Pens need love
Posted: November 23, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alice drawing, fountain pen drawing, ink drawing, sketchbook 16 CommentsI haven’t done a pen drawing in a while and when I finally sat down to draw yesterday my good Pilot fountain pen was not performing as it should. I refilled the converter with ink and continued my drawing but it ran out of ink quickly and the flow of the pen was not great. It was time for a good cleaning.
I flushed it thoroughly with distilled water and refilled it again but it was still not working as I had hoped. So this time I went to the very trusty Goulet Pen website to see what I could do. I followed a long series of instructions to fill my particular converter — empty it, turn it again to prime it with ink, expel all the ink, then fill it partially, turn it this way and that — basically a series of clockwise and counterclockwise acrobatics for my pen. But it worked! The ink is flowing again, the lines are black, and there’s nothing like sitting down to do a drawing of Alice when the snow if falling outside my window and she is exhausted after a walk. Sketched in a tiny Etchr Hot Press sketchbook using a Pilot E95S pen and de Atramentis Document Black ink.
Alice watches baseball
Posted: October 13, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alice, ink drawing, stillman & Birn 8 CommentsHappy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends! I hope you are enjoying a relaxing long weekend with friends and family. We had our family turkey dinner yesterday and then retired to the tv room to digest and watch baseball.
Since Alice is not much of a baseball fan, I was able to draw her as she slept. But with every whoop, holler and groan from the fans in the room with her, she adjusted her position a little bit, and I kept on drawing. Sketched in a Stillman & Birn Zeta series sketchbook (which I love for ink drawings) using a Platinum Carbon Desk Pen and Platinum Carbon ink.
Droopy bouquet
Posted: September 2, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet sketch, Delta series, ink drawing, pen sketch, stillman & Birn 12 CommentsIn the over-stuffed bag of art supplies that we all received from generous sponsors at the Poznan symposium was this tiny Stillman & Birn Delta Series sketchbook. The Delta series contains thick ivory-coloured paper and the small size book is perfect for tucking into even the smallest bag that I carry on daily errands. It’s been an overly busy summer but I am trying to keep up the daily drawing habit, and there are no excuses when you always have the book with you. It took a couple of tries to find the right pen to use with this but the winner is a Pilot Juice Up 0.3 gel pen. The roller ball nib glides beautifully on this paper, and the fine tip is ideal for even the tiniest of flowers in my droopy bouquet.
No place like home
Posted: August 4, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alice sketch, dog drawing, ink drawing, pen drawing 9 CommentsAlice is tired today and catching up on some rest. She swam on the weekend when we visited friends at their lakeside cottage, and it’s more activity than she’s used to.
In the summer she can’t run in the woods because of the tick problem. Instead she walks with me on the boring suburban streets, and it’s just not the same type of running and jumping over logs that she likes, and that keeps her in really good shape. So when she does get to run free and to swim, she has to recover for a few days afterwards.
I drew Alice today with two Pilot fountain pens: one extra-fine point filled with grey ink and one fine point filled with Platinum Carbon ink, in my Hahnemuhle portrait format A4 sketchbook. I didn’t have to go far to find her in the house. As always, she is by my side, whether I am in my office, working in my studio, or cooking in the kitchen. I have travelled a lot these past few months and feel quite bad about leaving her with our dog sitter when I go, even though she is lovingly cared for there. But of course, when I return, I can see that she is happiest here, on our daily walks, or in the house going from room to room and bed to bed.
Alice in blue
Posted: April 3, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alice sketch, ballpoint pen, dog drawing, ink drawing 24 CommentsMy reward today for finishing up a tedious project was to spend some time sketching Alice. And her gift to me was staying still for the whole time. It’s nearly time for her walk, but she held her pose until I was done, as if she knew how important a bit of drawing time was for me.
When I set out to draw, I wasn’t sure what my subject would be but she was beside me, and thankfully I had a ballpoint pen and a sketchbook right on my desk. Getting up to find drawing tools would have disturbed her and ruined the moment. Now my gift to her will be long walk and maybe a few throws of a tennis ball since the snow is finally starting to disappear.
Late to the game
Posted: March 26, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ink and watercolour, ink drawing, spring, wheelbarrow 23 CommentsI’m sure that you already know that in Canada we have 11 seasons, but I’m a bit late to the game. I only heard about this last week on the radio. My particular favourites on this list are the ones that occur around this time: fool’s spring, second winter, spring of deception, third winter and mud season. I think we are probably in fool’s spring right now. Which means there’s still time to paint the wheelbarrow with some snow on it.
I haven’t painted my old friend the broken wheelbarrow in many months. It was in a spot in the backyard that I couldn’t see from my window, but I fixed that yesterday. I put on my boots and went out there to move it, carefully, to a new spot. It’s not as good as the old spot in my previous yard because it’s up against a skinny pine, not a grand old oak, but it will do. It’s in a forested corner of my yard which makes a good backdrop and hopefully makes up for the lack of a big tree.
I sketched this on hot press paper using a Lamy pen that’s filled with copper ink, and added watercolour after. If you want to learn a bit about this process, have a look at my newest online course, “Sketching Techniques with Pens and Inks“, on sale this week.
Yesterday’s bouquet, today’s ink
Posted: February 15, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet, flowers, ink drawing 25 CommentsLast month, one of my students let me try her Lamy pen that had been filled with De Atramentis Pipe Tobacco brown ink. I couldn’t detect the fragrance of the ink, but I did love the way the ink lines dissolved when you hit them with a little clear water. I tried to find the ink from my local suppliers but no luck. So today I headed downtown to the pen shop and I bought some Diamine Ancient Copper ink. It’s not quite as brown as the tobacco ink, but besides having a beautiful name, it has other qualities that are quite wonderful.
It has a deep orange/pink tone that is perfect for the pale pink amaryllis that are the stars of this bouquet. And what I like about it is that the more you go over the lines with your brush, the more they dissolve until you have lost them altogether. Not all water-soluble inks do that. The final sketch looks like part painting, part ink drawing. Tomorrow I’ll experiment further with this. I’ll draw with copper ink and paint on top of that with watercolour. If the results are decent, I’ll post that drawing too.
The woods are a Notan
Posted: January 14, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ink drawing, winter drawing, woods 8 CommentsOn our daily walks in the woods, Alice and I discover different trails. We’ve been taking one lately that is quite magical in winter because of all the bent tree branches. It was especially gorgeous this morning after yesterday’s snowfall — a monochrome wonderland.
I took a few photos of various patterns that the trees make, and when I got back to my studio, I painted this one in ink. No preliminary pencil drawing, just an array of fine brushes dipped first in Noodler’s Black ink for the foreground shapes, and then Noodler’s Lexington Grey ink for the background shapes. It’s a good exercise to try to paint around what you want to leave white.
I used a smooth sketchbook paper for this. If you want to give this a try, don’t use your good watercolour brushes. I have another set that I use for ink that have very good points and are very inexpensive.
Alice watches football
Posted: December 26, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alice, dog drawing, ink drawing 22 CommentsIt was the best kind of day for Alice. A long walk in the woods with the four people she loves best in the world, followed by an exciting football game on tv. And them some turkey leftovers with her dinner.
It was the best kind of day for me too. Besides the long walk and having the family all together, I received a new sketchbook and some new pens from Japan so I could draw while everyone else watched football.
The big city
Posted: December 6, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ink drawing, Pointe Claire Village, snow scene, winter painting 24 CommentsI went downtown extra early before an appointment today just so I could draw. I love my quiet neighbourhood but there’s nothing like drawing in downtown Montreal. I parked on Blvd. St. Laurent and had a view down Milton, where there were buildings, cars, a truck, pedestrians, graffiti, and the sound of sirens. A perfect city experience.
I only had a 005 Micron pen with me so I did a lot of excited scribbling. So much scribbling that I wore down the nib of the pen and had to discard it. But it was just great to be sketching from my car again.
On my way home I made a little detour to Pointe Claire to sketch in one of my favourite spots. The village has changed a bit. Now there’s no parking on Ste. Anne, a street where I painted so many winter scenes. And my favourite yellow building has been renovated and now is clad with a dull brown siding. Oh well, it was still great listen to the cold wind howling outside while I painted my first snow scene of the season.
