A new sketchbook and some irises

Last month in Santa Fe, someone in my workshop group let me try a new 100% cotton sketchbook from German paper maker Hahnemuhle. I just did a small sketch but was really impressed with the paper. This week I received a couple of these books from Hahnemuhle — an A4 portrait and an A4 landscape — and I’ll be experimenting with them this summer.

There’s a gorgeous spring bouquet on my counter, filled with flowers from Lutaflore in Pointe Claire and waiting to be painted, so I decided to give the book a try. I sketched the bouquet first with a fine grey marker, and then added colour. The paper is a bit smoother than my Etchr Perfect Sketchbook, which makes it easier to do more detailed drawings, both in pencil and in ink. It’s closer, in fact, to the paper texture of the Handbook Watercolour Journal that I have been using for years. If you work in ink, you might like this book because pen glides really easily on the paper. As for taking watercolour, I was really impressed. The colours remain vibrant, the washes flow well, you can glaze and layer, and lifting is easy. So far it’s a two thumbs up for me.

Pen envy

Ok, I’m guilty of buying something I didn’t really need. I certainly have enough pens — dozens of markers, dip pens, fountain pens and other assorted drawing tools — but I saw my friends using a Kakimori dip pen in Instagram reels, and I had to have one. Call it an early birthday gift to myself, which is easy to justify since I do have a June birthday.

The pen arrived today, in its beautiful packaging. The brass nib in a tiny grey box with a debossed imprint for the logo, the wooden handle in a long box, and the pigment ink in a square box. All as beautiful as Japanese packaging can be. So beautiful that I’m tempted to save the boxes too.

There are no assembly instructions for the pen. Insert the nib in the handle, dip in the ink and draw. And draw is what I did after seeing the beautiful thick and thin lines this pen can make in drawings from Suhita, Paul and Paul.