamic quality. This is also the point in a sketch when I will add elements into the foreground to enhance the illusion of space.
This is my favorite part of the sketch, the part where I start to fill shapes. There’s magic in those solid blacks. The drawing almost immediately takes on a brand new look. I love the challenge of figuring out which areas will work best being filled, and which areas will remain white. Sometimes that decision is based on what’s there in front of me: tires, windows, silhouettes of trees – they are often (but not always!) filled with black. Sometimes (but not always!) areas of shadow, like the overhang of a roof or eaves. Sometimes, it’s more arbitrary, simply because I think it makes the sketch better or helps the story being communicated in the illustration.
A few more flourishes here and there, some more fills, and that is that.
Recent posts on social media about drawing with pens has brought quite a few questions into my email box. I’m no expert – I simply know what I like and what I don’t like about various pens and pen points. When it comes to dip pens, two nibs in particular work well for me. I am fortunate to have a pretty decent supply of vintage Lady Falcon points. Their flexibility is excellent and I get a decent variation of line weight. I also recently tried out Zebra Comic G points and have been mostly impressed for similar reasons. The “Blue Pumpkin” point is well regarded, but as much as I want to love it the line is generally a bit too thin for my tastes.
As far as pens are concerned, Uni-Ball Vision meets almost all of my needs. A Pitt Big Brush works great for fills, and it’s also loaded with India ink. Earlier this week I ordered a set of Pitt markers and am testing them out. I’m excited because they also are loaded with India ink.
The video above was created for the sake of comparison. It’s far from comprehensive, but will hopefully answer some of the questions recently posed to me about the difference between marks.
Dip pens are messy. They don’t hold an inexhaustible reservoir of ink. But they do apply India ink rather efficiently, and one of the really nice things about India ink is that it is quite fixed and stable once dry.
Don’t get me wrong: I love drawing with a fountain pen. But even when I’ve loaded a “permanent” ink, I wind up with transfer taking place when I apply a watercolor wash. This has proven true for me regardless of which of the many pen inks I’ve tested.
I took a bunch of my sketches from the #oneweek100people2022 drawing challenge and printed them out onto heavy index paper. These were organized into groups of like images, and thoughtfully sequenced – rather than organized by date. Then I used a GBC coil binding machine, which we have in my Fine Arts office, to bind them all together into a book, which I share here. It’s an idea that I think I may do more of, when sketches seem to be forming into a sort of theme. I’m thinking about crows, people, architecture, music, and so on.
I have boxes and boxes of vintage pen nibs that are, ironically, NIB (“new in box”, but also “nibs”). Those Falcon points on the left date to 1870, and some models are apparently the same ones Sparky Shultz preferred for Peanuts. When they stopped making them, the story goes, he bought all of their remaining stock. I’ve got about 30 of those points, not to mention hundreds of Spencerian nibs. (Those particular points are beautiful, but require a dexterity I simply don’t have, and which seems to have been lost to time.) #dippen#penandink#bw#indiaink#vintagepen#sketching#kansascity#cellarratwinemerchants
Incidentally, I really hated to lose the rat signage from this sketch (see top), but the composition is better cropped like this, with the focus on the street signs and the guy walking down the sidewalk. I have no qualms about cropping an image if it makes it better. In fact, I do it all the time.
I had a craving for a cheese burger and onion rings.
There are a couple of places where a sketcher may encounter some really rich subject matter. A bar. A music venue. A busy street corner.
And a diner.
The people working, doing their everyday job, is interesting to me. I liked the way this guy leaned into pushing the cart of cleaning supplies through the center of the dining area.
And the diners are always interesting types, too. I drew this couple into the background of the first sketch, and then realized how much I liked the way they looked in close up.
Just Sketching 