Author Archives: leslie

More #DoNotPin Garbage

So pinterest has released a small snippet of code that you can embed in your website/blog that blocks the pin it bookmarklet. This is good news. I was really worried I was going to have to watermark all my images here on the old blog . I was really not interested plus, I think it looks like butt. However, it leaves my thousands of images on Flickr vulnerable to being pinned. I really wish that Flickr woudl take a more proactive approach toward it's members who would like to be protected from tumblr and pinterest, especially since it's so damn easy.

Instead I'm headed to Flickr and finding my most often pinned images, there are a few dozen of a journal I shot back in '08 that get pinned and tumbled, you'll probably recognized them. Each one is getting a discreet little "ComfortableShoesStudio.com" The pain in the ass of this is that I have to open each one up on picnik to edit. Picnik is slow. It means I'll be scouring pinterest looking for my images (if I can bring myself to do it.)

I really think that pinterest should have a one click "hey this violates my copyright" button, no forms, just a click. It should be easier.

Here's one of my images I've had to ruin with a watermark:

oh and another:

First Round: Ink Fade Testing (lightfast)

Review: Pilot Prera Medium Fountain Pen

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This is a small pen that is pretty sharp to look at. The clear acrylic is shiny and perfect. The white printing is crisp, every detail looks good. The smoke colored accent pieces on the end of the pen are nice, perfectly translucent yet perfectly gray. This is simply a really good looking pen. The nib is steel and shiny, again very good looking and is very smooth. It lays down a consistently wet line in what I would call fine but is really a medium according to Pilot.

I immediately inked it with one of my favorite blues, Private Reserve Sonic Blue. Sonic Blue is a nice dusky blue that is perfect for work, journaling, and even sketching. It was great in this pen. I can imagine this pen doing well with a variety of inks. The nib is very smooth.

The pen itself is very lightweight and for it to be comfortable, for me, I had to post the cap. When I say this pen is light I mean it, I could barely feel the pen, which caused me to write with more pressure.

I’d heard so many WOWs on the ‘net about this pen I guess I was expecting…. more… It’s a nice pen but at an average retail of about $50 around the internet I’m left underwhelmed. After using it I’d have expected it to retail around $25- $35. It feels a lot like a school pen, one, kids would use, and I suppose that’s who Pilot is trying to appeal to with the bright colors. For $25 I’d have been blown away, for $50 I feel like I gave into peer pressure and spent a tad too much.

If you are looking for a starter pen I’d steer you more toward a Lamy Safari for about $30, a Pelikano for $20, a Kaweco Sport for $22. IF you want to spend $50 get a TWSBI. All 4 of those pens offer a better value for your money than the Prera.

Check the ‘bay to see if you can find one for around $25- 35. I doubt you will for awhile, these pens are in strong demand right now and I paid a little more than I should have for mine and I waited 3 or 4 months for that deal.

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Don’t Pin MY Stuff #donotpin

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Pinterest. Sigh. I've written about how much I dislike Tumblr and Pinterest due to finding a ton of unattributed images on both sites. That was way back in September of last year.

And now this article created a firestorm on twitter this afternoon. (search for #donotpin on twitter)

My feelings on Pinterest (and tumblr) can be articulated as follows:

Pinterest should link back to the creator DIRECTLY
Attribution should never ever be stripped.
They should only create a thumbnail of the image, not store a hi-res image.
Their weak section in ToS "you either are the sole and exclusive owner of all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services or you have all rights, licenses, consents and releases that are necessary to grant to Cold Brew Labs the rights in such Member Content, as contemplated under these Terms" is complete bull shit and probably won't hold up in court should an artist be damaged by their website. After all they know how their users USE their produt- to pin stuff that doesn't belong to them. If you pin my stuff without my permission (without attribution) then you have damaged me.

Every click on either of the 2 services that should come here is a damage. I know my pics on flickr have been pinned and shared on Tumblr. Imagine my surprise at finding my art journal pages shared without attribution? Shocking, only not, when you start to follow an image around the service. One person pins it, another pins from their pin, and another and another. After the 3rd click you stop looking for the original page out of shear frustration. How many sales have been lost to good honest artists and craftspersons to the vortex that are these 2 sites. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't make money off their service, but they should be more fair to the artists and crafts people who are really the driving force of their site.

This quote gets at the heart of why I hate pinterest so much, "If someone pins a photo on Pinterest, they've created a competing version of the image, which could siphon image search traffic away from the source site." (Link to original article.)

Pinterest and Tumblr may just drive me toward watermarking my photos, though I hate watermarks. It's the only way for me to drive traffic to my blog if someone steals an image. So, you know, don't pin my stuff.

Another Cowboy

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I thougth I'd show you another cowboy drawing. I started this guy the same as the last- with the Pilot Technica .04, quickly scratching out the basic lines. This image is about 5×7 inches just a little larger than the last few drawings I've loaded up.

After that I added the shades of gray, using layers to get darker shades of gray.

Finally I added black with the brush pen.

Obviolsly I'm totally digging these brush pens. I've found a figure drawing class and I think i'm going to go and draw with this pen combination. Additionally, I've used the Loew Cornell pens I reviewed here with this technique and it's pretty cool when they bleed into the gray ink. Also the pens are way more comfortable when used for drawing than when writing.

3 Step Sketches

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I've been messing about with a trio of pens- the Pentel Hybrid Technica and 2 Pentel Pocket brush pens(PBP), one with black ink and the other with gray. It's been a great combination. For the image below I looked up images on Flickr's Commons page. I happened upon some images from Florida's Archives of various southern ment from the early 1900's, some of whom were Civil War Veterens. I particularly enjoyed this guy.

I started roughly sketching in his face with the Pentel Hybrid Technica (review to follow.) I looked mainly for the large shapes of light and dark, blocking in the dark areas, leaving lights alone. I looked for the edges of things like his eyes, dark shadows, and hair. I used the pen quickly, spending no more than 5 minutes on this part of the sketch.(If I had been doing this a year ago I'd have spent about 10 to 15 min and gone much more slowly.)

After I'd blocked in the stuff I felt was important I put down the Technica and switched over to the PBP (pocket brush pen) filled with Omas New Gray ink. I was able to quickly put in the areas of lighter shadow and then build more layers upon that to create more darks. I can't over emphasis the virtues of this ink for sketching- the fact that it starts out as a nice silvery gray and gets darker and darker with additional layers is fantastic. It is not light fast, but is perfectly fine in a sketchbook.

After I was happy with the level of shadows I'd built up with the gray ink I grabbed the PBP with black ink and started to darken the darkest area and add some additional texture with it. The eyes, hair, and shadows were all deepened with this pen.

This pen combination is great, the Technica is great for quick little sketches, it handles being treated roughly quite well. There are some areas where the gray ink will lift the technica ink if I've done really heavy scribbles that overlay one another. It's not noticable in the finished sketch. If you wanted to sketch in pen and ink, these are all the tools you'd need.( I mean, you could add a fountain pen or two, just in case you want another line….)

Review: Update Pentel Pocket Brush Pen to Eyedropper

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I wrote about the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen here. I suggested in the post that perhaps the pen could be converted to eye dropper fill rather than use the carts. I find that the pentel carts are pretty pricey, though it is awesome ink. They range from $2 for 2 ($2 per cart whoa!!!) to $ 11 for 6! (Jetpens has about the best price I could find.) Converting this pen to eye dropper amount to a massive savings. I found I went through a cart pretty quickly in regular sketching and using the black to fill in the background.

I loaded it up with some Omas New Gray. Which is a nice pale silvery gray that layers well, perfect for sketching. It is not a lightfast gray so it should stay in the journal and not on the wall. I’ve posted here about turning a pen like this into an eyedropper and this pen is no different. I used a blunt syringe to fill the barrel with juuust under 3ml of ink. That’s 3 carts of ink, in one fill. While I used a dye based ink I could fill it with a pigment based ink as it’s designed for that, which mean it’s even more awesome.

After letting the ink get to the brush I noticed that the ink flow is a little faster than with the Pentel ink. This could be because the Pentel ink has pigment or is thicker than the dye based ink. The Omas Gray ink has good flow even in a fountain pen. I’ll be trying out more inks once I run through this one. The other good thing is that I can fill my black pen up with Noodler’s Heart of Darkness once I run out of carts of black. (Scored 2 more with this pen.)

The best thing about turning this pen eye dropper? It’s simple. All you need is a little silicone grease from the plumbing section of home depot and an eye dropper or a blunt syringe. Money saved? Each fill will save you about $3 over using cartridges.

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Review: Pentel Arts Pocket Brush Pen

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I have been coveting a pocket brush pen for awhile. I have a brush pen but it has a incredibly long handle and is a pain because of that. I was comp shopping Michael’s when I came upon this pen. Imagine my horror when I got to the counter and found I’d left my 40% off coupon at home… I put the pen back and came back later. With my 40% off coupon I snagged this pen for a measly $10.83, which is less than I could find it online.

It’s sold on a blister pack like most other markers and pens are at Michael’s. Once out of the packaging its a nice looking shiny black pen. It’s comparable in size to most pens on the market. It’s very light weight even with the cartridge plugged into the pen. After wielding a TWSBI 540 for an extended writing session earlier in the day, this is like writing with a cloud. The pen is all black except for a Kanji character on the cap near the clip and the pentel name on the opposite side of the cap.

After installing the cartridge the ink descends into the brush rather quickly, the brush was fully loaded with 60 seconds of installing the cart. The tip is soft, flexible but springs to a point immediately after pressing it down fully. It is capable of giving a hair thin line or a swath of ink 5mm wide. The ink flow is generous and kept up with some very quick line work. The line variation is quite nice and relatively easy to control.

The ink in the cartridges is reported to be in water resistant. Something that I found interesting is that the back proclaims that the “fittings” are leak proof. This tells me that with some silicone grease this pen could EASILY be converted to eye dropper fill. For me, this is a VERY VERY interesting thing. In my testing I found that the ink is water resistant once dry on paper and when wet gives a very nice wash effect with a nice even gray tone. In effect you could take just this and a water brush sketching and you could do the sketch, allow it to dry, add more ink, add water and get a nice gray tone for your shadows. The ink is not water resistant on acrylic paint until it is FULLY dry. It writes without issue on acrylic, no skipping or beading up. It does take quite some time to dry on acrylic paint- to get to the fully dry point it needs a few minutes.

This pen is a very good price when 40% off but at full price at Michael’s I’m not sure. I’d rather put together a $25 order with Jetpens.

I'll probably do an update to this review once I run through the 2 carts that came with the pen and convert it to eyedropper style. (See update on eyedropper fill here.)

Reg $16.99 at Michael’s $14 at JetPens

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It Eats You Up

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One of the many things I’ve learned over time is that giving into anger for long periods of time isn’t helpful. It’s one thing to allow anger to burn through you, own it, and then allow yourself to work through the hurt that it is masking.

Last year taught me that my rage was fast burning but that the hurt that my slow burning anger was masking was the root of what needed to be dealt with.

Injustice should be rooted out and the snake oil sales people will pay for their actions, let karma be the bitch.

Promote What You Love

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The "Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate," images are rolling around twitter and facebook these days. While I agree, and I've seen first hand how powerful promoting something you love can be, both for you and the person; I think it's foolhardy to ignore what you hate entirely.

The story with the ostrich sticking it's head in the sand is a good one, bad things don't go away if you ignore it. The same for tryingto think only positive thoughts, you can't make bad things or depression go away by thinking it away. We aren't magnets and the world isn't fair and sometimes hard work doesn't pay off. Sometimes life sucks.

BUT I've learned that you can make things work for you if you spend some time and are honest with yourself on how you can take that bad situation and force it to work.

My matra will be "Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate; but keep a mindful eye out for the bad stuff."

Comfortable Shoes Studio

Musings about art and writing supplies.

Author Archives: leslie

More #DoNotPin Garbage

First Round: Ink Fade Testing (lightfast)

Review: Pilot Prera Medium Fountain Pen

Don’t Pin MY Stuff #donotpin

Another Cowboy

3 Step Sketches

Review: Update Pentel Pocket Brush Pen to Eyedropper

Review: Pentel Arts Pocket Brush Pen

It Eats You Up

Promote What You Love