Desk Junk (Testing Noodlers Ink)

My painting group came over tonight, as they do most Wednesday nights. We were all sitting around the living room while I finished my awful Healthy Choice TV dinner (I’d barely gotten home before they arrived). Everyone was tired from working all day, and we were trying to get motivated to move to the studio. Finally Judith got up, singing loudly (and beautifully), and marched off to the studio so we all followed.

That lumpy brown thing is a sea-sponge that my quirky little calico cat, Fiona, likes to snatch off the table and wrestle with. Her favorite torture victims though, are my wonderful Smartwool Socks–which I have to hide from her or she’ll nab them, jump into the (empty) bathtub and wrestle them until they’re full of holes.

Yesterday I was bragging about how confident I am in my drawing skills now, so of course tonight I felt like I couldn’t draw well if my life depended on it, and nothing came out right. But in the interest of daily drawing and posting, here it is anyway.

I started this sketch to test whether Noodlers Ink would bleed when painted over with watercolor. First I drew the top left box and then I painted the yellow border over it. When I rubbed it with the brush the ink bled and washed off. The arrow points to that spot. I didn’t have the problem anywhere else on the page because I applied the paint with a light touch, letting the paint, not the brush touch the paper.

I used my new Lamy Safari fine-point fountain pen, which I’m liking a lot because it can do thick and light fine lines. What I don’t like about it compared to the Micron Pigma pens I usually draw with, is that it takes a while for the ink to dry so it’s easy to smudge if I’m impatient and it beads up a bit in the Moleskine sketchbook (this was in an Aquabee).