In spite of an overflowing cabinet of fountain pen inks, I purchased the 2021 Inkvent Calendar by Diamine to have 25 new inks to explore during the Holidays in Ink Challenge. (Twenty-four of them are shown in the image above.) Diamine will be releasing these inks in bottles for individual purchase in early 2022, for those who weren't fortunate enough to snap up one of the collections. This post showcases my personal favorites from the set. And, yes, I have a LOT of favorites!
Holidays in Ink has just begun today! If you didn't have a chance to get started, don't worry; this Challenge is not a Sketch-a-Day type. Rather, you choose the sketchbook you think you can fill during the next six weeks. The goal is to complete the book. You still have plenty of time to do that before January 2, when Holidays in Ink ends!
In the meantime, if your studio is anything like mine or friends of mine, you're probably struggling with getting your inks organized. I don't like dipping into the bottles because it can contaminate the inks. I don't like the skinny plastic vials because they are too thin for some pens or brushes to dip in, and also they are so deep that the ink gets on areas where I'll be putting my hand when I write. My solution has been to get packs of 5ml. glass bottles from Dollar Tree. I can dip into these without making such a mess. They are more convenient to store because they aren't as tall, making them less likely to tip over too. I refill these little bottles using a pipette as needed, so there is zero risk of contaminating my large bottles of ink as I move from color to color.
Last year, I wrote out the Holidays in Ink Prompt Lists across a two page spread in my sketchbook, and used those pages to organize my approach. It's always helpful to have a printed list too. Melissa Fisher made a printable version for us last year. She has once again created a PDF file that we can print out of the new Holidays in Ink prompts for the 2021-22 Challenge. Thank you so much, Melissa!
She has also written a blog post about how she plans to use Holidays in Ink as a sort of meditative/religious retreat for herself, to balance the hectic holiday season. I love seeing how people use this Challenge to meet their own goals, and fulfill their personal journeys. Art can bring together so many different world views in a unifying, encouraging, and therapeutic way.
The Rat Race of Life lately has prevented me from sorting out exactly what my own "bigger goal" will be during Holidays in Ink this year, though I have some rough ideas. If not solidified in advance, that purpose often reveals itself through the process of creation, allowing the challenge to develop with the flow of the ink. (This is why I often create the title page last!) When in doubt, follow the process.
If you missed the main post for Holidays in Ink with the dates, prompts, etc., here's a link. We have less than a week to go before it begins!
My dad gave me this glass pen about 30 years ago, which was handmade in Venice, Italy. I use it all the time for testing new colors, and doing ink and wash. It's so easy to wipe clean when switching between colors. Naturally, I don't bring it out on location because I'm always afraid of dropping it and breaking the delicate tip. As a gift from my dad, it's irreplaceable. Even working in my studio, I worry about dropping it. I needed an inexpensive version that I wouldn't be so afraid to use.
Everybody has been asking me if I am planning another Holidays in Ink challenge this year, and the answer is most definitely, "YES!" I hope you'll join me from Monday, November 22 through Sunday, January 2 to complete this challenge. Melissa Fischer is teaming up with me once again to come up with prompt lists that can inspire us and improve our art.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to complete a Holidays in Ink sketchbook from cover to cover during the dates of the challenge. That's it. You don't have to follow prompt lists nor make your own sketchbook if you don't want to.
If you'd like to play along with us, here's how you can get ready:
If you've never done bookbinding, this is a great opportunity to take on a bookbinding project before the challenge begins! (Make a small one first to test drive the process.) There are lots of great YouTube videos on bookbinding, with hundreds of options to explore. I especially like Sea Lemon and Nik the Booksmith on YouTube.
There will be a prompt list posted before the challenge starts, for those of you who would like to work from a list. If you want to be sure not to miss the posts related to this challenge, you can subscribe to this blog by entering your email address on the upper right. You will then receive email notifications of new posts.
I'm doing my paper and materials testing now, and will probably bind my own sketchbook for the challenge, or rebind an existing book. Melissa and I have ordered the new Diamine Inkvent 2021 Calendar, so we will be exploring the 25 brand new inks in that collection, as well as using inks we already have. We're looking forward to lots of linework with fountain pens, dip pens, and even ballpoints (great for travel!), plus wet on wet washes, calligraphy and lettering, and more compositional study. We hope you'll join us! Stay tuned for the prompt lists.
Happy New Year, everybody! I can't believe Holidays in Ink is over. I'm still mentally processing everything from this challenge. Here's a video tour of the sketchbook I created during the challenge.
A note about the figurative works: Except for the dancers in primary colors, they were done during weekly figure drawing Zoom sessions that I do with a few friends. We've been working from master paintings, allowing 20 minutes for each. The figures are therefore a bit more stylized than they would be if we'd been using photographs.
I've been excited to have a go at the Black and White on Toned Paper prompt (Process #6). When working on a toned surface, I nearly always select a warm color or neutral gray. This time, I decided to pick up the cool colors of sky and water, using a sheet of periwinkle-colored cardstock that has been living in the studio closet for several years. I'm loving the strong contrasts and power of these Notan style sketches. I used the paper color as my midtone value, adding just black and white for lights and darks. I definitely want to do more of these moving forward.
I made Sumi ink this week for the first time, using a Sumi ink stick and stone.
I can't believe we're more than half way through this challenge, and heading into Week 4. If you're doing the challenge also, let me know in the comments how it's going. I'm glad there are still over two and a half weeks left, since I still have a lot of untapped prompts, and nearly 30 blank pages remaining in this sketchbook!
The sketch above, in bright, primary colors, was the result of several days spent mostly doing monochromatic work. I was DYING for some bright color at that point, so I pulled out my most saturated, brightest watercolors, and gifted myself with a fiesta day of color intensity. Normally I'd do a composite with several different poses, but I loved the image of this dancer, so I sketched the same pose several times, as if it were a dance company chorus, letting the colors mingle and the images float across the page from one to the next. The linework was added after the watercolor dried.
The Holidays in Ink Challenge certainly got me out of my comfort zone this week. I had some new art adventures, discovered more about what inspires me, and had some flops and successes. Leave me a comment and let me know how it's going for you too! If you've posted your sketches somewhere, feel free to leave a link there too. If you haven't started this challenge yet, but would like to, you can read all about it and get the prompt lists (which are totally optional) at this link.
Day 7 involved a Process Prompt I knew I would put off forever if I could: Blind Contour drawing! But I was determined to tackle it. I had beautiful, fresh flowers to inspire me for the Flowers subject prompt, so that helped ease the pain. I did the sketch with a red Bic Cristal Xtra-Bold 1.6mm ballpoint pen (Amazon Affiliate Link), and then splashed some watercolor over it with a loose approach. (Image below.) Starting with the pen in the upper left hand corner and working across the page helped me guess where I was. I also tried to keep my hand still and work around a center point of the flower, then shift my hand over for the next bloom. I confess, I did peek just a few times to be sure I was filling the page! I don't think I've done blind contours since a figure drawing class 20 years ago, and it was more fun than I thought it would be. The inaccuracies gave me some interesting and unexpected shapes to work with. I like the red lines poking through the watercolor. These Bic Cristal pens are great for sketching, with their very wide ballpoints yielding lots of variation when wanted, and intense colors. At under $5 for a set of 24, the price is hard to beat for some favorite art tools during this challenge!
How are you all doing at the start of Week 2 of the Holidays in Ink Challenge? Please let me know in the comments! I began Day 1 on November 24 with the page spread of herons and flamingos above. The first page or two in a new sketchbook is always a bit intimidating for me, so I selected a more familiar subject from the prompt list to begin. I've been wanting to study the leg anatomy of the longer-legged birds, heads of herons, and upside-down beaks of flamingos, so I did some anatomy studies on the page as well. My process prompt was Line Quality. I aimed for longer, more expressive lines, and to avoid chicken-scratchy, short, choppy strokes. (Materials list for all of the sketches in this post is at the end.)
Yesterday, I panicked! In spite of my posts and preparation so far, it suddenly dawned on me that Holidays in Ink was starting in two days, and I felt totally unprepared. I had no idea what I was going to sketch when the time came, and I didn't want to get sidetracked thinking about that when it was time to sketch. Are you feeling like that too?
So, yesterday I sat down and made a plan for the first few days, using the prompt lists in the Holidays in Ink post. I can always adjust it, but at least I have a plan. Once I did that, I felt 1000% better.
You can play along with my plan, create your own from the prompt lists on this post, or do something entirely different. Feel free to post your plan in the Comments. Here's what I plan to do:
It's hard to believe that the Holidays in Ink Challenge will be starting in a week! I'm getting so excited about it that it's difficult to stop myself from diving in for a head start. Grabbing supplies for the project from my studio shelves, drawers, and boxes is part of what's made me so eager. Here are some mouth-watering images of some of the things I intend to savor over the next couple of months. I've added Amazon Affiliate links to make it easier for you to source any of these supplies that you might want to add to your own.
Most of us are experiencing a greater-than-usual sense of cabin fever this year due to the pandemic. With stores having reopened, I donned a mask and gloves, and headed to my favorite Dollar Tree store for an inexpensive dose of what I call "A.R.T." --- Art Retail Therapy! I always find loads of fun and useful studio items here, and everything at Dollar Tree is truly $1, unlike many of the other "dollar" stores. They carry two types of metal clips I cannot be without in the studio or outside painting, plus a bunch of other art related items I use all the time. The little 6-packs of white paint palettes will come in very handy during Holidays in Ink, when working monochromatically with different dilutions of a color, or for limited palettes. I also love the challenge of finding things that I can repurpose for art use.
The watercolor palette at the bottom of the image above was made from one of the $1 Colormates eye
In preparation for my Holidays in Ink challenge, I've got my eyes open for supplies that might be interesting to work with. That's not to say that I don't have PLENTY right here in the studio, but when I saw this 48-color set of Arteza Real Brush Pens on Amazon Prime Day, my willpower abandoned me! I decided to dive in and give them a test drive, since I love working with ink and brush pens. I did a few sketches and tests with them, along with several comparisons with other non-waterproof inks and brush pens that I'm already using.
Here in the northeastern United States, October is the month when we plein air painters flock outside to capture the very short burst of peak color in the landscape. It's a time I look forward to all year. Not only is it the best color we will get, but it's the last opportunity before colder temperatures drive us indoors. I've always lamented the fact that Inktober happens in October. I love working in ink, but it's the last thing I want to do in October. Every winter, I come up with a personal, motivational studio art project to expand my own horizons, and try to make the most of the days indoors. This year, from Thanksgiving until after New Year's Day, I'm going to do Holidays in Ink. You're all invited to join me if you'd like an interesting art challenge around the holidays. Here are the basic details:
A friend of mine gave me a really cute tin filled with 30 cold press Hannemule watercolor postcards. (https://amzn.to/3cceRSN.) You can see the tin in the image above on the upper right corner. It's been super easy to tuck it into a sketch bag with a small pan set of watercolors or gouache, or a favorite brush pen (https://amzn.to/3mAWTOC) for monochromatic studies. The cards are 4x6" with rounded corners. I'd classify the paper as
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| Immature Bald Eagle, gouache on gray paper of a Stillman & Birn Nova Trio Sketchbook |
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| Part of my current "Inspiration Wall" in the studio |
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| Watercolor over thin white gesso layer, calligraphy marker |
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| These two facing pages were lightly sized with white gesso. A small plein air painting was collaged onto the left side. Watercolor and gouache were used to paint the Red-winged blackbirds from photos I took at the scene, and capture the feel of the marshy location. |
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| Watercolor, applied directly onto the pages (no sizing) |
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| Pentel Pocket Brush Pen filled with Platinum Carbon Black ink, 13x44" mural drawing |
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| A couple of my gouache (left) and watercolor (right) palettes with some little sketches. The small, airtight plastic container has titanium white gouache in it. |
