Ballpoint pen and sprayed isopropanol.
Nervous things in front of me
Ken Wilber
Portrait of Ken Wilber in black ballpoint pen, isopropanol, gel pen, black pencil, white pencil, white gouache.
Tim Freke
Portrait of Tim Freke.
“Here we are. This is happening to us. We’re heading to death. We now know we’re living in an enormous universe which is extremely old. What do you make of it? What do you think this is? And what do you think we should do with it?”
This one is drawn in ballpoint pen (2 types), gel pen and isopropanol. This time though, I squeezed the ink out of the pen with a pair of pliers, and painted with it direct on the paper, mixed with a bit of isopropanol. You don’t need much.
Lange Dyk
Drawing of Lange Dyk, which is near where I live in Westhoek. Blue ballpoint pen with isopropanol, plus gel pen and blue pencil.
Indonesian flavourings
Indonesian flavourings. Essential to the mix. Kecap Manis from ABC and Sambal Oelek from Albert Heijn. These are more experiments with the ballpoint pen and sprayed isopropanol, plus a little bit of blue pencil here and there. Next it’s Marmite.
Ballpoint pen portraits
I’ve wanted to draw something with a Bic biro for ages—that indigo blue kills me. Then I found that spraying a bit of isopropanol makes the ink run, and you get this great watery effect. (Though it seems to be only the magenta pigment that runs. The cyan doesn’t seem to run much).
Drawn on 300g brilliant white Clairalfa inkjet paper.
The Bob Mortimer was the first I tried this way. It looks OK… but there are probably too many lines going on.