misspollicat: Hello!

Good afternoon/evening/morning guys and dolls!

Firstly I want to introduce myself! *curtseys* my name is Paula and I am starting out a lovely blog to share my art and creativeness with the world! I like to create in so many different ways it makes sense to make a blog and try to untangle the big ball of yarn that is my creative brain!

So today i'm going to be showing you a lil' project I've been given the privilege to work on by the lovely guys and dames over at Kuretake www.kuretakeshop.co.uk Now if you haven't heard of Kuretake firstly, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!and secondly you must must MUST head on over there and take a gander at their range of art tools.. I can promise you wont be disappointed!

So the project topic is a very special one, to create something that sums up Kuretake's 30th anniversary *starts blowing up the balloons* I've been thinking about what to do for this project in great length and here's my design and a step by step guide of how I achieved it...

So the first thing I did was to jot down ideas of what came to mind when I thought about Kuretake.. obviously my first thought was PENS! but how did this tie in with the birthday theme? hmm... that's right... CANDLES! I linked pens to candles in my mind and I was all ready to begin. I took myself over to the Kuretake website and made a little rough sketch of the different equipment over there.. what the nibs looked like etc and I thought about how I might like to arrange that into a concept..

And I was ready to start creating..
Step 1: I used a ruler and a pencil to mark out a box in the middle of the picture where I wanted my number 30 to go. I then used the ruler again to mark the lines of where I wanted my pens to sit:

Step 2: I chose a selection of pens online that I liked and thought would look interesting in the piece. I drew these in using pencil and keeping the ruler line as a kind of centre line for the pen barrel which helped to keep it even.

Step 3: I started to use my pens on the individual pen drawings.. Now the pens im using here are all Kuretake brand pens. I have two different sets currently:

KURETAKE CLEAN COLOR REAL BRUSH (36)
These pens are filled with water based ink and have a fantastic brush nib. I love these pens, I really do. The nib is so flexible and they give a unique finish to any drawing. I love the way the brush fans and disperses the ink which allows for a nice almost cross hatched effect. The ink flows easily through the nib, I use these a lot for drawing koi or Japanese works because they are very similar to using ink pots and brushes.

KURETAKE ZIG MEMORY SYSTEM SCROLL AND BRUSH (48)

I saw these online and I knew I HAD to have the whole set straight away. The colours in this set are amazingly vibrant and I like the variations. There aren't too many browns.. or not enough pinks.. you get the point. These pens are double ended (ooooh) with one end being a fantastically pigmented brush nib and the other being a gorgeous scroll nib. Now I love the brush tip, it's fine but not micro meaning I can do detail but I can also do large areas of colour. I also love the scroll tip, although the very first time I used it I could not work out how to hold my hand to get both parts on the paper.. I am now a pro at this after experimenting. These pens have so many uses which I will expand on later..

So I went on to use the real brush pens on all the drawings aside from the writing in the middle and the two 'candle pens either side' I used a sweeping arc movement with my hand to create a rounded effect on the barrel

(Colours used are: Pale pink, bright yellow and orange)

(colours used are: Black, blue and yellow)

(colours used are: mustard and black)

(colours used are: cobalt blue and black)

it was starting to take shape....

I then used the scroll and brush pens on the 'candle' pens either side and used the scroll nib to write the '30' Now another thing I like about these pens are the fact that you don't have to take off both caps to see which end is which because it's labelled! HURRAH It's a small thing, but another thing that makes these pens winners in my book.

Step 4: So it was really coming along now, but it seemed a bit plain! This is where the multi-use of the scroll and brush pens REALLY comes into play. I switched to brush nib, set the very tip down and laid the brush end flat, this allowed me to create a mix of a flower and a firework.. PERFECT! I layered these petal like prints up and then experimented further with this technique but pulling the brush nib back on the paper and then pushing it down.. I really liked this effect.