I have been experiencing a bit of a creative drought and decided to fill up a fresh Moleskine Sketchbook with hope that my creativity would start to flow again. This particular sketchbook has thick pages that work well with both pencil and light paint. My goal is to draw or paint once a day. Because I work best with some sort of limitation, I decided to render the alphabet, one letter a day. Since I want to encourage creative flow, I will drawing whatever comes to mind and do my best to not judge it. The purpose is to restore and enjoy the process.
My first day started with the letter “A”. I wanted to push the paper to it’s limits, so I experimented with paint an markers in addition to colored pencils, pastels and ink. The pen & ink laid down smoothly with no bleed-through to the back. Because the paper is so smooth, the ink lines look very dark and even. The watercolor paint, however, caused a bit of buckling on the paper and did bleed through slightly on the wettest areas. The markers worked well in light strokes, but also experienced some bleed-through if I worked the color too much. This is an easy fix if I let the marker dry before applying a second coat. I used gold, metallic pen for the swirls, which worked very well. No bleed-through whatsoever and the lines were smooth and even when dried. To add a little texture, I impressed a rubber stamp on the page behind the letter. Again, the smooth paper shines as the ink laid down in smooth, even lines.
This journal would be an excellent choice for those of you who like creating images using pencils, charcoal, stamps, pen & ink and even markers. I am looking forward to trying out some other mediums as well.
Leave a comment