Another Day, Another Cat

Early evening, and Peat the cat is perched, dozing, on the back of the sofa in a slightly precarious position. I thought I’d squeeze in a quick drawing – it soon turned into an ink sketch. It took under 10 minutes. I found it very refreshing to work so fast, without analysing every step.

I used Indian ink, this time in my medium-weight cartridge sketchbook. I knew the paper wouldn’t take much water, so I didn’t work wet-in-wet at all. The lighter areas were done with a fairly dry brush, and then added to for grey tones using a little diluted ink on the brush. Initially the large dark areas were rather streaky, as the brush I used was too small for the matte effect I wanted, so once it had dried I went back over these areas with a larger brush – that did the trick. The page is slightly bowed as a result, but I can live with that.

It’s delightful to be able to make really black blacks so fast with the ink, such satisfying depth after many years of being addicted to graphite. Even 6B can’t compete.