I wanted to show you some of the progress I’m making on the thank you ATC. I’m (as of this writing) on card number 19. I’ve stumbled into some great images in the Flickr Commons of Civil War era people. The great thing about that era is the mustaches on the dudes. There are some seriously awesome mustaches in those archives. The other things that is interesting is the contrast in women’s hair styles, some are completely severe and look like they hurt and others have some unkempt hair.

The interesting thing in the photographs is how washed out many of them are, as if proper lighting wasn’t thought of, or they were purposefully over exposed to hide some wrinkles and other imperfections. The overexposure of much of the face leaves the viewer with sharp contrast around the eyes and clear views of crow’s feet. I really love drawing from these images.

So here you have cards 16 through 19:




I also wanted to show you the business end of the Uniball Signo Bit 0.18 pen I’m using to start most of these images. It’s so small my camera had a really hard time focusing on it. I put my uni kuru toga in the pic to give you a reference of the size of that tip. The kuru toga is a 0.5 tip. The Signo Bit is a 0.18. It’s tiny and allows me to get miniscule hair thin lines. It’s also waterproof and lightfast. It’s not quite as dark a black as the Signo Bit pens but for a micro tip pen it’s pretty great. I highly recommend this pen to anyone who wants a micro tipped pen to throw in their sketching bag. (You can get it at Jetpens as well as refills!)