A big pink mess.

I bought some black drawing paper today and had the bright idea to mix up some pink gouache and see if it looked nice against the black.

Well... it probably would have, had I mixed it properly, but I just can't ever seem to get the consistency right, and I ended up with a big pink mess.

This side is bad.

But this side is worse.

Incidentally, I promise my calligraphy is better than that when (a) I've ruled some slant guidelines (it SHOULD be 5º for italic, 55º for copperplate), (b) I'm using ink/paint that is a bit thicker than slightly chalky pink water, and (c) I'm using my left hand to actually hold the paper down and stop it running away from me, instead of using it to hold a little bowl of gouache because it's too messy to sit it on the table :)

Oh and the orangey looking stuff is actually gold ink, but it's pretty much useless. It doesn't even come in a pretty bottle.

Pretty curly writing

Here's my new pen for learning copperplate. I've been trying it out a bit before I try to learn the actual letter forms, because I thought it would be easier if I was already sort of comfortable using the oblique pen. It's so cool! Such a pity it's totally impractical to have an inkwell on my desk at work and hand write all my letters, but I can't see the boss going for it...


And here's the Fight Club haiku, written with the new pen. It's not any particular script, but I think it's quite pretty anyway. My workmate's daughter is getting married next year, maybe if I've learned copperplate by then she'll let me write her invitations :)

Fashion Wheel update and my new pen

A few people suggested trying coloured pencils might be less smeary. Well I gave that a go, and it wasn't terribly successful, but then I found a 3B Caran d'Ache graphite stick I had lying around and tried that instead. It was much better and I got a lot more of the detail. Unfortunately 3B is really quite soft and I managed to smear it with my hand while colouring in, plus the coloured pencil ran into it a bit, but it's definitely better. Next time I'm at the art shop I'll look for a harder graphite stick, I bet that would be perfect. Or maybe I could use some charcoal fixative before colouring... hmm. Click to embiggen - it's definitely clearer than the previous ones.

Oh and side note - Richard bought me a nice new oblique pen holder and some pointy nibs because I want to learn copperplate writing. The writing on the Fashion Wheel drawing is me trying out the pen. I'm not claiming that this is anything like copperplate, of course, because it's most definitely not! I can do decent italics, but italics really aren't anything like handwriting (they're more like shapes and parallel lines that all look the same), and my own handwriting is dead upright and not even joined up. This is going to take a lot of effort I think :) Pretty handwriting is most definitely a lost art.

PS: I haven't cleaned this up in Photoshop at all, whereas the previous efforts were very very grubby indeed.