De Atramentis Archive Ink

Eureka……Wonderful new discovery of a permanent waterproof ink – De Atramentis Archive ink (black). I was reading in Liz Steel’s blog that she uses the De Atramentis Archive ink for drawing under watercolour washes without ink bleeding. So after some googling I found that the Good Store in Vic Park carries this ink and bought a bottle to try ($25 for a 35ml bottle).

This is a very, very quick little sketch on heavy weight cartridge paper (Westart 225gsm) of some dried Banksia flowers I have in a vase at home. Drawn with the De Atramentis ink and let dry for a couple of minutes then washed over with permanent rose, perylene maroon and some dirty blue/green colour left on my palette with a waterbrush. Magic……no ink runs, no bleeding…. the ink is rock solid.

I have now swapped out the Montblanc ink in favour of the De Atramentis into one of my Lamy’s for when I need the ink to stay put. I do use an Extra Fine nib for this ink as I feel that it is quite wet but does seem to dry reasonable quickly.

I will still use my watersoluble inks for when I want to blend on the paper but it’s really good to finally have a waterproof ink for my fountain pen.

Sketching Kit

This is is my everyday carry sketchbook stuff….

My homemade Fauxdori of course….

A small metal folding watercolour box (Lukas brand although I didn’t like the paints that came with the set so have swapped out to a mixture of Winsor and Newton, Daniel Smith and Art Spectrum). I bought empty full and half pans and fill them with tube colour as necessary and the pans are held in place with blu-tack (this works surprisingly well, make sure the box and pans are clean then stick down strips of blu-tack to fit the base of the box and just push the pans down – they won’t fall out and if you want to swap colours they can be levered out and replaced)

Update…Colours in the box…..

Yellows: Winsor Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Quinacridone Gold

Reds: Permanent Rose, Winsor Red, Perylene Maroon, Quinacridone  Burnt Scarlet

Blues: Cerulean, Cobalt, Ultramarine

Other: Cadmium Orange, Neutral Grey

A wrist sweatband for cleaning my waterbrush (white band was not a great colour choice as it looks pretty messy quickly but they wash easily – I hand wash as I don’t want all my clothes multi-coloured).

Then in the pocket of my bag I have all my pens, pencils, waterbrushes, eraser and ruler……

Fountain Pens -Three Lamy pens, one with Extra Fine nib, two with Fine nibs. All with ink convertors and different inks…. Montblank Permanent Black (which is the most waterproof and least smudgy depending on the paper)….DeAtramentis Black/Brown ink which is water soluble to a lovely warm brownish red colour…. and my own mix of a Black/Blue with two parts Skrip Black to one part Quink Blue/Black which dilutes to a lovely bluish grey when wet.

Ball point pen – Uniball Jetstream 3 – Black, Blue and Red colours for highlighting in my diary

RollerBall type – Pilot Hi-Tech V5 black ink (watersoluble) and Uniball Eye Micro Black (waterproof pigment ink)

Gel Pen – Uniball Signo white gel pen (for those all too frequently lost highlights)

Pencils – Always mechanical or clutch – I don’t have the patience for sharpening and dislike shavings and graphite in my bag….. Pentel A120 mechanical pencil 0.7mm 2B leads and Steadtler Mars 780 2mm clutch pencil with 2B lead.

Eraser – Pentel Clic eraser 2….it’s shaped like a pen with a plastic sleeve cover, I don’t use it all that often

Waterbrushes – I wouldn’t be without my waterbrushes – a wonderful invention for quick outdoors sketching… I’ve tried several brands but my favourite is the Pentel waterbrush. I have three in my bag, two are filled with ordinary water in the broad and fine brush points. The third waterbrush is a fine point filled with Liquitex or Art Spectrum acrylic ink – this acts like a caligraphy brush and I use it for Notan style drawing/painting. I always make sure that my pens are upright in my bag so that there are no accidents.

Ruler – Small (15cm – 6″) metal ruler for when I just have to have a straight edge

 

My Fauxdori

This is my “Fauxdori” – a home made version of the Midori travellers journal. I really like the look and flexibility of the Japanese Midori travel journals but the two sizes that they offer don’t really meet my needs, plus they are really expensive to buy and fill with their books……So I made my own – really quite easy to do. There are lots of videos on youtube of people showing how to make your own, so I did but made it a little different for my needs…

I bought a piece of 2mm “tooling” leather from a local leather supply shop in North Perth and a leather punch kit plus some “millinery” elastic from Spotlight (total cost around $40). I’ve made mine in A6 size as this is convenient if you’re buying paper to make books fit inside – it’s exactly half A5 size paper (which of course is half A4 size – the most common size of paper). Also it’s small enough to fit in my bag with out taking up too much space and when I sketch on location I can use it without drawing too much attention (pun intended).

Method…Using a sharp knife cut the leather to size ensuring that there’s enough leather around the edges to wrap around the booklets inside (this will depend a little on how thick you’re going to fill it). Then punch 3 holes along the middle of the spine – one in the centre for the wrap around band (Midori have their band in the middle of the back cover but I think that leaves a lump in the paper – better to have it in the spine where it’s hidden away). Two other holes top and bottom for the book holding elastic. See picture above. Now the clever part is to use a button with a shank on it and thread the elastic through the hole in the shank and tie a loop long enough to pass through from the outside of the cover, run  down the inside of the cover then exit the bottom hole, run up the outside of the cover then loop OVER the button (see pic above). The advantage of using a button is that it also allows you to insert spiral bound books if you wish – just push the loop down through the rings then out the bottom and loop over the button.

I have two elastic loops which allows 4 separate books to be held in place (could add more if necessary) then the shank of the button sits in the hole of the cover nice and flush holding it all in place. I also have another piece of elastic for two book marks that just loops around the button a couple of times.

I also rounded the corners for a more elegant look and rubbed the leather with olive oil to soften and protect the leather (do this before you thread the elastics through and let the oil be thoroughly absorbed before you fill it with paper)

Now for the fun part – filling with what ever you want.

I have made………

Sketchbook – from heavy weight cartridge paper

Notebook – with lined and blank pages (created using excel spreadsheet then copied duplex onto regular copy paper)

Diary  – again created on a spreadsheet and printed on copy paper

Each book is stitched using ordinary sewing thread doubled over (supposed to used waxed cotton bookbinding thread but I don’t have any and this seems fine for my purpose of making relatively thin booklets). Just use an awl or any sharp point to punch five holes along the mid line where they will fold for the spine then using a long sewing needle weave the thread in and out (see youtube for bookbinding tutorials especially “SeaLemon”).

I also have a couple of plastic pockets made from plastic zip folders bought from officeworks (cut the zip part off and rounded the corners)

Making my own books is really quick and easy and is heaps cheaper than buying special books to fit a special size. Plus I have complete choice over what paper I put in – watercolour, cartridge, toned or my own printed up copy paper or a combination of any of these. I especially like to use old cinema flyers for the covers – at my local they print up beautiful thick glossy flyers in A5 size  – perfect when folded in half to make A6 book covers (see the Banksy cover above, the other covers are cuttings from a magazine  – I just liked the pics so glued them on to the first and last pages.)

A charm or other ornament can be looped through the closure loop for added adornment and ease of opening (I have few earrings that are missing their partner that I could use).

Mother’s Day on the Beach

City Beach on Mother’s Day afternoon, a girl sitting nearby digging in the sand, lovely warm and sunny a balmy day.

Elderly couple sitting in their folding chairs under a sun umbrella with a bright stripy towel draped over their knees – the “Freo Doctor”(sea breeze) arrived at exactly 3 o’clock.

The Life Guards watch tower on the groyne, unmanned at this time of year even though there were plenty of people swimming and riding the big swell that was rolling in.

 

(W&N and Daniel Smith watercolours on home made sketchbook with heavy weight cartridge paper, Pentel mechanical pencil, Lamy fine fountain pen, MontBlanc black ink, Pentel waterbrush)

TV Head

A head I drew whilst watching TV last night, just froze the image on the screen and sketched in pencil with watercolour over the top (raw sienna, quin burnt scarlet and ultramarine blue) then a fine tip pentel waterbrush filled with Art Spectrum acrylic ink for the black outlines. Took about 15 minutes. I’m reading Charles Reid’s book “Painting what you want to see” and I really like his style of painting…letting the colours run and merge on the page – not as easy as it looks but great fun (should really use heavy weight watercolour paper – my sketch is on cheap copy paper)

Subiaco Clock Tower

A little sketch I did of the Clock Tower in Subiaco which commemorates the fallen soldiers from the area in all the wars. I did attend the actual Anzac ceremony (2015) but sketched this after as it wasn’t appropriate to draw in the middle of the service!