New toys

I received a box from Dick Blick today containing, among other things, a Stabilo All pencil, an Elegant Writer calligraphy pen, and a pad of toned tan paper. So I set out to play with these new tools in ways that some of my artist pals have been doing (all  impressively!).

I can't say it was much of a success; the toned paper was cool, and allowed me to do a painting with much less initial work to fill in face color, but I tried the Stabilo All out by doing her hair and then trying to activate it with water to make it dark, and...it didn't work. Pallid grey washiness ensued. Then I added in (as it turns out, the wrong kind of) charcoal, and it got chunky and chippy, so I waited for that to dry, brushed it off, and covered up the hair with some indigo ink, black pen, and white gel pen.

Similarly, I did her shirt by outlining with the Elegant Writer and activating that with water; on my friends' artwork it blossomed and bled and made three beautiful colors, but on mine, it just...bled. Obviously I'm going to have to find out their secrets!

This is a slightly wonky version of feminist writer Roxane Gay; I recently discovered her through an interview I saw on YouTube with Trevor Noah when her last book, Hunger, came out, and I am now anxious to read all her books. Although she has written a novel and some short stories, she is primarily an essayist, and since this has always been the only format with which I myself have felt comfortable as a writer (except for book reviews), I think I will enjoy reading her. (Some trivia: She and poet Yona Harvey also wrote six issues of a Marvel comic, World of Wakanda, featuring two female warriors/lovers from the Black Panther's female security force. Marvel cancelled it because their research supposedly revealed that "people didn't want any more diversity," or female characters. Huh.)

"Roxane"—Pencil, Stabilo All, charcoal, white gel pen, Uniball fine black pen, Daler Rowney inks, Elegant Writer, on Strathmore 184-lb. toned tan mixed media paper, 9x12 inches.