I wish I could have made the title even longer to include And There’s A Cute Downloadable To Try For Your Christmas Cards and a Real Time Video Available Too! But I think the Googles would have my head. Ha! So even if you’re  not a pen and ink person, there’s fun for you too.

Today I’ve got a great tip for you that I think I’ve talked about a little bit before – but I don’t know that I focused on it much. So let’s do that today! Note there are a couple projects here:

1. A large fox piece with watercolor + ink, kinda crazy background. Available for purchase here.
2. Smaller pen and ink only fox with mouse. Also a digistamp printable here.
3. Drawing #2 is a realtime video at Artventure. Find it in the Pen and Ink Students group.

First in the video is a deeper dive on the Ellington pens I showed last week. The only negative (minor) that I saw was that after using the pen for a couple days or carting it around to a sketch event, the nib section came ever so slightly loose and needed to be screwed back in a little. I mean a little. That’s no reason in my book to dislike a pen, it only happened after big usage.

Tutorial: Game-Changer Fountain Pen Tip

Testing your pens to see if they create two line weights is what I expect fountain pen peeps to go do after watching this. And that’s ok. Leave me a comment and tell me if you did! ha!

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

A rather crazy idea

I wanted to try something new. A realistic image for part of a wash-and-ink piece, but leaving the background not realistic….with a mix of linear, graphical elements and loose and flowy ones. You’ll have to let me know if you think I succeeded!

I’ve posted the original over on my fine art site…or you can get prints (with or without frames), or cards over at Society6!

Sweet fox

This pretty little fox was drawn in pen and ink and colored afterwards–the opposite of my preference! But I wanted it to be available for folks to cover if desired, so I was lucky that the pencil wasn’t opaque enough to cover it – so be careful if using pencils with it. Some will give the detail a really cloudy look. However – this one pictured was colored on the Hanehmule paper, which is smooth and nice for pen and ink, but quite terrible for colored pencil! It’ll be easier to work with on a paper with more tooth. 🙂

Draw your own…

If you want to draw your own fox, head over to Artventure where the realtime video is inside the Pen and Ink Students group. It’s just got music in it – but the outline is there so you can try your hand at drawing fur.

Or color one up!

If you just want to color up this cute fox and mouse, head to Art-Classes to purchase the printable!

Which one might you do?

Are you fancying a coloring session with the printable, or maybe being brave enough to draw a fox yourself? Or perhaps you’ve got some holiday shopping in mind – you can get the Winter Fox as prints or cards….or buy the original if you’re the lucky first one to shop!

Supplies

• Papers:
  1. Hahnemule Lettering Pads
  2. Arches Cold Press sheets
• Fountain pen:
  1. Ellington Pen 
• Daniel Smith Watercolors:
  1. New Gamboge 
  2. Anthraquinoid Scarlet 
  3. Payne’s Blue Gray
• Ink:
  1. Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen Ink
• Brushes:
  1. Da Vinci Series 17 Maestro Long Needle, Size 9
  2. Da Vinci Maestro Kolinsky Sable Brush – Round 4