Inktober 10- “Gull”- This one is doubling as a preliminary study for an upcoming painting that will be entered for a juried exhibition. Copic 0.1 pen in a Stillman and Birn Zeta series sketchbook.
Author: foxstudio
Inktober 2018- Alexander A Really Great Cat
Inktober 9- “Alexander A Really Great Cat”- This our ten year old tuxedo cat who we’ve had since he was three months old. He’s a big ole fur ball who will happily roll over for tummy skritches. Platinum fountain pen on Strathmore 300 vellum bristol.
Inktober 2018- Baby Spotted Hyena
Inktober 8- “Baby Spotted Hyena”- We spent around a half hour watching a clan of spotted hyena on an art workshop safari I took in Kenya in 2004. One of the adults was laying on the ground. Suddenly a little head popped up next to her leg and this cub came out into the morning sun. Platinum Carbon Ink pen on Strathmore 300 vellum bristol.
Inktober 2018: Mongolian Agama Lizard
Inktober 7- “Mongolian Agama Lizard” These small reptiles are quite common in the drier parts of Mongolia. I love their funny face with the overshot jaw and their great color pattern. This one “posed” for me for quite a long time. Stillman & Birn Beta series wire bound sketchbook (the very last page) with a Pilot EF fountain pen.
Inktober 2018: Bactrian Camel
Inktober 6- “Bactrian Camel” I’m on the hunt for the “perfect” sketch journal for my Mongolia trips. I used Moleskines for years until the new owners ruined the once-excellent sketch journal paper by making it too thin. I’ve worked my way through almost all of the Stillman & Birn line and may have found two finalists. So here’s the first drawing I’ve done in my Gamma hardbound, a white domestic bactrian camel I saw in Mongolia. I’ve actually seen her a number of times over the years and have done a painting of her. I used a Pilot EF fountain pen. I like the combination so far.
Inktober 2018: Marabou Stork
Inktober 5 – “Marabou Stork” Moving on now to my fountain and dip pens. I saw this marabou stork on a 2005 art workshop/safari in Kenya. He was one of a number storks and lots of vultures hanging around a cheetah kill. I used my Pilot EF pen for this one. I think it was a little too fine for the size of the drawing and the time I wanted to take to do it, around 90 minutes. But it turned out ok. I used my go-to drawing paper, Strathmore 300 vellum bristol.
TBT: “Hayden Valley Thunder
TBT (Last one till Inktober ends on Oct. 31, then it will become an occasional feature) “Hayden Valley Thunder” from 2003, Oil 30×15” Private collection: I had a great piece of reference from the Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park of this bull bison standing on the hill with clouds behind him. I’ve always love Maxfield Parrish. So I decide to try combining the two by changing out white clouds for sunset colors. I also added the cow from another reference photo.
Inktober 2018: Mongolian Sheep
Inktober 4- “Mongolian Sheep”- Another piece done with the Copic Multiliner SP 0.1 in my Stillman and Birn Beta Series sketchbook. The wool let me get looser with the pen, but I was careful to try to capture the expression in the eye. I did bite the bullet last night and order the ten pen set. It will arrive, shipped from Japan, sometime between the end of October and late November. As you can see I work pretty traditionally. My influences include many of the great pen and ink artists and illustrators of the late 19th/early 20th centuries…Alphonse Mucha, Edwin Austin Abbey, Joseph Clement Coll, Joseph Pennell, William Heath Robinson and William R. Leigh. More about the latter when I do an African subject. I’ll be posting some tutorials soon on my nice new Patreon site. https://www.patreon.com/susanfox
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Inktober 2018: Wildebeest
Decided to switch to more traditional pen and ink today. Also, my Copic Multiliner SP 0.1 pen arrived yesterday and I wanted to take it for a spin right away. I’ve been using Sakura Micron pens for some years now since, as one artist friend put it, they have been the “gold standard”. But I’d become increasingly irritated with them. The nibs didn’t hold their hardness and the lines became irregular and unpredictable. Drove me crazy in the field. Plus I never liked that they were disposable. And I wasn’t going to start up with Rapidographs again. Been there, done that, battled the clogging. Plus expensive.
I’ve been seeing the Copic name around for a year or so (first encountered it as tools in Autodesk Sketchbook, then as markers, not drawing pens, and I gather this is a newish product. The SPs have an aluminum body and ink cartridges. I’m going to see If I can refill mine once it’s empty. But least one isn’t throwing a whole pen away
So I dove in this morning and did this fairly quick drawing of a wildebeest I saw and photographed in Kenya (I only draw and paint from my own reference). Overall, I like the pen. At first it did not like being moved away from me one bit and was skritchy and cranky. I thought that might be a dealbreaker. But it finally “broke in” and that wasn’t a problem anymore. I kept the technique simple…mostly vertical parallel lines, no crosshatching. I did a pencil underdrawing first.
I’ll try a few more pieces with it and then decide if I’m going to pop for the ten pen set ($59.95 through Blick). The drawing was done in a Stillman and Birn Beta series sketchbook.
Susan Fox, American Artist 