Category: Drawing

Days 67 – 101

Deer Me

So here’s days 67 through to 101 of taking 15 minutes or so to draw my left hand. If you’re clever you can tell what day’s I took the stuff for that benign tremor.  Maybe not though, if I hold the pencil loose enough it’s not that bad anyway. Starting on day 80 I went in with a pencil just cause I wanted to sort of get a process down. Pencil, then ink, then count. 1, 2, 3. Always 3. Speaking of which, hands are a 3 now, funny how that works out.

Also starting with 80 I used a dollar fifty 3.5 by 5 inch craft paper cover notebook. I really like that size. It’s a nice size. And they’re thin so I can clip then to a table and not have to worry about not having anything to steady it all. As of 101 I’m not quite halfway through the second little book. 101 and maybe 10 minutes a pice that’s a double just drawing a left hand. 16 hours. Not all that long really.

Days 40 – 66

Deer Me

So line variation is more noticeable than I’d expect. That’s the thing about technical pens though, there is not variation without changing pens, that feels like something useful. Like maybe if I was trying for better work with perspective then lines up close could be thick and thin lines far away, would that make there feel like more or less depth on the page? Something I should probably learn about, but I’m really struggling with what’s real right now so maybe I better let that wait. Anyway here’s more left hands, and American Sign Language in around 10 minutes a hand, once a day.

 

DIY Nib Reservoir

Deer Me

Nib pens are great. Nibs are great. Zebra G nibs are only a couple bucks for a pack of ten and they flex. Line variation isn’t as extreme as it might be on a gold Phono nib from some Victorian era Pitman’s Shorthand school but it’s better than most. The thing that sucks though is flex eats that ink fast. Nothing sucks more than another involuntary psychiatric hold but running a nib dry on a long expressive contour is right up there. Just behind that, a close second to running dry is flexing too hard to fast and loseing flow. You know, when the tines separate and you just get two hairlines instead of nice broad stroke.

I got a solution though. Put you a giant reservoir on your nib and be well. Next time you have an appointment snag you one of those gimmie drug company rep pens. Here’s what you need:

  • A nib, something with some flex makes the most sense
  • The spring from that gimmie pen
  • A soldering iron
  • Solder
  • Needle-nose pliers with a wire cutter

Here’s what you do:

  • Cut that spring in half so it’s about a half inch long
  • Heat up that soldering iron and heat one end of the spring
  • Touch a bit of solder to the hot spring so it melts, that’s called “tinning” it
  • Sit that spring on your nib so the unsoldered portion hangs down to just below the feed on the nib
  • Heat up the “tinned” bit of the spring till it tacks down to your nib

Now when you dip that spring fills up and surface tension gives you ink like nobodies business. A full dip on this sucker puts out seventy inches at about 3/32nds flex. SEVENTY INCHES. Oh, and did I mention that when it’s on the full side (more than half) there’s basically no more speed-limit to keep it from spliting to hairlines? Yeah, and it’s free if you can get access to somebodies soldering iron.

The down-side is you gotta make sure to wash the nib now after you use it. No more wipe and go when you’re in a rush

On the left is about a third of a full load with the spring, lines drawn top to bottom, right to left. On the right is a full load without the spring, lines drawn bottom to top, right to left.

Days 25 through 39

Deer Me

Here’s the latest up to day 39. Picked up a Rotring Rapidography 0.50 around day 30 ’cause I heard that the ink was black black, practically as black as India ink and I thought that it might end up being more portable than a dip pen and ink bottle. I’m not sure how I feel about that pen yet, something about having to hold it veritcal makes my tremor worse unless I grip it super loose. I’ll keep trying it though ’cause I do like that Rotring ink…

India Ink

Deer Me

India ink is sweet. Its basically black + shellac + alcohol. It sucks that you cant use it in a fountain pen though, well you can but pretty much only once. I like it though, a lot, so here I go supporting a project to make an india ink fountain pen. This’ll be my most expensive art-thing that wasn’t tuition. Support it maybe.

Charcoal

Deer Me

Charcoal is pretty great. I think it’s great because it’s fast, easy, cheap and very forgiving. Full of anger and hate, poisonous food and hatching spiders? Charcoal forgives you. Charcoal doesn’t care that all you have cheap sketchbooks and scraps of copy-paper. Not like ink, ink cares about your paper. Ink cares a lot! Ink cares so much that it’s going to soak right in and become part of the paper, maybe part of the other side, maybe, part of the sheet behind the top one too. Ink’s a 2. Charcoal’s a 3. That’s for sure, maybe, the very best 3 it can be.

That’s perfect too, ’cause there’s only really three sorts of charcoal.

First there’s vine. Vine is just what it says on the tin, it’s vines, burnt vines? Former vines? It was vines, the charcoal formerly known as grapevines. It comes in gently curving lenghts around the size of a pencil. Three grades, hard and medium and soft. There’s extra soft too, and probably extra hard and extra medium. It’s a bit coarse, and you can really feel it going on, even on very smooth hot-press paper. It’s uniform in cross-section, charcoal all the way through ’cause vines grow that way.

Then there’s willow. Same thing with willow, it’s formerly a tree. It’s got a pith that you can see in the center of each straight length. Willow doesn’t come in hard or soft or medium, I think it’s all soft. And it’s fragile and dustier than vine but it’s so smooth. It’s like an ice cube on a hot dashboard. It wants to move. Willow comes in different diameters, up to about the size of a lipstick.

Then there’s compressed. If it isn’t vine or willow, it’s compressed. Ignore whatever made up name the manufacturer gives it. Compressed is carbon, ground up charcoal, and it’s mixed with some sort of binder. That could be some kind of mastic gum resin or oil or just about anything really. It comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes. It comes inside pencils. Then it’s got every hardness from practically dust to basically stone. The hard ones can hold a point like nobodies business.

All you need to use charcoal is a piece of it and any paper. Bigger paper is probably better but that just means it’s a good thing for implying details rather than adding them. You might want an eraser, so get a kneeded one. Get a scrap of rough canvas too, or a tissue, that’s basically an eraser too. I guess some people need a paper smudger too but just use your finger. You don’t need a sealer but it’s not gonna stop being alive until you have one and use it. Just grab a can of Krylon for six bucks. No, it doesn’t matter if you get “workable” fixative or not. Hell, people use hair-spray and if you’re working on cheap acidic newsprint or something that’s not gonna be doing much but getting worse that’s fine.

Anyway, here’s days fifteen through twentyfour. Everyday is charcoal day until I get bored.