Playing in the Pitt

The other day I picked up a Pitt Aritst Pen (brush nib) and played with it a little. I also picked up a Pigma Brush as well. I had fun with them both and can see it will take a little practice to get the results I want all the time. The Pigma is a little narower than the Pitt but the flexibility is about the same. The Pigma comes in lots of colors as does the Pitt. I had a hard time finding individual pens - instead of sets - of the Pitt pens in art stores. I finally found the black ones at Office Depot! After you get used to them they really provide a lot of expression in pen and ink line. They remind me of comic book illustrations.

Some Metro Art and More From the Margins

Last week was a very intense week. I attended a seminar on Simulation Modeling and Analysis – read heavy on statistics. To avoid the traffic and parking I rode the Metro (subway) to and from the sessions. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to do a little sketching. The ride is not very long so I decided to try sketching heads to start with. I did a couple on each trip in. On the trip out it was to crowded to try and draw – there are lots of stops so trying to draw standing up is near impossible – need an extra hand to hold on to a support.

The seminar was really good – but even a good seminar will have some slow moments. So, as the math began to get deeper than I needed I doodled in the margins of my notes. Well, there was five days of this and I tend to doodle a lot. I used my fountain pen for almost all of these doodles.

My first couple of days I tried heads, as I mentioned, a couple were good and others dismal. I still find myself noodling with the image and trying to put more detail than I need, in my opinion. I am trying to improve my sketching speed! But, as Dave Rankin would say I tend to draw rather than sketch.

I thought I would try my hand at hands one morning and that was not so good. I really got wrapped around the details and lost the image I was after. The fact that some people move their hands around a lot made it difficult as well. So, I need to really concentrate on speed – to capture the shape that caught my eye and worry about the detail later.

After my questionable effort to capture hands I thought I would try one of the EDM challenges – to draw a mouth. This was particularly interesting and I really had fun with this. It is extremely enlightening when you begin studying the mouths of those around you. The amazing range of subtle and dramatic differences could fuel drawings for a very long time.

In spite of all the marginal art I really did get a great deal out of the seminar. I expect that I will be applying many of the concepts presented in the very near future.