Pen & Ink

These week's theme for Artists' Play Room is Ink, pens and paper. And I'm rather proud of myself for having done this quick little drawing already on Monday night, rather than in the last minute (or being too late). Although, admittedly, it is neither very original nor "out of the box" thinking. And there isn't any paper in it either, apart from the paper it is drawn on (which is, of course, my favourite Moleskine sketchbook).

I have a whole collection of inks and calligraphy supplies (but never enough time to actually use them), but I love this Indian ink, which I recently discovered, because it is waterproof. I still prefer to use pen and ink to add details and outlines in my paintings and art journals, rather than pens. I know that there's now a whole range of high quality, high pigmented pens available (and I have quite a few of them), but I somehow I still have this deep rooted fear (implanted many years ago by my painting teacher), that pens will eventually fade away. So I used to use diluted acryl paint, instead of the watersoluble inks, but this waterproof Indian ink is so much more convenient. And they come in a whole range of gorgeous colours.

The ones I have at the moment are black, white, and a beautiful deep indigo, which, unfortunately, due to the terrible quality of my photography (late evening with no good natural light) is completely lost. I got a new scanner at work, and hope to be able to get some better results with scanning my sketchbooks with this one (the old one was hopeless). I'm just waiting for our IT support to give me the temporary rights to install the software on my computer. It might take a while...

I used a lovely, warm walnut ink to give the bottles their brown colour.

So while the subject might not be very original - just the tools I used to do this little sketch - I kept to the theme by using (almost) only the theme's materials - pen and inks on paper (and a small brush for some of the details).

I'm very pleased that I actually managed to do this little drawing without making a total mess. I love pen and ink, but I usually can't help to smudge and smear the ink all over the page and myself, no matter how hard I try not to. But this time, I (almost) managed. Yay :).

Make sure to visit Jenn's blog on Saturday, to see what the others have created. So inspiring, and  always so beautifully presented by Jenn.