July 2016 – ChernHaven

Some recent ballpoint doodles

I searched and searched for tips on turning my longtime ballpoint habit (mostly fueled by sitting at a desk at work and school, and ease of carrying on a bus) legit with an archival ink. Turns out there are some common brands that use inks that conform to certain industry standards, and there are lots of mailing list and blog posts about these issues. But, actually finding the right implements cheap in my locality took a lot of hours (as always.) But, for now I’ve got my answers, even if it did require ordering stuff from China and Japan and Germany, and the most expensive pen has already had the pocket clip break so thanks, Tombow. But, the Tombow refills are more for writing, as they are a smooth flowing liquid ink.
If you want to get that pencil like feel and value range you need an old school funky ballpoint, none of this gel and liquid and glide what-not. Well, Schneider’s got it, and the Schneider Pulse (not the Pulse Pro, which has some kinda smooth glide ink) ended up being the compromise weapon of choice. I got one at a reasonable price, and then a handful more shipped from way out for a very reasonable price. And some extra refills. Now, actually getting my broken hand and mind to usethem up is a whole other issue. Most of these drawings were done after being up all night and then finally having a craving to do what I should have been doing all along after the sun starts coming up and I’ve turned the lights out.

doodle for dawn small — which pen was this?

hands 7_21_16 state 2 small — I was about to go to bed, I swear

hands detail 2small — detail of the above

just some recent fountain pen doodles

I keep remembering, hours after I should have gone to bed, that reviving my lapsed focus on drawing, starting in reverse order of problems with getting the broken hand back in action, was supposed to be some sort of priority. I mean like, when the sun is coming up.

But, why should it be a priority, anyway? The world is overrun with people wandering around with sketchbooks now, and blogging about their practice and their techniques. Back when I was really in it no one else could be seen doing it in these parts (unless you were in the vicinity of the art school), and no one cared that I was.(Isn’t she cute, though? Less than an inch square in real life.)

I have been using the old Pentalic Mark X, which when new seemed like a sad replacement for my favorite reasonably priced sketching fountain, the Pelikan 120. Although I have purchased a couple more 120’s off of ebay, at not so reasonable prices these days, I still do not have one working the way it used to. The Mark X just keeps flowing along, with no maintenance in the 35-40 years since it was new.

Wait for it

Hey, I was just installed. How the heck did you even find this “Blog”?

Well, having already gotten one mysterious (and possibly translated from another language?) comment, apparently there are robots out there waiting for any new WordPress site to appear.

However, just in case any humans are involved, I will explain that this is indeed the first post I am writing on my new installation but I have attempted an import of the items on my Blogger site. So, it looks as if I have been working on this sporadically for seven years. (“Sometimes I’d like to murder time” – Robin Williamson, October Song) I have been meaning to take back possession of a lot of the stuff that I wrote directly on FaceBook as well, we’ll see about that later.