I like my drawings like my cooking - irregular and unpredictable (though my drawings have a much lower failure rate and very rarely make my wife cry). 

I do use Micron Pens for stippling wildlife (see ), but otherwise I generally draw using fountain pens (a Lammy Safri Fine, an Artist Rotary Medium and a Sailor Fude Pen); I struggle to draw with the tiny Microns as I usually hold pens in the overhand grip and am used to making bold, expressive movements with my arm. In this picture, I was trying to push myself to use a greater range of textures and apply them to a larger composition.

I chose a dark foreground, a near foreground and a faint mountain with no middle ground as I wanted a sense of distance and space, of the mountain almost floating in the air. I used the Fine pen to dot it out and then filled in the darker lines as needed.

The foreground was drawn with the medium pen and the fude pen - fude pen is good for shadowing and for making irregular lines by pressing the flat nib into the paper and stippling, like on the left-hand hillside, but the long, contour strokes weren’t right for the foreground rocks. I did try them on a reference sheet, but they were too bold in the final composition, so I had to turn them into deep shadows. I also had to improvise a bit as the picture was taken years ago, on a phone camera, so the quality of some details wasn’t clear.

The mountain is Ama Dablam, a beautiful mountain that should only be climbed if you have already lived a full and complete life without any regrets.

Positive things I learned were 
- My drawing in perspective has gotten much better. I was able to make the steps look fairly dimensional
- I was happy with the composition - I forewent a middle distance for a more dreamy sense of Notan with the hovering mountain, which was my goal.
- Doting out shapes is a great way to identify the contours and dimensions of the drawing without fully committing. I am quite a slow draftsman, and I took a break after outlining the composition with a technical pencil and another after dotting in the composition - both times I saw things that needed to be changed.

Areas for further improvement and study - 
- It was a struggle to create more detailed textures on the rocks with my fountain pens - I’ll take some specific classes on pen texture and see what can be adapted to my drawing methods.
- I’ve gotten into the bad habit of drawing most vegetation in the same few strokes - I’ll take some classes on tree and plant drawing to disrupt this habit and make my drawings more convincing.

And any additional feedback or points for improvement are always welcome.