Today I decided to take a stab at my minimalist style of art.  It was a lovely idea that I hope to find more success with tomorrow, but today’s endeavor was one frustration after another.  The first problem is that I am currently at a friend’s house pet-sitting, so I don’t have access to all of my art supplies.  On a basic level I just need a good brush marker and some decent paper.  It’s the easiest way to go, with the least prep and fuss and mess.  Any actual art stores are quite a distance across town from my friend’s place, so I decided to hit Michael’s instead, where I was hit with sticker shock and a bizarre range of colors to choose from.

In the past I have used Faber-Castel Pitt artist pens (the brush variety) and Copic markers (the brush tip).  All of those pens were locked up with no salespeople in sight, not that it really mattered.  They didn’t have singles of the Pitt pens, and I couldn’t find prices on the single Copic pens, but the packs ran a bit over $55 for five Copic pens, and $22 for a set of six Pitt pens, both of which seemed exorbitantly high.  On top of that, all of the Pitt pen sets were weird arrays of colors that I am unlikely to use.  I checked the store brand brush markers, but the tip was too stiff to work for my purposes, so I landed on an also overpriced single black brush marker I’m pretty sure I’ve seen before in a stationary store in Japantown San Francisco.  No biggie.  It was theoretically meant to imitate sumi, so I figured it would suit me fine.  As for paper, that was as expected, and I decided to go ahead and buy a pad of nicer paper than I usually do for my minimalist art, one that is actually labeled for use with markers.  I have a tendency to use paper for mediums other than labeled, but that’s a different story.

I get back to the house, pick out some stock images to use as reference (because I am nowhere near up to speed enough to avoid reference material), sketch the first figure on my nice smooth marker paper, and pull out the pen I purchased.  Not only is the tip far smaller than I expected (it was labeled medium), but it is stiff and has a poor body to it.  Oh well.  It’s what I now had, so I decided to make the most of it.

It worked OK, but it didn’t give me the breadth I wanted for more dramatic line width variation, it was difficult to transition to finer line widths smoothly, and generally I didn’t like how it handled.  Most of the obvious issues with this piece are a result of my lack of practice (and resulting weird choices on some line placement), so I decided to give it another try, altering where and how I made my lines.

The final result of this I actually like, but again, it lacks the depth of line width variation that this piece truly needs, and very few lines were made in a single pass.  It’s a goal for me when making this style of art, that each line should be one smooth pass.  That isn’t possible with the pen I bought.  That was frustrating enough that I knew I didn’t want to waste more time trying to use it, because it wasn’t going to allow me to practice the skills I want to refresh.

So, I dug through one of the pen cases I brought with me that I knew had some Micron pens in it, and found two Pitt pens.  The black one was toast (blunted tip and dry on ink), but the brown was in decent enough condition to use.  Awesome!  Problem solved!  Right?

When I finished drawing this one, I thought I had an acceptable piece.  There are a couple details that again, didn’t flow as nicely as I would have liked, but that’s why I’m practicing!  They are things that no one else is likely to notice anyway, and I know that.  So, I let it dry to the touch and then used my kneaded rubber eraser to remove the pencil, and that’s when it failed….

Time to try again.  I figured the paper might just need more time for the ink to dry.  I’ve done that before with pen and marker paper, been too impatient and erased before it was ready.  I could make those design changes I was thinking of anyway.

This is when I knew I was done trying for the night.  Still not perfect, but getting closer, close enough to be worthy of putting in my portfolio, until I erased the pencil.  For some reason, the ink from the Pitt pens won’t dry properly on the paper I bought, even though they are technically markers, and the paper is for markers.

Fingers crossed I’ll be up to driving across town tomorrow to get the materials I need.  I think I’ll just stick to watercolor and mixed media paper for the minimalist pieces.  It’s always worked great in the past.  It will also be nice to get a couple new pens that haven’t been beat around for years.  Materials don’t always need to be expensive, but having unsuitable materials can make an art piece doomed to failure before you ever start.