Taking the Challenge. EDM Challenge #1: Draw your shoe

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I decided to try tackling the EDM Challenge after a multi-year hiatus. The Challenge is an incredibly inspiring and motivating series of exercises devised by the wonderful Karen Winters. It initially began in the EDM Yahoo group but has now become a part of the EDM Flickr and Facebook groups too.

Each week, Karen posts a prompt for a drawing subject and zillions of people tackle the challenge and post their results. It’s a great opportunity to compare and learn from others. You can find the list of challenges in the files section of each of those groups. Also I have included a page on this site with the list.

I’ve decided to go back a half dozen years and start at the beginning with EDM #1: Draw a shoe. I hope to tackle a new one each day or so (unless life intrudes in some horrid way or I lose interest, as is my wont).

I drew this shoe with my new Lamy Safari Fountain Pen, Charcoal Broad Nib (L17B) filled with Noodler’s Bulleproof Black ink. This Noddler’s ink is perturbing me a bit these days. Even when I leave it to dry for hours, it can be a little less than waterproof at times and can add a black tinge to my watercolors. It seems to vary by the paper, so I am not giving up on it yet. But I do love the handfeel of this big fat nib; it’s sorta like drawing with a charcoal stick.

I drew the shoe as a contour drawing, tracing around each hummock of shoelace and protruding bit of tongue. Then I want back in and drew the interior bits, making sure the laces crossed where they outghta, and that the nose of the shoes wasn’t too snub or too elephantine. At this stage the drawing looked amateurish and flat. So I added some cross hatching in places ( I always vow not to do shading and then give in and add light and shade. I just can’t keep myself to just drawing in pure line) and filled in the interior of the shoe. Then I took out another, older pen, my Lamy Safari Charcoal Extra Fine Point ( L17EF) and drew in the little holes and stitching and added another layer of crosshatching.

I was still wrestling with how to capture the lovely grey suede of my new shoe, so I hauled out my Daniel Smith paints and used a grey, Sodialite Genuine, keeping things fairly flat as I really wanted to make  a drawing rather than a painting. Next I added a coat or two of Cadmium Yellow   and a dash of Doctor Martin’s lemon yellow for good measure (I bought these shoes primarily for their canary yellow, delightfully cushioned soles).

Finally I wrote about my new shoe with the trusty ol’ steel nibbed dip pen.

The composition is a bit wonky as my page is square and my shoe is oblong but it’ll do for a twenty-minute drawing before breakfast.

On to the next challenge.

Oh, and if you have drawn EDM #1 and would like to share it, please post it somewhere (Facebook or Flickr or on your blog) and tell me where I can see it.

Lamy replacement nib

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I bought Jack a Lamy Safari extra-fine fountain pen. He likes it (though he bought a bunch of refills rather than deal with loading it from a bottle. The ink’s not waterproof but it’s a lot simpler to deal with if you’re not used to ink bottles) but prefers my new super thick and chunky nibbed Safari. I discovered that you can replace the nib on a Safari to a different style. You can buy the whole front end of the pen on the Lamy website for virtually what I paid for the complete pen but on ebay I found a guy selling just the nibs for a lot less. Hopefully,  we’ll get it next week and can make the swap.

Drawing trash

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In the process of my endless rearrangement of my apartment, I managed to reveal a completely bare wall in my living room, one of the few in my home, and realized it called out for a big square painting. I mentioned this emptiness to my pal, Tommy Kane, and yesterday he appeared with one of his masterpieces, a lovely canvas of the Lone Ranger. Tom even hung it, as perfectly as only such a talented art director could do.

It was a beastly hot day, so, once the ladders and hammers were put away, we decided to visit the NY Sanitation Department’s maintenance garage on the banks of the Hudson River. We set up our folding armchairs in the shadow of some especially fragrant trucks and unwrapped ham and cheese croissants. After lunch, we broke out the drawing gear and spent an hour or two drawing the grimy complexity of rows of ailing trucks.

Tom is capable of spending weeks drawing a single scene so I tend to take my time too whenever I draw with him. As a result, these drawings tend to be very thick with lines, dark, layered, probably overworked. But there’s nothing like sitting with an old buddy in a garbage garage parking lot on a sweltering day, pen in one hand, book in the other, croissant crumbs in one’s whiskers, cawing seagulls overhead. Try it sometime.

First Feelings

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Last night I sat down with my camera to talk aloud about how I feel having the first copy of my new book, A Kiss Before You Go in my hands. Here’s what I said:

First copies

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These just arrived. The first three copies of my next book.

I’m still not sure how to feel.

Duh.

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After my bizarre pen experience yesterday, I hastily ordered a replacement. In fact, I got so carried away and was so vigorously cursing my old Safari that I ordered several replacements (“muttering “I wont be fooled again”). Another Lamy Safari extra fine, a second Lamy Safari pen with a broad nib (and a refill converter), and finally something pink called a “Noodler’s Ink Flex Nib Piston Fill Pink Panther Fountain Pen.” It was a mad burst of self-indulgence brought on by grief, I’ll admit.

Then, this evening, reading the comments on my last post, I came upon a link recommended by Lisa Ridolfi which led me to a video explaining how to swap out nibs on Lamy pens.

As I watched the video, I thought, “Huh, so Lamy pens don’t usually have black plastic points, they have metal nibs. The black plastic bit is just the thing that the actual nib slides on to. Which could only mean that ….”And sure enough, after scrabbling around on my desk, I found the metal nib that I had accidentally yanked off as I tried to vigorously wipe down my newly filled pen. I slid it back into place, gave it another more delicate wipe down and the Safari is back on course. Huzzah!

Any day now, I shall have an embarrassment of new pens arriving in the mailbox which will fortunately will force me to draw all the more. I hope you will absorb you this pathetic anecdote as a cautionary tale, and that you will forgive any aspersions I have cast at the Lamy company and their fine products.

 

RIP

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How weird!  This morning I posted about my pen and the ink I use in it. A pen I have used without incident, around the world, in book after book. A Lamy Safari Charcoal Extra Fine Point Fountain Pen – L17EF

This evening, my pen ran dry and so I refilled it, just like I have dozens of times before.. An hour later I picked it up to draw  — and it conked out.  It just felt like a strange plastic roller ball nib and wouldn’t produce a line. It was like a lifeless corpse in my hand. I cleaned it, refilled it, tried everything that would normally revive a wonky pen. Zilch.

There was nothing I could do but order a new Safari, a bright blue one this time.

That’s what I get for raving about a trusty old pal and for answering too many questions about it in one day. Rest in peace, Old Safari.

Ink

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A number of people have asked me what ink I put in the Lamy Safari fountain pen I use in the Spring video. It’s a lovely substance called “Noodler’s Black Waterproof Fountain Pen Ink” which is incidentally classified as “Bulletproof” because, once dry, it “resists all the known tools of a forger, UV light, UV light wands, bleaches, alcohols, solvents, petrochemicals, oven cleaners, carpet cleaners, carpet stain lifters …” In short, don’t spill it on your nice new shirt.

I bought my initial bottle on Amazon for about $12 but I see it’s now up to $16.18. As that first bottle has lasted me for nearly two years and is still going strong, I consider it a bulletproof investment.

A new video: timcam

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An utterly ridiculous experiment in film making. The latest from sketchbook labs. vimeo.com/43860865