I came down with quite the doozy of a cold this week and have thus been out for the past several days, unable to post. Don’t worry! The saga is now back from its hiatus, with more hilarity and hi jinx for your enjoyment.
The Chicken Saga pt. 6
Tag Archives: pen and ink
The Chicken Saga pt. 5
Of course I asked….it just wasn’t until later that evening!
The Chicken Saga pt. 3
…Although a chicken roll call would be most amusing.
The Chicken Saga pt. 2
I promise the rest of this story isn’t just a bunch of bad puns.
But I had to get that one in, given the subject matter.
The Beauty of The Lowly Pen
For today’s sketch I turned to a favorite go-to implement: a smorgasbord of pens.
Simple but mighty, ink pens are one of my top choices for sketch materials. In fact, when teaching Drawing I or Intro classes, the first thing I do is banish pencils (at least, mechanical or similar types with erasers. Charcoals and chunky, non-erasable pencils were allowed, but I digress) much to the chagrin of the students. The “no pens allowed” rule is actually a technique I stole from a former Drawing I instructor and it’s one of the best ideas I think anyone has every had.
The reasoning behind this is that it’s easy for the eraser to become a crutch to any artist. Obsessing over details and the tendency to focus on “mess-ups” instead of what is truly important about a piece–composition, technique, a conveyed emotion or feeling–can quickly overtake an artist and thus sabotage the visual integrity of a drawing.
So there you have it, folks! A quick, frizzy sketch of two kids and a bike in motion, no erasing, using several of my favorite pens: Zig Mangaka 2, Sakura Microperm, gray tone Mildliner, and Le Pen, all from my absolute-favorite pen shop: The Goulet Pen Co. They even include a DumDum pop with your order! (At least, they used to.)
Long Days Drawn Out 