Going full Van Gogh with this selection – I mean me? Painting Sunflowers and Irises? With my VG Standom? As i found they aren’t easy to paint or draw, but the real reason for painting and drawing these is that The Friends of Queen Promenade have stepped up and planted some amazing things on Queen’s Promenade, from an Italian garden, woodland garden and even a sensory garden.
The sunflowers are new, and have grown amazingly well (I tried to grow one here, it didn’t really thrive but they get the afternoon sun there and it’s been a hot sunny summer. But earlier in the year I painted these irises, planted near the benches not too far from the Pocket Park. I do seem to be painting more flowers over the last few years, like buildings or trees I see them as a challenge.
As always, even large images don’t show the detail so I encourage you to click on it and zoom in.
The sensory garden is by where the Raven’s Ait ferry goes, and is quite small but it does has a bench. Maybe cos it’s a bit out of the sunshine seems less people sit there. Shame because it’s a wonderful view, and most of the flowers are out – and anyway it was one of those blazing hot days, I’ll leave sitting in the sun to those who want a melanoma or three 😛 Like the old recovered bench near the pocket park, it’s a good place to sit and watch people and boats go by.
I did two pieces – the view to Kingston from the garden in ink, I was cleaning my pens at the same time, so it’s a mixture of my vintage pens – and a technical pen drawing with watercolour. I’ve not discussed my new/old technical pen collection here yet, but you will see a lot of drawings using them shortly!
I always have an alert for pens on Trash Nothing, and saw that someone was giving away some old technical pens – rOtring Isographs, even older rOtring Micronorms, Faber Castell TG-1s, etc. I’ve always wanted some of these since seeing my Mum’s Micronorm pen (those are the black ones with the weird 2001-sci-fi top) but could never justify the eye-watering cost.
Now luckily I had rOtring ink for my brush pens and even more importantly rOtring cleaning fluid, so I went over and collected them. As I thought it was a mixed bag of some broken nibs, some broken bodies, and of course nearly every pen had dried up ink!
Now removing dried pen ink is one thing, but rOtring ink is waterproof (BTW ignore the people who say ‘just soak it in water’ – total bullshit, that only works for wet ink, for old dried ink it does nothing). So after wasting days soaking the functional looking nibs, I then used my rOtring pen cleaner and that worked much better. I’ve gotten maybe 10-12 pens working, and to my surprise even though I got the thinner nib pens working as an afterthought, I fell in love with the 0.35 and 0.25mm pens.
As a result of all that soaking, days and days…I now have a second-hand LIDL ultrasonic cleaner. I really recommend getting one if you have to revive old pens like that.
You can see these pens in the piece above – it’s a little chaotic and detailed for online, so I’ve done some close-up details. Not totally happy with all the watercolour either as I’d forgotten my palette and it was going dark when I came back later so it was a bit rushed.
The flowers at the front are using the 0.25mm Micronorm, the ones at the back the 0.7mm and 0.8mm, a mix of TG-1 and Micronorm, and 0.35mm. The reason it’s a surprise is I am very much a broad line lover – I tend to go for 0.7mm or medium to broad nibs in fountain pens. I tend to see thinner nibs as too scratchy, but then again I did love the fine Preppy nib, so there is some history there.
Contrast this and the Sunflower drawing with the fountain pen drawing above for comparison.
I draw very differently with fine nibs like this…more technical, less fluid. Some might not like it, but I love drawing like this. The rOtring/TG-1 pens aren’t really meant to be used like this, they are plotter pens for technical drawing, meant to be used perpendicular to the page. Turns out, the Micronorms and the few working TG-1s are less diva-ish about this, and can be used at an angle.
Many of the nibs were rather scratchy, so out of that working 12 there is maybe 4-5 best pens. The 0.25mm was a new unused nib, and I think the TG-1 0.35mm which has fast become a favourite was also from a set but rarely used. This is what I used for the Sunflower Bee drawing below. I think it still has some of my expression and fluid lines, but a technical nature I rarely have in my work. And yes the bee just turned up, several times to be drawn, I don’t just add details like that.
Oddly I was quite upset when I made these, they might seem so tranquil but my mind was anything but. I had fled the flat after an outburst (not mine, and sadly not the first time). I can confirm, drawing sunflowers is good for a troubled mind. Vincent knew what he was doing.
And bringing more VG realness, I decided to do a paint stick piece – the new KingsArt ‘Gel Sticks’ mentioned in the recent post about lightfastness. It’s hard to do this with a medium that doesn’t mix and a limited 24 colours (I have a bigger set on the way as TK Maxx are selling those too – no I am not sponsored by them!). So a lot of visual mixing, Impressionist-style, and sgraffito. Yes the paint sticks are back!
Neo-im/expressionism via kid’s paints, anyone?
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