Strathmore Bristol is excellent for many uses, as it comes in a variety of finishes, weights (plies) and price points. The really good stuff is the 500 series, whether smooth, semi-smooth or plate (smoothest of all with a hard, shiny surface). Today I’m preparing a piece of Semi-Smooth paper for drawing and I wanted to know which side was up with this paper. Most paper has a right and wrong side, depending on what you’re doing with it. A visit to the Strathmore site reveals that Bristol is designed to have 2 identical working surfaces, top and bottom.

Shown above is the paper after being “toned” with graphite. This is a fun way to work. Any highlights are erased from the medium tone of the paper and darks are made with pencils of varying hardness. HB or F is a good place to start. In the photo above you can see the tools I use for the toning process. It’s pretty simple, you get some graphite powder, load up a cloth or wad of clean, soft paper, like paper toweling or even Kleenex, and spread it around. I’m lucky. I have a source of pure graphite powder because I use the drafting-style clutch pencil holders for 2mm leads that have no wood attached. I use the rotary-style lead pointer shown above and it provides plenty of ground up graphite, which I would discard if I didn’t use it to tone paper.

The plan is to procure an almond branch with at least one blossom open and go from there. The paper is ready and waiting!

The cyclamen leaf study above is an example of the technique. Some artists are obsessive about getting the ground color even, but I like a little variety there, as long as there are no obvious spots that are rubbings of something that was under the surface, or worse fingerprints! Thus the glove in the first photo.

Updated 5 days later:

Below is the finished drawing of almond blossoms, shown with more of the tools I use for this technique:

The clutch style lead holders with F and HB leads, my 2 most used grades.

Stick style white plastic erasers, carved to give good edges.

Kneaded eraser, endlessly useful for erasing small areas and touching up the background if any stray marks are made on it.

Soft brush to remove stray grains of graphite and eraser noodles.

The final word on this paper is that its surface takes the graphite tone very evenly and nicely, but it is hard to erase back to pure white. It is excellent for straight drawing with graphite, but not as good for the toned ground technique as other papers I’ve used in the past. Still, this little drawing is a keeper I’ll sign and likely frame.

I’m working on 2 illustrations simultaneously because I’ve got 2 sketchbooks from the currently running sketchbook exchange project in my studio at the same time and the plant material I wanted to use was wilting fast. I just hope I don’t get the books out of order when I go to mail them since I’ve made such an issue of keeping the books flowing from artist to artist in the proper order. So Columbine flower is first and should go out this week and Purple Honeywort is second and should wait until this time next month.

In order, both still in progress:

Wait, I added them in the proper order, but they came out in reverse order. You see how easy it is to get mixed up!!!

I’m calling it P.P.P.P.  Nearly every artist I know has a moderate to severe case of this serious condition: Precious Perfect Paper Paralysis.  The only cure I know of for the artist is the copious application of a graphite pencil.  Once the graphite pencil therapy is well tolerated, the patient can advance to INK!

All joking aside, one of the hardest things for artists (and writers) to overcome is the preciousness of an unblemished page.  It’s worse when the pages are bound into a lovely journal, as above, and you are approaching an empty page with an indelible medium.  Because ruining one page of a journal is tantamount to desecration of the entire book and we are conditioned from our earliest days to revere books and not deface them unless we are making notes in the margins with a pencil, it’s inordinately hard to put pencil to a blank page in a book.  So, the reason I advise pencil as a cure for stubborn cases of P.P.P.P. is because pencil marks are erasable and condoned even for use on the precious pages of textbooks, possibly the most exalted of all books with the notable exception of the Bible.*  This embedded knowledge that pencil marks are allowed and even approved in certain books comforts our souls.  So starting anything with a pencil should be less daunting:

 I know many art teachers/gurus, especially among the nature journaling and urban sketching crowd, recommend skipping the pencil phase because starting something that you intend to finish with ink or colored pencil or watercolor with a pencil is a crutch that can be as limiting as a physical crutch you might use if you’d injured your leg.  But, graphite can also be an artistic end unto itself and is inarguably an art tool as fine as any other you care to name and as permanent:

Fooling the brain into thinking it’s just playing around and not engaged in making ART can really help.  Or fooling it into thinking it’s making records that will be useful later, either to yourself or to others, can also liberate the timid brain from the fear that it might somehow make inferior art.  This is why I was keen to start my own perpetual journal from the first moment I saw one.  The first thing I did was write a date range on every page of a blank journal.  That wasn’t hard.  Now EVERY page spread of that journal already has marks on it.  The next thing was to tell myself this was simply going to be a useful record of things that happen in nature around me regularly through the year.  That helped.  It continues to help.  I’m filling that journal slowly but surely with drawings of mundane things I see around me that I find interesting.  Sometimes I start right in with ink as Lara Call Gastinger recommends, but that is admittedly scary and not for everyone.  More often, I start with a pencil underdrawing that is meant to be erased as with the gourd drawing above.  Sometimes I make the pencil drawing the whole point of the exercise, as with the Mermaid’s Purse/Shark Egg Case above. Pun intended and the pointing of pencils is a subject unto itself for another day.  But today’s point is that I rarely suffer from P.P.P.P. with this journal anymore. 

Here is one final piece of advice I will share that I got from Carol Bryer Fallert in a quilting workshop:  notice what you notice.  That sounds like it might be a tautology, but really it isn’t.  Pay attention.  Look around you.  You’ll notice small things that interest you.  When you do, put a sketch of it in your book, not because you’re going to make art, but simply because you noticed it in that moment and found it interesting.  Later you will go back and page through your journal and remember that moment when you noticed.  I find I collect things as I go about my life and think, “Ooh, I want to put a sketch of that in my journal.”  This works way better than thinking, “Oh, I need to do a drawing, what shall I immortalize today?”

*The Bible is an interesting exception because while it is the most revered book of all time, for generations, people wrote in “Family Bibles,” recording marriages, births and deaths and then passed these Bibles down to subsequent generations, thus providing a rich trove of information for current genealogists, but that’s another rabbit hole altogether.  Writing critical information in a space designated for that information with an indelible medium is not comparable to making “art” with the same implement on a blank page.

A few years back I started a Perpetual Journal inspired by the work of Lara Call Gastinger

I used a journal I’d made and still had on hand that was blank.  Lara divides her books into weekly spreads, but I didn’t have enough pages in my chosen journal to do that so I did some math and decided I’d use 10 day increments in my book.  That worked out perfectly.  I figured I could manage a drawing every 10 days or so throughout the year if I was diligent.  Of course I haven’t been as diligent as I hoped and my journal has many gaps 3-plus years later, but it also has lots of drawings in it and is progressing more or less how I hoped it would, just a little more slowly.  It’s a project that is close to my heart and I carry this journal with me both into my own backyard and also whenever I travel about the country.  I use it mostly for botanical subjects but I’ve been thinking I might insert some small landscapes here and there as well.  Carrying the journal with me so I can do field work is essential.

Enter my aging LL Bean backpack:

I’ve carried this pack for years and it is still quite serviceable.  In fact, it looks almost new from the outside.  When we travel, I use it to carry all of my art supplies and often games and books as well.  It is capacious and the divided sections allow me to separate the books and journals from the supplies that might soil them.  BUT, when I pulled out my journal after our last trip to the coast where I never got a chance to draw at all,  I noticed there were black specks of something scattered throughout the journal on every page, some worse than others.  I assumed a pencil sharpener had exploded or something similar and was so saddened by the dirt everywhere that I just set the book aside and moved on to another project. 

When I got the book back out and started trying to remove the specks of dirt that were behaving exactly as if they were flecks from a black colored pencil lead scattered across the pages, it seemed wise to stop and really figure out what had caused this explosion of particulate matter that was significantly worse at the bottom end of the book.  So I removed everything from the pack and discovered that all of my pencils and sharpeners were intact and safely stowed apart from the journal.  It was the lining of the pack itself that was disintegrating, but only in certain places where there was a water-resistant coating.  I took a white cloth rag and swiped across the area at the bottom of the pack that had the coating and here’s the result:

Oh my goodness!  This reminds me of the material they used at about the same time to make the soles of some Clark shoes that suddenly and unexpectedly began disintegrating years later, especially in shoes that had been stored in boxes, like my favorite red shoes I trotted out each holiday season.  Each one of those flecks of rubber-like material has the capacity to leave a mark on clean white paper.  I have spent hours with a very fine X-acto knife carefully attempting to lift each speck off of the paper before it smears an indelible mark.  I’d say my success rate has been about 85%-90%.  Many of the specks came cleanly away from the page and others left marks that could be lightened with an eraser.  Very few left marks so dark that I won’t be able to cover them with a subsequent drawing and none of the drawings I’ve done so far was ruined.  So it’s not an unmitigated disaster at all.  And as I was looking at one of Lara Call Gastinger’s perpetual journals displayed on her website, I saw some embedded dirt in the spine area of one of her page spreads so I guess I’m in good company if my perpetual journal has a few stray marks here and there.  Whew!  Now, back to that drawing board after I issue a warning to any of you who might have LL Bean backpacks that are 15-20 years old: check that any waterproof interior linings are still intact before each use!

And no, it’s nothing to do with the internet, but a reminder that a deadline is fast approaching and it’s going to be down to the wire.  I’m participating in Round 2 of the Northern California Chapter of the American Society of Botanical Artists, abbreviated NCalSBA and I’m working on my title page and first ‘sketch.’  I put sketch in quotes because I think of a sketch as something that takes minutes to an hour or 2 at the most and these little illustrations have taken on a life of their own and I’ve been working on this one for well over a week.  I need to mail this to the next artist on the list around the 25th and here it is the 21st and I’ve still got one huge leaf to render after I finish the little one I’m working on now:

Note how I got all excited by the spotted petals of this flower. I went on the internet to research “spotted cyclamen” and couldn’t find any speckled or spotted varieties of cyclamen except one photo of a “rare spotted cyclamen” photographed on the plains of Galilee. A deeper dive revealed that dark purple spots on petals in cyclamens is a sign of a fungal infection called Botrytis blight. Sigh. Not so rare. Botrytis blight is a very common plant pathogen that attacks all sorts of ornamental flowers but I think it usually shows up as brown spots. These purple spots are actually quite pretty and the plants and flowers looked healthy, but closer inspection showed holes at the center of some of the spots. That’s a dead giveaway. Farmer Gary recognized it as blight immediately from afar, of course.

For any pencil artists in the audience, and really more as a reminder to myself, I discovered a few useful new pencil colors on this project as I was trying to replicate the colors of the stems and leaves. Cyclamen stems are a very interesting mix of reds and greens and the leaves are a dull green that was easily replicated with a few of my standard greens (Polychromos 174 and 165) and I have backups for those colors in my stock, but those lighter areas of dull green were a little more challenging. I found Polychromos 189/Cinnamon and Tombow Irojiten LG-6/Mist Green were quite helpful (you can see them on the table) and I’m well on my way. I just have to buckle down and draw!

After years of trying to find a system of carrying sketching tools that works I finally saw a kit that looked exactly like what I wanted during a presentation in JML’s (John Muir Laws) online Nature Journaling Workshop the last time I attended.  I cannot recall the sketcher’s name but I do remember that people kept asking him about his kit and no one seemed to get a decent answer about where to get the simple small pack that he used.  He had an Amazon affiliate site where you could buy pens and sketchbooks and books he’d written and other supplies he likes, but nowhere was the pack that so neatly held all that gear you could buy from his site.  Well, I have all the gear I need and then some, but I’ve never found a way to carry it that would allow me to access it easily and quickly on the go.  JML suggests using a cross-body bag, but I tried that and found that it bounced around when I walked and unbalanced me and I still couldn’t access the contents quickly or efficiently.  Plus, most of the cross body bags I saw or tried were really too big and tempted me to carry more than I thought I really needed to execute the kind of sketches I like to do en plein aire. 

So I just went searching on Google and Amazon, knowing that if I entered the right search words I would eventually see something that looked close to the mystery pack that the speaker used but for some unknown reason wouldn’t identify when asked, and sure enough, I did.  I can’t tell you now what search terms I used but in the end what finally came up were “nurse fanny packs.”  There were a slew to choose from and I chose the 2 that looked most like they might suit.  In the end this one is the one that fit the bill for me.  As of this writing in December of 2023, the link is active and Amazon still carries this exact same item at a very reasonable price.  Below are photos showing how I’ve kitted out this great little pack.  I’ve used it for some time and I find it is just about perfect: 

Here is the pack all ready to go out into the field.

Here is a top view showing the pack opened with my sketchbook and travel palette inside.

Here are the Handbook sketchbook and Winsor Newton palette I use.

Here are a few other things I carry:

• The JML cotton crew sock top to wear on the wrist for a handy water brush cleaner.
• A view finder.  I love these view finders for landscapes.  
• A water brush.  My palette actually holds a very nice DaVinci number 6 sable travel brush that I like better than waterbrushes, but I still carry a waterbrush for situations where I can’t set up a container of water to wash brushes and because I like to use it to release ink from the…
• Tombow marker pen.  Since college I’ve used old-style black plastic barrel flair pens to do drawings with lines that I would then release with water and a brush to get a nice wash effect.  Recently, Flair ink has been reformulated and the technique no longer works with the new “improved” pens.  The ink smears terribly while you’re drawing and when you touch it with water it releases way too much pigment.  I’m on the hunt for a new pen that will function more like the old Flair.  These Tombow markers are meant to be used with this technique, but the jury is still out.  I need to do more experimentation before I can recommend them wholeheartedly.
• Micron Pigma Sepia 005 and 01 pens, plus a black Micron PN. The sepia pens are for drawing and the black PN is for writing.  None of them smear with water or when writing on any paper so you can draw and then go back and add watercolor without fear you’ll release the ink from the drawing.
• Crowquill drawing nib in a Tachikawa holder with a cap.  I keep this not for doing pen and ink drawings because transporting ink and using it in plein aire settings is too difficult, but sometimes I like to use a drawing nib to get fine lines with watercolor.  I will fill the nib from a brush and draw with the watercolor wash I’ve mixed rather than with ink.  This saves me from having to carry a very fine brush for calligraphic linework I will sometimes need do at the end of watercolor landscape sketches if there are fine lines needed, like telephone wires, window panes, signage or boat rigging.
• Tiny Spray Bottle.  You can’t see it because I added it later and then updated this post.  I use this spray bottle to re-wet the paints in my watercolor palette.  It dispenses a nice fine mist that doesn’t flood the colors.

This pack is sufficient for my sketching needs and I can carry it in the small of my back while walking but easily bring it to the front and access my drawing materials immediately.  I can also still wear a backpack for other items like a jacket, water bottle, binoculars, wallet etc.  Why was that workshop instructor so reluctant to tell people he was using an inexpensive nurse’s fanny pack to carry his sketching essentials?  Maybe he was concerned that the links wouldn’t be stable and people wouldn’t be able to find exactly the pack he uses anymore.  Who knows? Suffice it to say that if the exact version I link to above becomes unavailable, that there will always be other nurse fanny packs available that are similar because nurses are not going to stop carrying all that stuff around and clearly these little packs are what they need to do their very important jobs.  Lucky for me they make for perfect field sketching kits as well!

I was asked this question today. The short answer is, “I do!” Also Calligraphers and Cartoonists do, but I’m no Calligrapher or Cartoonist, just a backyard sketcher.

I think the natural follow-up question would be, “Why would you, then?” Well, and I think the Calligraphers and Cartoonists of the world would agree, my simple answer is that these tools produce marks that are noticeably different from marks you can make with other types of tools. Also, at least for me, using these pens is ergonomically better than using comparable modern pens. Because you have to stop and dip the pen periodically, you get a break from the constant repetition required to shade with the stippling technique I prefer. I can choose nib holders that are a better fit for my hand than the cylindrical barrels of the ubiquitous Micron Pigma pens and the flexible dip nib gives less resistance when you touch down to the paper, over and over and over, until your hand cramps if you don’t take breaks.

I’ve been enjoying my dip pens with Walnut Ink so much lately that I’m on a mission to make them a portable medium I can take on location. For years I’ve used microns in my journals for ink drawings and they have performed well, but the dip pens are calling.

More nibs and holders and my favorite tilted inkwell that makes dipping so much easier:

Front and center: T-36 holder and a Nikko maru mapping nib. Next door an unfinished persimmon drawing from last year that looks suspiciously like it was done with the micron Sepia 005. How can I tell? It’s the uniformity of the stippled dots. The difference is subtle, but I can tell. To me, the work with the dip pens is livelier somehow. Anyhow, that’s how I’m feeling today.

Or a plant?

Well I’m constantly complaining about the oxalis growing in my yard where I don’t want it and it’s really hard to weed out. It’s truly a pesky little weed with nothing to recommend it beyond tenacity.

But then I got this month’s sketchbook with a lovely sketch of Oxalis Stricta, or Common Wood Sorrel. well there is never anything common about the paintings of Ellen Blonder. Her lyrical sketch of the weedy sorrel growing wild in her environs inspired me to snag the oxalis above for my monthly sketch as I was strolling about the nursery looking for inspiration. Here are the 2 illustrations together and a closeup of mine in progress below that.

Although you’d never know it from the weather lately. My plan was to use peach blossoms for my sketch this month and the blossoms were making me a bit nervous because they were not opening due to all the cold weather. Finally they did open but they immediately got battered by yet another storm. Still, I was able to find these sprigs and get them staged and photographed. Let the sketching begin.

But here’s something new. Because of the transitory nature of blossoms and the poem I wanted to include this month, I wanted to trace my sketch onto the paper. I often work this way, but rarely in journals. Surprise, this book has sketches on the other side of the paper, making tracing with my trusty light box a bit tricky.

Many people seem to think it’s “cheating” to use any mechanical or optical aids to begin artwork. Tell that to Vermeer and all the other masters who used camera obscura to trace images on to canvases. What’s cheating is using someone else’s photos. I selected the subject, staged it how I wanted it and photographed it myself. So I own it start to finish.

Only April and May are left and then I will get my own book back. It will be like Christmas in June!