The Beauty of Pen & Ink

I wrote yesterday that I was getting ready for the Bryn Mawr Hound Show. A large part of the work I'll be showing are pen & ink drawings of hounds. Drawing with pen and ink is one of life's simple pleasures. I love to study the pen work of the grand old British Masters (as I call them) of the Edwardian era.
One of my favorite draftsmen is G. D. Armour, a British sporting artist whose colleagues include Lionel Edwards, Cecil Aldin and Charlie Johnson Payne (a.k.a. Snaffles). Snaffles is best known for his humorous color prints, including his most popular "The Best View in Britain" & "The Worst View in Britain", which made him a household name in the hunt countries of Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. George Denholm Armour never enjoyed the same fame and name recognition in this country as Snaffles and Cecil Aldin, but he was every bit as funny, and a better draftsman. I discovered his cartoons for Punch, or The London Charavari, on eBay years ago. His sense of humor was second only to his exquisite pen and ink drawings.
G. D. Armour illustrated a number of books, including Surtees's Jorrocks, but they're not nearly as interesting as his black & white drawings. I much prefer Reynard The Fox, or The Ghost of Heath Run, by John Maesfield, with Armour's bold drawings.
Armour also wrote and illustrated several volumes, including his autobiography, Bridle & Brush, which tells of his life as a sporting artist and his service in The Great War. Copies of the book can be found on www.bookfinder.com as well as on eBay. I hope my blog will motivate some readers to seek out his work and discover his great appeal for themselves.
Here are a few of G. D. Armour's cartoons:

 

For my own pen and ink work, I use Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pens and a Canson Acid Free Sketch book available in any art supply store - even out in the burbs. I've never gotten used to A.C. Moore or Michael's as the only purveyor of art supplies after living in New York City for so many years. Pearl Paints on Canal Street was the only place I ever bought art supplies, even after I moved to New Jersey. With the demise of that iconic store a few years ago, I've been forced to scramble to find alternatives. There are none. Dick Blick/Utrecht is a poor substitute. They're expensive and cater to main stream arts and crafters, not art students or professional artists. Perhaps I'm just a snob, but no art supply store I ever frequented in my youth had rubber stamp kits and silk flowers. New York Central Art Supply is the best of what's left in New York. If you know of any other great art supply stores in the New York metro area, please let me know.

Back to Pilot disposable fountain pens. Although the line they make is not as variable as the old fashioned drawing pens, (the kind you dip in India ink), they're still wonderful to draw with. I found them in one of the giant box stores out here in the boonies, in a three-pack of black, blue and purple. They're wonderful for outdoor work because there's no messy, leaky pens or bottles to cart around with you. As I said before, they don't let you vary the line much. With a "real" drawing pen, you can increase the pressure on the point to spread the nib, making the line thicker or thinner as you vary the pressure. With the Varsity pens, you can get thicker and thinner lines too, but the control is not quite as accurate. A small trade off for the convenience and ease of using a disposable fountain pen.

I write with the blue pen, and people are always asking me where they can get them. They're becoming hard to find in stationery stores, so I order them on eBay in boxes of 12. They now come in a variety of colors, usually in a set of 10 or 12 or something. Not sure. Look online.
The drawings I did yesterday seemed a bit too timid. I did the sketch in pencil first and then redrew it with the pen and erased the pencil lines. They look too careful to me. I'm going to do one without a preliminary pencil drawing today. I think it gives a more spontaneous result.

CMC