Inktober: mushrooms

[eller]

So these are my mushrooms for Inktober! :) I again used my fountain pen with fude nib, except this time I drew on grey paper so I could also use white highlights. For these, I used a Faber Castell PITT artist pen that's not entirely cheating because it contains "India ink - waterproof".

I feel kind of bad for wasting a whole A4 sheet of rather expensive paper for this, except I really wanted to see if this technique works out. It doesn't. Now I know. (It's really annoying when something ends up too bad to sell but too nice to throw away without hesitation. What am I going to do with all that wastepaper? ;_;)

Yesterday I also drew something about "dance" but I decided not to upload it - the sketch turned out nice, so I decided to use it as basis of a lineart for a collaboration game thing. Unfortunately, the participants' drawings have to be kept secret. Oh well.

Comments

[green_knight]

What do you feel doesn't work? I saw the picture before I read the comment, and thought 'neat'. At this scale your nib is no longer overwhelming.

[eller]

Mh. I'm glad you like the picture! However, it's not something I'd ever give to print, for several reasons, some subjective, and some of them objective. I'll try to explain my thoughts a bit...

Objective problems of the technique:
- The white lines don't work! They're smeary, blotty, and, worst of all, sometimes broke off and I had to start anew. I guess this was a problem of the white pen I used, which usually works fine but apparently didn't like this particular paper. It's visible especially on the grass when lines suddenly terminate more or less randomly. That's not supposed to happen!
- Not visible in the picture, but the black ink lines took forever to dry. I had to stop working several times so I wouldn't smear the whole picture. Very annoying for something that's supposed to be a sketching technique.
- Also not visible: the nib made horrible scratchy sounds while drawing. *shudders*
(- Very visible but not the fault of the technique itself: my pen strokes are horrible due to lack of practice. LOL)

Subjective:
- I'm still intensely uncomfortable with anything that isn't the "clear", detailed, tidy style of my watercolor paintings. I usually think in terms of color areas, not lines, so line work is clearly not my strong suit.
- Ironically, I like the broad strokes better on the smaller format than at this scale, for the same reason: it's more suited to my style of thinking if the "lines" are so broad compared to the overall image size that they turn back into "areas". This might mean that detailed drawings are impossible, just areas of light and dark, but the resulting sketches will actually be more useful to me if I one day decide to make a "real" artwork from them.

[jainas]

I was going to ask the same question for pretty much the same reasons...

But I get how annoying waiting for thing to dry is. I'm never patient enough and end up messing my drawing nine time out of ten... ^^
Regarding the technique and the white lines, I guess it is the gap between what the artist *knows* is not perfect about their work, and what the watcher actually sees... And even if I see the places where the technique could be better, it doesn't stop the final piece to be enjoyable to watch... even if the white line don't end when you think they should have! ;)

It's a good idea to use colored paper. Maybe I'll try that some of the days!

[eller]

I'm afraid I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to technique. ^^° I know this is misplaced in sketch work but there's always this nagging voice in the back of my mind, saying, no prospective buyer would be happy with this. XD

Colored paper is such a great invention! Lately, a lot of manufacturers came out with sketchbooks containing grey or brown paper, and I really like that development - I usually use brownish paper for figure sketches because with some shadows and highlights it's so easy to portray skin...

[jainas]

It is of course different if you create as a "professional", with an eye to selling the final piece, which is not often my case... but even then, I always remind myself of that Francis Picabia quote, that could be translated as "art is the worship of mistakes". :)

[eller]

Oh, I fortunately don't actually have to sell paintings to live, or anything. (I have a paying day job, haha!) It's just that most of my social circle happen to be professional artists (I wonder how that happened) so obviously I also have some standards as to the technique I want to have. Always wanted to have, actually. I mean, I got started by - very primitively - looking at other people's artwork, and thinking, okay, I also want to be able to do this. And then I started working on that... XD Also, I occasionally do illustrations that actually go into print, and I'd be very embarrassed indeed if the technical flaws were too obvious. (Actually, never mind: they'd never go into print in the first place...) So, yeah, even when sketching I can't really shrug that ambition off. (And, yeah, personality flaw - I know!)

[jainas]

With your rythm of posting I somehow assumed that you were at least semi-professional... (or maybe on holidays. :D )

We are different in that I guess. I have a day job as well and art and drawing are playfull to me, more of a hobby, even if I strive to improve... I have never been highly perfectionist. (Also a personality flaw. ^^ )

[eller]

Oh, I guess semi-professional sums it up nicely. The only reason I don't do art full-time is that algorithm designers in our society are better paid than watercolorists. ;) But I do spend a lot of time on trains (commuting to and from work) so I'm almost constantly painting when I'm not busy with evil mathematics. ^^

Seems we're different in our approach to art, then. It's also "playful" for me but, at the same time, playful means also trying to improve. (So - my actual "playing" is also basically limited to chess... Tournament chess. Can you see a pattern there? XD) For me, art is... Something I want. I guess.