Kuretake Clean Color Brush Pens

A bit of a divergence from my usual knitting topic but I've been drawing a bit recently. I'm a sucker for a nice notebook. I love the Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. I have an A5 one for my everyday notebook/bullet journal but I recently bought one of the smaller pocket ones.

I'm planning on using it to write all my knitting notes in and put some sketches in.

The other thing that I've bought recently is the most amazing brush pens. The Kuretake Zip Clean Color Real brush pens. I bought mine from Cult Pens, who have always been easy to deal with. The pens are Japanese and from a lot of shops come directly from Japan. I just bought a selection of pens but I've put another order in for more, as I love them so much.

The pens have an actual brush tip to them. You can get a really fine line or thick one - depending on the pressure you use. They blend with one another. The really good thing is they are water soluble, so you can get some really nice effects with very little effort.

The only downside I've found is the paper has to be cartridge or watercolour paper to use water with them - they're absolutely fine on any type of paper if you don't use the water. I used them in a colouring book and it did bleed through. You can get quite a bit of blending without the water though.

This one is in my standard moleskine notebook and I haven't used any water. If you go over same section more than once the colour deepens. What I think is really cool, is the soft colours. The light grey is great for adding shadows. I'm attempting to draw something every day, so I'll see how it goes.

This one is on cartridge paper. I was just doodling and trying out the different effects you can get. All the colours have water added to them and combined with the Pigma marker really makes the pictures sing.

The bottom left image is a colouring book and I've used the colours without water. You can still get some nice effects and blending.

I'm working on a creative lettering idea at the moment. It's the first verse from The Tyger by William Blake.

Anyway, as you can perhaps tell I think these pens are brilliant and I'm looking forward to filling my sketchbook up.

Bo in Blue

Conception to....

acquisition to...

creation.

He keeps taking his hat off. I've had a word with him about it.

I especially love his tail

The pattern is Bo Rabbit by Susan Hickson. My ravelry project page for Bo and more details.

Sketching & Doodling

At my LYS, A Good Yarn, there was the New Launch sale last week (I bought too much and daren't blog about it). There were lots of lovely yarns in stock. I wanted to use the Bergeré de France, Coton Fifty and the shop has had Mary Jane's Tearoom patterns in stock. They have been hugely popular in the shop, probably in part to the wonderful samples that have been knitted up.

I always have a penchant for stranded colourwork and Bo Rabbit appealed to me the most. So I ended up sketching a Bo Rabbit to try out a different colour combination. Here's my "Bo in Blue":

It would have been better if I'd used my sketchbook but it helped me make a decision. So here's the yarn I bought to make him.

However, the side effect of the sketch was, I really wanted to draw again. Some of my friends had been pinning some "Zentangle" designs that caught my eye. 

So a fair amount of research and many hours later. Here are the results.

Luckily, I happened to have the right sort of pens and pencils to do it without buying anything. The website and the newsletters are quite informative. I found this site was quite good for more design ideas - TanglePatterns. The designs look incredibly complicated but the method behind it is broken down that even someone who believes they have no artistic leanings would be able to produce a zentangle.

I ended up making a sampler page to try out the different designs I found and so I could use it as a reference too.

I've not quite finished with it. I keep adding more and filling in the gaps - so it's a work in progress.

Anyway, back to the knitting.