What's your favorite way to work?

This is one of mine...of course, OUT there, on the spot, is my first love.  I was sitting on a bench by Lake Taneycomo, where I've camped a number of times when I wore a younger woman's clothes...

My favorite Noodler's Creaper pen and Lexington Gray ink let me sketch in the details, as much or as little as I like...

...and then I just splashed in the color, loosely.  I use that a lot, because it keeps me from getting too niggly with details.  This is a very comfortable technique for me.  I often just jump right in with ink, when it's a subject like this, with no pencil underdrawing.

 When my subject is more complex--like architecture!--I'll sometimes do some light graphite guidelines and THEN ink, as I did here.  This was the little Depression-era cabin we stayed in for our anniversary, also at Bennett Springs.  It's a charmer!  (You can see the center fold of my journal right on the leading corner of the building.)

I used a similar technique here, but decided to only color the little building and a bit of background at Bennett Spring State Park where Joseph was fishing.  This was done with a bent-nib Hero calligraphy pen, which makes wonderful brush-like marks, and no pencil underdrawing.

and for this one, I switched to my beloved vintage Sheaffer--probably of an age with the building, come to think of it!--and lost myself in the shapes and textures.  I decided to leave it as it was, with no color...ink can suggest a kind of luminosity all by itself.

All three of the pens used here are fountain pens, so I always carry a tiny vial of ink with me!  It's the same ink, too, which can look gray or black depending on which pen I'm using.

As you can probably tell, for once there was no hurry, no need for quick sketching as I teach in some of my mini-classes, and so I sketched till my fingers smoked!

More of my Bennett Spring sketches, old and new, in my Flickr set, HERE.


So what's YOUR most comfortable way to work?