Tag: iron gall ink

Village Windows

Well, I don’t live in an interesting old village, but I think I could quite happily.  Suburbia just doesn’t make it when it comes to interesting lines, stones, and such.  Macadam and stucco and neatly cropped lawns are my daily world, so I always have to run off someplace else!  Not that suburbia doesn’t have its good points, like modern plumbing and electricity, but it’s not that visually exciting.

Okay, so I got our my Faber-Castell watercolor pencils.  I have a tin of 60 that I have been meaning to try on a serious level.  So, here is the first layer.  I used iron gall ink on a dip pen for the lines, and then just a quick scribble of pencils to lay down the basic colors.  Next, I will wet the pencils and let it dry.  Then, off to work. Bye!

Peaceful Morning

 

Today is Christmas morning.  It is easy to forget what truly lies behind Christmas – thoughts of peace and hope, the turning of the year as the solstice brings back the light of longer days, and the values that are at the core of most of us.  Community.  Family.  The world around us.

For me, much of what I truly love in this world is ephemeral.  My family, my friends – we all will vanish at some point.  How many of us will be remembered in 100 years?  There is one thing, though, that never ceases to amaze me, and that is the natural beauty of the world, its diversity of life (human, animal, plant), and the fact that it is even here at all.

With this in mind, I wandered through some of the myriad photos I took on our trip last summer.  Here, a view out of the car window on the way from Mesa Verde, Colorado, to the state of Wyoming.  Here, the American West – sparse, grand, barren, and filled with life.  Merry Christmas!

Coffee Cup and Iron Gall Ink

I have been playing with iron gall ink, in this case McCaffery’s.  Iron gall ink is easy to make and is the traditional ink over the centuries.  It is waterproof, but with age turns the sepia so often affiliated with old manuscripts and drawings.  I was playing with my goose quill pen, and a steel nib pen as well, working on calligraphy, when I decided to try it in a sketchbook.  Given how busy I was this weekend, this is all I could accomplish, but I will say that the ink held up beautifully as the watercolors were added after the drawing.