Jovian Fruits

Some day I'm going to get back to working in colour: LEMON YELLOW, ORANGE and the RUSSETT of Braeburn apples. For the moment though, now that the daylight has gone, this pen and ink drawing is going to have to do.

I've been reading my Sky at Night magazine and these fruits remind me of Jovian and Saturnian moons, which come in a surprising variety: wrinkled, smooth, pitted and pockmarked, even, in the case of Io, pizza-like.

Christmas Lines

I'm writing the Christmas greetings in our cards this year. I could have printed them all in minutes but it's good to settle down with a calligraphy fountain pen, filled with green ink cartridges, and write them. It's an opportunity to practice a rather decorative form of calligraphy. I always make the lettering in my published sketchbooks as legible as I can so here's a chance to add a bit of a flourish.

I never seem to do one which is totally perfect, but I prefer the freedom of the hand-lettering to the printed equivalent in Viners Hand or Lucinda Handwriting.

In my school days, a punishment used to be to write out 100 lines, things like 'I must not talk in class . . .'. Me, naughty at school?! Hard to believe but I must have been given lines on a number of occasions because that analogy of just writing for fun (although it wasn't meant to be fun, just a mindless task) came back to me as I went through the pile of cards.

Richard's Line-writing Dodge

Once, when I was given lines to do, I had the idea of saving time by ruling a line down the entire page for all the 'l's and so on. Must have looked a real mess when it was finished and it probably took longer than simply writing it.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk