Hello, May!
Sketch Session & Dip Pens
A big, hearty welcome to May! How was your weekend? My weekend included making folded pens (aka Cola Pens), a sketch session at a historic location, and exploration of some vintage pen nibs.
Friday
ARE YOU GETTING INTO WEAPONS? Haha, not at all. What you are seeing in the image above are two handmade cola pens, also known as folded pens or ruling pens depending on how they are shaped/formed. These can be a lot of fun for lettering, but I thought I would also try them out for loose sketching. I have wanted to make one of these pens for a VERY long time and finally took the time on Friday night. Surprisingly, they weren’t difficult to make, but mastering them is a whole other story.
Saturday
The Reading Drawing Guild held a sketch session at the Historic Ephrata Cloister where we got to enjoy a sunny day and some sketch time with each other. It’s a unique historical site with an interesting history and buildings. At the end of the session, I was able to try my cola pens for sketching. Just a quick, loose sketch to see how they performed. Very different than what I had expected.
Sunday
Just as the weekend began to wind down, I got out some vintage pen nibs that I thought I had kept separate from when I shared this post on pen nibs last year.
However, when testing them out, I couldn’t remember many of them. The Brause, the Everbrite, the Hero. Maybe I had put them aside as nibs that I hadn’t tried yet and then easily forgot. It’s quite possible.
I find that it takes immense control to get just the right line width by adjusting the pressure but I’m looking for my Goldilocks pen nib, the one that is “just right”.
The Esterbrook 501 Penesco was kind of dreamy. It had the thinnest of thins and I could get a good thick line in contrast with it’s thinnest. I think that will become a new favorite for a little while and I’d love to try some urban sketching with it.
The cola pens will definitely give me the extreme with the thickest and the thinnest of lines, and I can’t wait to work with them more. I hope you enjoyed my weekend recap and found time to enjoy the weekend yourself. Let’s hope the month ahead is a time for more creative–and offline–pursuits!
