The Royalty Pen

Royalty nib boxShapely and bronzed, this steel nib manufactured by I.D.Belcher & Co. of Birmingham is the kind of nib that Bob Cratchit might have used if he’d still been working for Scrooge in the late Victorian era.

It’s scratchy enough to offer a hint of  feedback from the surface of the paper and to give a sharp etched-looking line but even with that sharp point it flows well. royalty nibsIt might help that I was using the smoother flowing Noodler’s Ink instead of the Winsor & Newton Indian Ink that I used in previous tests. It occurred to me that the vintage nibs that I’ve been using probably weren’t designed for use with viscous Indian ink.

Royalty nib
I’m happier drawing real objects than copying someone else’s design. There’s such a pleasure in just making marks with dip pen and ink. You can see that I get into a flow when it comes to the scattered nibs, they’re more random and organic, like a bunch of ash keys or sycamore seeds, the sort of thing that I’d normally draw.

 

Outside the Box

The eagle-eyed amongst you might spot a small creature – a booklouse I guess – trundling along and heading down into the spiral binding of my sketchbook when I’m drawing the fourth or fifth nib outside the box. I’d spotted this little creature crawling amongst the nibs in the bottom of the box when I emptied out the contents. There’s a small ecosystem in there!

Drawing Close

My thanks as always to the people who made the music track available on YouTube. If it wasn’t for CouldB Entertainment making the track Drawing Close available, you’d have to listen to my scratchy pen and, if you drew close enough, the patter of the tiny feet of the booklouse.

Proscoptera – the booklice and barklice – have been around since the Permian period when the early dinosaurs first appeared in the fossil record.

Link; CouldB Entertainment