I came to this class after sketching a Star Nosed Mole (available here, if you were wondering what a Star Nosed Mole looks like - https://www.skillshare.com/en/classes/always-drawing-7-creative-exercises-to-jumpstart-your-sketchbook/277788556/projects?via=project-details%3Fvia%3Dproject-details) and I sketched the star nosed mole with couple of fountain pens because I really don’t like disposable plastic pens.

My pen arsenal consists of a Parker pen for writing, and a Lamy Safari and a Sailor Fude pen for sketching.

I was originally reticent to sketch with pens as I’ve spent a lot of time working with pencils, laying up transparent layers over one another, but I decided to give fountain pen sketching a try because the indelability of the ink means that you have to draw confidently, and work with any mistakes you make.

Some of my observations were;
- You can’t put down washes of value with pens, so every line has to both communicate the shape of the subject and how dark/light the surface is
- It was less easy to change the size of my lines with fountain pens, so the direction of the lines and the choice of pen for different effects was very important
- Pens give more natural opportunity for negative space in drawing

I chose to draw a bee because I wanted to capture negative space and explore the contrast of the wiry hairs and smooth legs. The best part of the drawing, for me, was using individual lines to try to communicate the directionality of the hairs using the Lamy pen and how this contrasted with the smooth lines on the legs made with the fude pen.

For next time;
- I haven’t taken any courses on shading, which I would use to add more dimensionality
- I used a underdrawing with a grey technical pencil, but I could have used a red or blue pencil to add some pentimental marks, which might be more visually interesting
- I’ll experiment with some less ‘fury’ subjects to explore different textures