As is my usual habit when I went south in the Winter, 2014 I determined to try some new art medium; this time with an objective in mind–to produce a coloring book inspired by my own original watercolor plein air paintings. I enrolled at the New Orleans School of Arts and Crafts to learn the art and craft of pen and ink drawing. I have used commercial, loaded pens to sketch for years. But my need here was different; I needed to deliberately reproduce the images depicted in my watercolor paintings. These paintings, themselves had involved NO DRAWING.
In class I mastered the tools, i.e. the different pens, quill, inks and practiced. Plus I got a lot of good advice when I explained my goal.
Initially, I used the computer to reduce the painted images to a semblance of line drawings. From these computer “line” drawings under tracing paper I eliminated lines until I had twisted them into an image I liked. From there I used old fashioned transfer paper under the tracing paper images to get the image to drawing paper suitable for ink. I used a thin nib to make the first ink drawing and had it scanned so that I could work and work until I had a drawing I approved of. From there I eventually used 2 additional nibs, each producing a thicker line than the one before.
You can view a selection from the coloring book by clicking Catskill Coloring Book in the Blogroll below and to the right.
bragg hollow studio 