Product reviews pt.2: Micron pens and brushes.

Micron pens and brushes.

When it comes to decent felt tip drawing pens, Microns are one of the most well known and widely available brands out there. They’re reliable, long lasting, and come in a variety of sizes, including very small 005 tips and large “3” chisel tips. They tend to be inexpensive, and work well on a variety of media.

I tend to keep a lot of these on hand, in varying sizes. Given my focus on crosshatching and other forms of shading, I go through the 005 and 01 sizes very quickly. The 08 sizes are perfect for bold, dramatic outlines. The wide chisel tips are classified as “graphic” pens. In addition to these are “brush” pens, with a flexible, brush-like nib that can be useful for inking something that you want to have a very light, ephemeral sense of motion.

These are perfect for sketching, and the ink works just fine on sketch paper. The following, for instance, was inked with microns, in a windpower 30% post consumer sketchbook.

As you can see, microns come in various colors. The above was done with a set of sepia colored microns, with tips ranging from .005 to .05. Microns work well with most types of markers, including copics. The image below was created with both microns and copic markers.

Microns do have their drawbacks. They can’t be refilled, so you end up generating more solid waste with them than is preferable. Line consistency isn’t the best, so these aren’t ideal for anything that requires a very smooth, steady line. These aren’t very suitable for drafting. They can be fine for earlier drafts, but for a final draft of a hand-drawn drafted document, you should use a technical pen. another issues is that the lines tend to be more sensitive to erasing than others pens, and can become faded quite badly.

The biggest problem, however, is that the nibs aren’t always that durable. The nibs of the smaller sizes can sometimes bend/break, which can affect line quality. The brush nib and the chisel style microns will sometimes become rough or frayed after repeated use. This is, by no means, the case with every single pen. But it does happen often enough to be noticeable.

In any case, microns are fine pens for most sketching and illustration tasks, especially if you don’t plan on doing much erasing.

Product reviews pt.1: Copic markers and multiliners (with brush pen).

So, I will be doing reviews of the various things I use to create my images. Why? Because I don’t like for the blog to be free of posts for long stretches of time, and this is the best type of filler material I could come up with. Plus, it allows me to write, which I enjoy doing anyway. Anyway, on to the first installment!

Copic markers and multiliners (with brush pen).

Most of my traditional media pieces are mixed media, and they primarily consist of a combination of watercolor and ink. Images are sketched, and then inked with microns or copic multiliners. Watercolor washes provide the initial layers of color, and shading, added depth, and details are added accordingly. For certain effects, mostly involving adding different hues for a richer appearance to the shading, I will use copic sketch markers.

The brush nib is the primary reason I use these, as it allows for easy blending with whatever I’m doing. The following piece, for instance, is a mixture of watercolor and copic marker, which I’ve used to add highlights and shading to certain areas. I sometimes do this to get a more vibrant or precise result than I can get with the watercolors I have on hand.

Some pieces are done entirely in copic marker. The following work, for instance, was drawn on landscape drawing paper.

It was penciled, then the basic outlines were inked. Afterwards, the first layers of color were added. Hatching is added afterwards. Microns and copic multiliners are supposed to be waterproof, smear proof, and, in the case of the latter, “copic proof”. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, and whether the ink smears depends on what type of paper/medium you’re using. Generally, sketchbooks and thinner drawing paper will have this problem. Illustration boards and thicker paper will vary. Heavier tooth and heavy weight paper, such as watercolor paper and wet media/mixed media paper don’t usually have this problem. Smooth illustration boards can sometimes do this, but they’re usually okay.

Once the first layers of color are applied, then I do the hatching and smaller details. Finally, added shading, hues, and other blending tasks are completed. The brush nib is very effective at blending, and in some cases you will not have any need of the clear blender (though it has it’s own unique uses.)

Copic also sells wide tip markers, for coloring in larger areas that are usually flat in color. These can be more difficult to master, as they have heavy chisel style tips which are not as effective at blending.

Still, these are useful for filling in large areas. Especially with darker colors and black markers, where blending may not be as much of an issue. Blenders also come in wide tip sizes, so you can still blend these. It’s just more difficult than it is with sketch markers.

Copic multiliners are my preferred ‘mid level’ inking solution, between microns and technical pens. Line quality is a bit better than microns, and tends to be smoother and more consistent. They also offer a greater variety of tip sizes are available, including the extra small .003 tips. They are also designed to be reused, as the ink cartridge inside is easily replaced with a new one.

The following piece was inked with copic multiliners, including the smaller sizes. This is the type of piece I enjoy doing with these pens.

Venetian mask tattoo

Copic also has their own equivalent of the brush nib pens produced by micron and staedler. This brush pen does its job just fine. Feature-wise, it doesn’t differ from the micron brushes, but I have found that the nib is a bit more durable, and is not prone to the light fraying/splitting that sometimes happens to the microns.

Copic products can be a bit more expensive than other options, but they do tend to offer unique features that you can’t get from other markers and multiliners. The multiliners, in particular, are one of the best lower cost alternatives to professional level technical pens (rapidograph pens).

It’s been too quiet…

Well, this past semester was very intense. I didn’t have a lot of time to post anything here, nor did I have much to post.

 

Anyhow, the semester is almost over, and I expect the break, as well as the coming semester, to both be far more productive.

 

The purpose of this post is just to make it clear that this blog isn’t dead. I just don’t have a lot to post right now.

Update.

I’ve been a bit quiet, obviously.

 

More stuff will be posted in the coming weeks. I’ve just been focused on doing other stuff. I have some new pieces to post, I just need to scan them.

Material.

Yeah, posting has slowed. Obviously. I’m just working on the next round of new material, which I’ll begin scheduling this evening.

Land Art Concept

Work in Progress: Giant Tryptich

This was originally an assignment for my Drawing II class, and while I was satisfied with it, I always wanted to expand upon it in some way. This is the original finished product. I’ll be adding some new touches, though I’m not entirely sure what they will be just yet.

It is a very large triptych, a type of hinged painting or art object from the middle ages.

I added a few twists on it. The whole thing has a series of narratives that have a sci-fi/fantasy element, most of which involves the multiverse, m-theory, and large spacefaring organisms, as well as unusual stellar phenomenon.

One image, obviously, is supposed to look like an old keyhole. A few of them are maps. Fictional alien writing can be seen in some of the various images. When this is finished, each image will be described in more detail. The empty spot is where a specific drawing used to be, but it fell off and needs to be reattached.

Black Helicopter Tryptich

This was a drawing II assignment, and the concept is a sort of dadaist, absurdist joke. (If I recall correctly, the assignment itself involved taking inspiration from Dada.) This thing would be incredibly pretentious if it were meant to be taken seriously, but it isn’t.

I decided to create an assemblage with a surrealistic sci-fi theme. It is also a parody of ‘black helicopter’ conspiracy theories. During the 80’s and 90’s some very foolish people began to claim that black helicopters were engaged in clandestine activities in the midwest, sometimes involving aliens and U.F.O.’s. For this project I decided to make fun of this conjecture by creating a narrative in which the ‘helicopters’ are actually large, aerial animals which only resemble helicopters, and live in large anthill-like warrens in the mountains of the American west.

 

I wanted to mix illustration with assemblage, so I did several drawings of the helicopter-creatures. I decided to give them a somewhat organic texture, and made the cockpits red. I also added some humorous touches. For instance, the drawings of the helicopters are cut out and mounted on foam core board, with Velcro on the back. There is also Velcro on the display aras of the folded boards, so you can move them around, though there is no reason to do so. There’s a magnifying glass, to examine the drawings up close, but there’s nothing to really see. There is a pen, but the quill is broken and there’s no ink. The parchment on the side with the pen is supposed to be an account of a sighting of one of the creatures that dates from the 1800’s (it’s not a ‘real’ account, I just made it up, and it’s just a few sentences.) The last side is made up of printed excerpts from goofy conspiracy theories.

 

The metal plates are just visual elements. There’s a good deal of symbolism in this thing, but I can’t explain it all, and all of it is just inside jokes.

 

Why did I do something this goofy? Well, it was fun to do it, but another reason is that I’ve always been fascinated with conspiracy theories, and why people believe in them. I’m also a skeptic, so I look at this stuff with a critical view, which naturally leads to me satirizing this type of thing.

 

I’ve always been pretty satisfied with this piece of art. It mixes assemblage, illustration, sculpture, and a number of media. It was a delight to combine all of this in to a single piece.

 

The boards have a various shapes painted on them in yellow, red, orange, and black. Those colors were chosen just because I thought they complimented the helicopter illustrations, and I think they look nice with the steel/metal elements, while the lighter yellows work with the parchment colors and the exposed parts of the wood. The paint itself is acrylic.

 

Anyhow, this things was really enjoyable to create.

Genre Identifier Labels (G.I.L.).

I suppose this is a sign of some kind of neurosis on my part, but there is what I did….

I have a decent music collection, which spans a wide variety of styles. Much of it is increasingly stored in Ikea KASET boxes. The ones with the dimensions geared towards storing jewel cases. Well, I tend to organize my music by genre and subgenre. I thought it might be cool to create some sort of labels or dividers, so I know what’s in each box. They would be made so they could be folded on to a box and easily removed should they need to be attached to another box. I went through a few ideas on how exactly to do this, and this is the end result.

 

Work In Progress: Objective Cards.

These will eventually be printed out and made in to small cards. Each one represents a life or creative objective I wish to follow. Most of them involve honing different skills or areas of knowledge. These are just a few. One of them, obviously, has the previously posted vector recreations of the treasures from the first Zelda game.

The finished product will be posted once they’re printed out