Roz Wound Up

Choosing a Pen for Writing (and Sketching) in Your Visual Journal

My December 9 post busting the notion that watercolor paper is only for painting made me realize I hadn't dealt specifically with an important part of the “writing-sketching-paper” equation that often gets overlooked, or not talked about: pen preference and pen type.

There’s no visual for today’s post because I don’t want to play favorites to any of the many pens I use. A look at past posts, or a click on the “pens” category will take you to illustrated posts. What I want to do today, without the influence of an image, is mention which pens I use and why I use them.

You don’t need fancy tools for visual journaling. You need a pen and paper. (Some of you may work with a pencil and that's OK too!) But your hand should like the feel of that pen on that paper if you are to be encouraged to continue. Often, people with no experience of pens and paper beyond office supplies (and office supplies have much to recommend them, don’t get me wrong) become frustrated when they don’t get the results they hoped they would.

Going with the Flow: More on Mixing Sketches with Collage

Above: yet another spread from my “weirdo” journal. I discuss this below. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

In an on-going attempt to show you what is going on in this journal, and give you a sense of the working method in the hopes that you will experiment and discover a working method that suits you, I thought the above image would provide a useful example. Here’s the breakdown of what happened, with a little bit of editorializing:

Backgrounds and What Goes on Top

Left: A mixed-media page spread (the journal is turned so the head and tail of the book are at the right and left, making the image 8 x 13 inches). Read below for more details about this spread. Click on the image to view an enlargement. When you do you'll also be able to see the lovely texture of the Gutenberg paper.

I’ve been showing you backgrounds I’ve made while I’ve been recovering from a nasty summer cold. Today I’ve posted a spread with background decoration that was actually used for journaling already. It represents the return of my ability to concentrate, a happy day.

Here’s a Breakdown of What I Did
1. I started this page spread with flat brush strokes of Turquoise FW Acrylic ink around all the edges. Then I took a soft sumi brush and trailed Indigo FW Acrylic ink through the still wet strokes. And while things were still wet I spritzed everything with clean water to spread color even more. I let it sit for a couple weeks because I had a cold and because I wasn’t on this page spread yet.

More Background Text

Above: I was reading a book the other day and an artist was quoted as saying this. I decided it would make an interesting rubber-stamped text background in the current journal—which I made with Gutenberg, and the texture of the paper is visible when you click on the image to view an enlargement. (Scanner clipped the right edge off.)

The other day, as I mentioned in other posts, I pre-painted a lot of pages in my journal. Since I was still too sick to sketch it made sense to keep up with the productivity! The previous post on rubberstamped text backgrounds was so popular I wanted to share another one.

On this spread I used FW Acrylic inks again (they were already out), and started with a flat brush making strokes along the outside edges of the page spread with Indigo and Turquoise (which is sort of a cerulean blue). I let that dry and then added some full strength strokes of Flame Orange and also some splats of the same Orange—but they got a bit neutralized as I had some blue on the brush.

While We Are on the Topic of Backgrounds…

Above: journal page spread where rubberstamped text forms the background. Click on the image to view an enlargement, and read below for more details.

I'm still fighting a cold and suffering from Fair Withdrawal. I am aching to sketch something, anything, including two not-too-attractive pears (I like pears with a little more variety and oddness to their shapes) that were on standby for Dick's lunches. So I flipped over the page in my journal and the next spread was covered with pre-stamped text. (The text is actually a line out of an article I read a couple weeks ago. "This insistence on open endings and on feelings." I had stamped it, running right off the edges of the page spread, with a large stamp typeface and Brilliance stamp pad inks, which have a nice metallic quality.)

I picked up a Faber-Castel Pitt Artists Brush pen that is a sort of periwinkle blue and started sketching the two pears I'd put on my desk. I was sitting on my foot-rest close to the floor. (Yes some of the handwritten text at the bottom of the verso page has been obliterated in the scan.)

Then I started scribbling with my Stabilo Tones to add color to the pears, their shadows, and the table top. The thing I love about Stabilo Tones is that you can scribble, then wet the lines and move the paint around, and finally blend with you finger.

If you want to read more about Stabilo Tones go to this post, and then read several of the posts which follow it. I was on a Stabilo Tone kick at the end of the summer. Just like me to love a dead medium. You could have similar fun with Caran d'Ache NeoColor II—which are also wax and watersoluble.

The blending with your finger is the real joy here—especially when you are fighting a cold and dying to sketch something (and there's no puppy in the house).

So next time a cold has you trapped in the house with nothing but produce, cover a journal page spread with text for the background and start to paint over it. Don't worry about the finished product. Just be sure to pick a medium that is tactile and fun, because the process will perk you up, even if the chicken soup isn't working.

Pre-Painting Journal Cards—Whether or Not You're Going to the Minnesota State Fair

Above: A very dusty photograph (I didn't have a digital camera in 2003 yet; I scanned this image from the 2003 journal where I kept notes about colors used in this batch of sheets) of a 22 x 30 inch sheet of 300 lb. watercolor paper pre-painted for journal cards. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I may have made some converts on Monday at the MCBA Visual Journal Collective—to using journal cards for the Minnesota State Fair. Having cards cut to a comfortable working size makes sketching and painting in the tight and crowded spaces of the Fair a lot easier.

I like to pre-paint my journal cards and several folks asked me how I do that, so I dug up this "before" photo to explain the simple process. You can see the State Fair Journal I made using cards from this paper here. If you haven't been reading my previous Minnesota State Fair Preparation Posts you could do that now (they start on August 12) and see additional examples of other types of journal cards. Or you could go to the journal selections page on my website and look for Fair and travel journals that use these cards.

One of Those Days: Letting Things Go

Left: Journal page with dog sketch (dip pen and Ziller glossy black acrylic ink). Fortune attached before I got to the page. Gouache background painted after ink sketch. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Today is the 10th month of more than daily posting on the blog. A tick mark on towards other goals. I had hoped to list a bunch of links from readers who responded to last month's "quiz" (about which blogs they read) but preparation for an art show (yesterday's opening was very well attended and great fun as well) and other matters intruded. It just hasn't been possible to pull that material together yet. It will come shortly.

It's Full—I'm Finished

Above: my fake journal kept to celebrate International Fake Journal Month 2009, finished today, the book contains exactly 30 page spreads, one done each day in April. The journal is an Alvin Field book with water resistant pages. I worked with dip pen and Ziller Acrylic ink (glossy black) and Schmincke Pan Watercolors. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Well, it's over. For me anyway. Other folks have about 4 more hours until the end of IFJM. If you are new to this blog and wondering what the heck IFJM is you can click on the IFJM category in the category list, click on the appropriate page in the page list, or go to the Official International Fake Journal Month Blog and read more about it; as well as see postings of the images in my 2009 fake journal and the fake journals of some other folks too..

Looking at Noodler's Polar Brown

Left: A quick sketch of Gert (my rubber chicken puppet) using Noodler's Polar Brown Ink (notice that I wrote "Polar Bear Brown" on this page because my label was already obscured and I wasn't sure of the title; read more about this below). This is on the last page of my current, until this page early this morning, journal, which I made with Nideggen paper. I filled a Niji waterbrush with the ink and sketched with that. Click on the image to view an enlargement. Read on for more details

I'm still on the fence about Noodler's. Dick has used it for years in his fountain pens. He carries several pens with different colors to take notes and draw diagrams in his work journals which detail all the "science" stuff he's doing. He's been happy with it.

When I try it I have been less happy. It doesn't flow the way I want it to flow, or it isn't waterproof on the paper I'm using it on (a problem of the paper's sizing I'm guessing because the inks I've tried are advertised as waterproof on cellulose).

But I'm always looking at inks and yesterday I noticed that Wet Paint now had a whole shelf of Noodler's inks in a range of yummy colors. The inks don't all have the same characteristics (as to lightfastness and water resistance) so you have to choose carefully for your intended purpose.

Mining Sketchbooks for Inspiration (Again)

Above: This is a cropped portion from a page spread I did during the recent SketchCrawl. The bottom right hand corner is the penguin sketch I'm interested in. It was the last penguin sketch of the day and the most successful, and I was sad that I'd run out of space on the spread, but the sketch was to have life in another way too. This sketch was made with a Staedtler Pigment Liner and Schmincke gouache, in a journal I made with Nideggen paper. Read about it below. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Regular visitors to the blog will remember that for SketchCrawl on the 11th I went with a group of sketchers to the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory. (If you would like to see all my pages from this SketchCrawl they are posted at Twin Cities Sketchers.) I focused on the animals, which is typical for me. The above image is a sketch I made while at the zoo. There was one very sick looking penguin and he was standing still, so I sketched him.

Left: the entire page spread can be viewed by clicking on this image. The journal is approximately 6.5 x 9 inches. The top half of the page spread was used for puffin sketches. I then moved on to look at the pengiuns and those sketches are on the bottom portion of the spread beneath the dashed line.

When I am out sketching at the zoo I'm not worried about trying to get a finished painting of an animal or bird, I'm just trying to notice things about whatever it is that I'm sketching. I believe that everything I notice will be useful to me later when I try to make paintings of any of the animals or birds. I didn't have any plans to do a painting of a penguin anytime soon, but that very day these sketches were useful to me when it came time to do the next entry for my International Fake Journal Month journal.