Ink Lines

The next exercise up for this week was pen and ink explorations, same as yesterday's pencil warm ups. I guess crow quill can be cause for consternation with students. We're asked to at least try it out and if it proves too unmanageable, to then look to alternatives--Rotring, Rapidograph, etc. Me, I like crow quill. My lines are often wiggly but I'll work on that. The line variation possible is completely absorbing.

And absorbed I was when my fearless feline, Timothy, came skidding across the kitchen table and directly into the bottle of Higgins ink. It could have been a lot worse. The bottle didn't tip, and splashed only a few smalls puddles about, none landing on the artist, sketch pad, or even the perpetrator himself. A bit of scolding and less of cleanup and I was right back to it. In Timothy's defense, the kitchen table is most often not nearly so cleared, that done so only to make room for my exercise.

My scan does not nearly capture the awesome detail, the plain beauty, of the finest lines. Next up is an exercise of sketching a few leaves using pencil, then with pen and ink.