Do Art Wrong: dip pens & markers

by on 11 June 2017 at 4:00 pm
Posted In: do art wrong

Today’s warmup features antique & new dip pens; J. Herbin’s archival black ink Encre Authentique (said to have been used by all the classiest ye olde French notaries); a variety of Rohrer & Klingner inks (the two iron-gall inks are not waterproof, the overenthusiastic burnt sienna is); and Copic markers, which I admit is a very weird combination of materials.

I grumped about the black ink not working with one of the nibs, but eventually got it going. The Copics sopped right through Stillman & Birn Alpha paper, but they blended reasonably nicely.

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Sketch of the day: Tombow pencils

by on 6 June 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: sketch of the day

‪I tried out a friend’s set of Tombow pencils last week–and fell asleep before colouring.

There’s more grain on the Stillman & Birn Alpha paper than I like for dry pencil, so I don’t think adding colours would have worked out well anyway.

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Sketch of the Day: negative space

by on 5 June 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: sketch of the day

I’m not sure my screen is calibrated well enough for me to tell if I balanced the colours on this properly. I’d be interested to hear if it looks oversaturated on anyone else’s screen–let me know in the comments below.

This Iusta uses Kermes-insect red, Pozzuoli brown, Cyprus green earth, and New Gamboge + Cinnabar to stand in for arsenic orange. I considered making her dress Lapis Lazuli blue, but I like leaving it blank. 🙂

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Sunday Red: warmup sketch

by on 4 June 2017 at 2:52 pm
Posted In: sketch of the day

Warmup sketch with two reds–kermes (bugs) on the left, cinnabar hue (substitute for genuine mercury vermilion) on the right.

I’m always worried I’ll overshoot the mark and ruin a painting by overworking it, but I’m planning to do a second layer (glaze) on the cinnabar red and on the skin tones when this is fully dry.

With the ‪second layer of red, the homemade fake cinnabar looks much more like real vermilion (even showing some of the same tendency not so much to granulate as to clump…that’s a technical term, for sure). The next batch I make, I’ll use more pigment.

I got the Stillman & Birn Alpha paper VERY wet and it held up with minimal buckling.

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Remembrance of angst past

by on 4 April 2017 at 6:00 pm
Posted In: blog


Today’s fuss-and-grumbling on twitter (don’t even look) got me remembering some old comics I did about family, which got me thinking about the memoir-y and family-stories comics I still want to do and keep planning out but not drawing, which also got me poking around through the rest of the pre-SPQR Blues archives to see what I might have already done.

Wow. I whined a lot when I did slice-of-life stuff.

I still whine a lot.

I should probably work on that.

(click the ones below if you feel like seeing them larger…)


commentary that went with this one:

Well, someone asked. But I’m rusty in the English-to-Latin department, and that’s more “cow-y killer” than “killer cow.” Back to the drawing board:
bos interfectorius seems to connote “deadly cow” as in “I am going to kill you with this cow.”
bos homicidalis would be your “homicidal cow” as in “Watch out, that cow is going to kill you.”

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