the joys of pen and ink

There’s a real joy to it. The tools feel good to use- round nibs, scratchy fountain pen, with the smooth handle. FW inks and dr. marten’s. Soft, soft, soft plastic brushes. And the smoothest paper surface you can afford. Then you prop yourself up and doodle. Doodle! With all these fancy art supplies! What could BE more fun?

Of course every mistake becomes the death of that particular page- you really can’t fuck up at all, even less than with watercolor. At least with watercolor you can hit a new wash over it when it dries and hope for the best- but with pen and ink it’s meticulous, it’s perfection, and at the same time the looser you can be with it the better it looks.

I’ve been playing around all day with this. This is the best doodle I’ve gotten out of the day.