Tessa Spanton SWA Artist, tutor, writer



TESSA SPANTON SWA ARTIST, WRITER AND TUTOR

Welcome to my blog.
This is where I write about some of the things that inspire my work,
news of exhibitions and works in progress

Wednesday 26 December 2018

The Elegant Writer Pen


                                             Algarve Pines

 The black Elegant Writer pen by Speedball can be bought individually or as a set of 4 from SAA
It is a calligraphy pen with a chisel shaped tip, it can also be used as a drawing pen. Its best used on a cartridge or HP watercolour paper as its a bit scratchy though still doable on NOT watercolour paper.
The ink is watersoluble so if you touch the line with a wet brush the black ink diffuses into the water making washes of aqua grey and sometimes pink. Paint just one side of the line to get the wash to flow in the direction you want. Its a bit unpredictable but fun to do. Its also very portable. All you need to sketch on location is an Elegant Writer pen, a loaded water brush and a sketchbook.
If I don't like the effect I sometimes lighten the tone by painting over with some white acrylic ink.

You can find an example of a water brush here

It's possible to do similar with Quink permanent ink and a dip pen. The colours are generated by water and are a bluish grey and ochre.

Below the pen is used dry for calligraphy.

 Pen and waterbrush  2 different versions of the Untersberg Mountain from outside Bloberger Hof near Salzburg.



                               View over Salzburg

                                           Oasts at Finchcocks Kent  (with water and some colour)

 Nonsuch Mansion this one has made the most pink.

                    

Thursday 13 December 2018

Working with gold and silver leaf

above 'Silver'  mixed media


 I have been working with gold and silver leaf.  the image above is a monoprint done with an oil based ink. i have worked over it with some oil pastel and silver leaf. The silver gives flashes of light depending on the angle so is tricky to photograph.


 The images below are greetings cards. I prepared some pieces of watercolour doing the edges with a deckle edged ruler. Igot some ivy leaves in from the garden. I had intended to paint the ivy leaf with watercolour but with the time available would have probably only managed 1 or 2. So instead I ironed each leaf, glued them on and coated each one with PVA glue.
Having experimented with the cards I will do some flower or leaf paintings with gold or silver leaf backgrounds.