Category Archives: brush pen

Street photography and sketching

Five years ago I enjoyed ‘street photography’, trying to catch telling moments in Bath’s weekend busyness. After a while the hobby lost its appeal, it wasn’t quite as satisfying as it had been, and it was around then that I started drawing. Five years … Continue reading

Posted in Bath, brush pen, ink brush, Inktense, people watching, street scene, urban, urban sketching | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Busts

Sketches from last weekend’s USkBristol/South West sketchcrawl in Bath. Fourteen of us started inside the Abbey (it was too wet to go up the tower) where I sketched a memorial bust and inscription. We then moved to the Guildhall market where I drew a … Continue reading

Posted in Bath, brush pen, cafe, figures, ink brush, Inktense, people watching, sculpture, sketchcrawl, urban, urban sketching | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Down and up the path

First a four panel sequential sketch, done in brush-pen while walking down The Shrubbery, a steep local path, last month. Then the same view as the last panel a couple of years ago, and finally the view looking back up The … Continue reading

Posted in Bath, brush pen, buildings, ink brush, Lexington grey, monochrome, sequential, urban, urban sketching | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Improving a brush-pen

My favourite media for urban sketching is brush-pen (Inktense pencils a close second), and my favourite brush-pen is the Kuretake #8. It’s the cheapest (direct from Japan here), has great ink-flow (the Pentel is very dry), the brush is springy (firmer than … Continue reading

Posted in brush pen, ink brush, kit, Kuretake, Lexington grey, Manchester Symposium, urban sketching | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Compare and contrast

Recent sketchbook pages of people (and horses) around Bath, drawn with either ink-brush/brush-pen or Inktense pencils; spot the difference! I’m tending to oscillate between these two media, still loving the speed and fluency of the brush for figures, but also the slightly … Continue reading

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Funchal museum

Back to Madeira with some sketches from the Frederico de Freitas museum in Funchal. A small ivory carving (with a lamb on the shoulder and one on the knee, St Agnes?), figures on tiles, and a C19th engraving of Madeira printed in … Continue reading

Posted in brush pen, collections, figures, Inktense, Madeira, museum, objects, Uncategorized, white pen | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Selfies, again

The usual parade of glum and suspicious late night portraits… Sherry says the third one is how I’ll look when I’m seventy! In the second one my mouth is my third hand, holding the extra brush-pen I’m using. By the next one I’d … Continue reading

Posted in brush pen, faces, ink brush, Inktense, self-portrait, technique | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Around Funchal

More from Madeira, three general views around the capital. The first is from a rocky beach (they’re all rocky on Madeira…) near the harbour, buildings crowding the crumbling cliff. Then looking down a central street towards the surrounding hills, cloud … Continue reading

Posted in beach, brush pen, buildings, clouds, coloured paper, holiday, ink brush, Madeira, street scene, urban, urban sketching, white pen | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Sheltering and walking

Madeira is famous for its ‘levadas’, over 2,000km of hand-built irrigation channels with narrow paths alongside that snake along the contours of the hills, bringing water from the rainy Northern hilltops to the fertile Southern slopes. Our first attempt to walk them … Continue reading

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Park tree

I went to the Botanical Garden to sketch the magnolias again, but it was shut (“Gates will be locked one hour before sunset”). So I sketched a tree across the road instead. Brown ink in a Kuretake #8 for the line … Continue reading

Posted in Bath, botany, brush pen, coloured paper, ink brush, Kuretake, park, trees, urban, urban sketching | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments