This started as a line drawing based on a photo of peonies in the garden. It’s drawn with three different pens: Micron 005, Micron 03 and Faber Castell Pitt superfine (0.3) on 11x14 Strathmore Bristol Vellum. The paper isn’t terribly tolerant of wet media, so I played around with tinting it in Photoshop because I wasn't sure how it would go. But I liked it in color enough to chance painting the drawing with the nice and bright Dr Ph Martin Hydrus watercolors. It's photographed it on my drafting table with my glasses for scale. The lamp has a daylight bulb, so I think the color (at least where the light is more prominent) is fairly true.
This was my first try using paint pens. Played around with shapes to get used to the texture of the paint and how it feels to use the pens. Done in a watercolour sketchbook.
I modified the challenge a wee bit. I didn't use the same paper for the various drawings since I was using (top row, left to right) hard graphite pencils (3H to HB), watercolor pencils, (bottom row, left to right) brush pens and ballpoint pen. These media work best on very different paper textures and moisture absorbing qualities. The second picture shows the object of my study --- and the apparatus I use to hold botanical subjects. "Third hand" tools are very useful and cheap. This one was under $10 and serves my purposes well. Just FYI. (Each drawing/painting was scanned and composited in Photoshop.)
I was on the fence of whether or not I was going to make a piece for the prompt, but I'm glad I did. I tested out some watercolor pens I had recently gotten (I definitely have to practice with them a bit more). I didn't really have a plan for this, and it was a bit fun to do something so spontaneously.
Benjamin Franklin (Part 2)
The plan worked, up to a point. After following the course several times in a row, he found it necessary to go through just one course in a year, and then one every few years. But the virtue of order—“Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time”—appears to have eluded his grasp. Franklin was not naturally inclined to keep his papers and other possessions organized, and he found the effort so vexing that he almost quit in frustration.
This timetable was formulated before Franklin adopted a favorite habit of his later years—his daily “air bath.” At the time, baths in cold water were considered a tonic, but Franklin believed the cold was too much of a shock to the system. He wrote in a letter: I have found it much more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element, I mean cold air. With this view I rise early almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing. This practice is not in the least painful, but on the contrary, agreeable; and if I return to bed afterwards, before I dress myself, as sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my night’s rest, of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be imagined.
From Daily rituals by Mason Currey
#daulyrituals #inktober #benjaminfranklin @masoncurrey
