#sketchbook #ink #quill
After experimenting and drawing with a sharpened stick from my backyard, in my latest YouTube video, I kept drawing and indulging in the inky fun off camera. Its been fun dipping the whittled tool into a bottle of ink and scratching away. It required dipping pretty often, and sometimes was messy or unpredictable... but fun and satisfying.
Somebody made a joke referring to 'EryckQuillz' on my YouTube video. I had forgotten about quills! Shortly after a Google search I came across a site called 'History of Pencils'. It had articles talking about the history of different drawing and writing tools.
I read up on quills which replaced reeds and even styli. Apparently, as I understand it, a 'stylus was a word for dry simple instruments carving out words on clay and wax tablets. Once you start dipping and using an applied medium the term becomes pen. This is my understanding from only one site at this time mind you. I could be mistaken. But I found that interesting. Mostly because, these days, I use a dry stylus to make marks on my plastic electronic tablet on my computer and on my mobile touch screen.
Any who, back to my point. I learned the main functionality of the reed pen or quill pen originates in its design. No matter the quality of the pens make, they all function best with a two prong tip. Each is split at the end of the pointy nib, creating a channel to hold ink, with what I gather, seems to be largely reliant on the ink's surface tension to hold it and gravity as well as use to feed more ink to the tip.
With this in mind, I took one of my previous stick pens and carefully split the tip in half like a snake tongue. Immediately, when dipping and drawing, it held ink in the split and fed the tip as I marked with it. It lasted much longer before using up the ink, which meant dipping far less frequently.
So here is a couple pages in my sketchbook where I scratched away with my stick pen and even played with some potential Halloween sticker/ tee/ merch designs. Fun stuff.
Thanks for looking! The learning and messing about continues!
