Every spring I’m tempted to sketch the bleeding heart plant that grows by our front porch, but I’m usually so busy weeding, pruning, mulching, and planting that I never get around to it. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in the spring with all the yard work and gardening I have to do, but this year I decided I needed to practice what I preach to my students – I needed to just make the time, and DO IT!
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| Pigma Micron pen & watercolor in 10″ x 7″ Canson Montval watercolor sketchbook |
So I did it!
I decided to keep the design simple. Instead of filling the page, as I usually do, I focused on just one undulating stem with its pretty pink blossoms.
Painting just a few leaves was enough to suggest the rest of the plant.
The lettering was done with a traditional calligraphy nib. I first lightly sketched in a few curving guidelines and roughed in the quote with pencil, to figure out the spacing of the lettering. Then I inked it with a calligraphy pen.
One of my students (and favorite artists!), Sharon Nolin, introduced me to the idea of using watercolor paint in place of ink in a calligraphy pen when adding lettering to a sketchbook page. “Tape” brand nibs work well with this technique because they have a reservoir on top, making it easy to fill with a watercolor brush.
Just load a brush with paint and dab it into the reservoir. (Sometimes, to start the pen flowing, it seems to help if I wet the underside of the nib with the brush, also.)
I like having the freedom now to coordinate the color of my lettering with the colors in a sketch. Lettering done with a calligraphy pen looks a bit more formal than my usual hand-drawn lettering styles, but I think on this page, it was the perfect choice.
3 Comments
I love how you drew the simple stem arcing across the page. The composition and colors work so well!
Lovely work as always; wonderful tip for lettering with watercolor!
I really like how clean and uncluttered this looks allowing the detail and beautiful colors to come through. The additional of your script is beautiful. Thanks for sharing your technique. I am going to find one of those nibs and give it a try. I enjoy following your page!