Walnut Ink

When I am feeling a little lost, I often buy new art supplies to play with. So I've done a lot of that this last year and a half. One of those has been a bottle of walnut ink from the Art Center in Memphis. I love having a really good, locally owned art store that will not only stock my specific needs for me (18x24" linoleum blocks instead of just 12x12" ones) but that also has a wide array of alluring things to browse and try and play with. If you are lucky enough to have such a store, please support it. Online ordering just isn't the same. 

So I came on this summer trip with a bottle of walnut ink and a very old dip pen that had been handed down to be and that has been sitting in a cup ever since, lonely and untried. I'm having a ball. The walnut ink nicely has a tight fitting top, and it rides around safely in the daypack with my art things, so I've been using it on site a lot lately. ​

I've used watercolor so steadily that it's easy for me to fill a page of my sketchbook with swirling, eye catching color. Facing a double spread with just the nib of a pen is a much different proposition, and I've enjoyed the challenge. It's more similar to the printmaking I do, which is graphic and pattern oriented as well. I'm feeling a distant kinship to Van Gogh, whose ink drawings I have loved since I discovered them in high school. One lovely thing about switching mediums is that you see the world around you differently since you're looking for different opportunities in a sketch. Just that gift alone is worth switching things up regularly, and I was overdue. I also do love feeling that tangible through line with my art heroes who have gone before. It's similar to the feeling I get cooking stew, a sense of the history of people standing and stirring pots and making a life giving force. Suddenly it's not just me and the stew but a host of ancestors standing at my shoulder as well. 

It's been a delightful change, and I plan to keep my hand in for sketching in line as well as paint.