Tag: Pen and Ink

This was sketched from a sunny bench in the little park just outside the Federal Building in Oakland. That tall thing in the foreground is a stone statue etched with a bit of a face, some lillies, and some extra eyes.

I’d gone to the Federal Building to cash a check at the credit union on the second floor (payment for a painting I’d sold). Inside the building there are guards, metal detectors and x-ray systems just like the airport. As I was about to go through the metal detector I remembered my new Swiss Army knife in my backback.

It was new because my old one was confiscated at the airport when I flew to Los Angeles to visit my mother in May. I’d forgotten it was there so it set off alarms going through the x-ray machine, winning me a detour to the place for naughty people where I was given a pat-down search, and every item in my backpack was thoroughly inspected.

The Swiss Army Tinker model which I’ve carried for years has knives plus a Phillips and flathead screwdriver, a can and bottle opener, a nailfile, toothpick, and tweezers, and has come in handy many times. I convinced the nice guard to hold it for me while I went upstairs to the bank.

They should have a system at the airport to store people’s illegal-to-carry-on but otherwise innocuous items like little pocket knives and now, TOOTHPASTE, DEODERANT and SUN TAN LOTION! How hard would it be to have a “coat check” system where you get a receipt for your item and pick it up when you return for a small fee?

I feel sorry for all the people at the airport today who had to discard everything from bottled water to expensive wine and cosmetics just in case they happened to have put liquid or jell explosives in there. I hope that at least the minimum wage airport custodians and security screeners were able to take those things home to use or sell on EBay rather than everything going into the trash!

Brown Micron Pigma in Strathmore 6×8 sketchbook that lives in my backpack too.

Original pen and ink version below

When I finished telecommuting at about 8:00 tonight, I sat down to a microwaved Lean Cuisine and turned on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes which I’d TiVo’d. I watched for the few minutes it took to eat my yucky TV dinner and then decided to do my daily drawing from the TV.

Since I mostly just paused the TiVo on the pictures that interested me with no sound, I can’t tell you much about the show or the people I drew except that it was all scary–the first guy in the drawing is Abu Jandal, who used to be Bin Laden’s body guard. He wants his son to grow up to be a terrorist martyr just like his daddy. The rest of the show was about the rapidly increasing global warming and Bush trying to rewrite the science and play down the warnings. So two of the other guys are scientists who are speaking out and the third is supposed to be Clinton who tried to get the scientists to make the problem sound even worse than it is. The cutest guy of all is a penguin whose environment is slowly disappearing due to global warming.

I drew this with my Lamy Safari pen, Noodlers Ink and my Aquabee sketchbook. The pen kept seeming like it was running out of ink. I think the pen does best on hard smooth paper, not on this. Or maybe it’s the angle I hold it–not upright enough perhaps. But it always seems like it’s not putting down enough ink or it’s putting down too much. Maybe it just takes more practice. The Micron Pigma is definitely easier to use but doesn’t give the variety in lines that the Lamy does.

Update: Next day I’ve added watercolor and deleted in Photoshop two lumps that were supposed to be seals. Which do you like better?