Accidental Castles (Experiments with distressed paper and drawing ink.)

These are really almost doodles. The first drawing in brown ink was a doodle I did after walking up from hospital to the top of Clifton. The buildings sprouting out of the walls and hillsides was the inspiration. Except, of course they didn't really much look like this. It was also an experiment with distressed paper (Stained with tea leaves and old tea bags.) and then drawn on using a dip pen and W+N coloured drawing ink.

I don't usually put my name on these things, but I got bored drawing all the little lines so the box cut down the work a bit. (I tried to count them, about 2500...)

This was the second drawing. Now I'm just making it up. This was a dip pen with W+N Blue drawing ink. The original showed stains from the other side where I used too much fixative (See post) and soaked through. Much to my surprise the blue dip pen ink bleed lots.

The bottom one is the last one I did this morning. Still experimenting, this time fountain pen ink - the luminous blues - and Intense water colour pencil, the darker blues. Did mean to colour some other bits in, but haven't so far. I'll post them if I do. Probably I'll add colour and further distressing digitally. Also considering drawing in black ink and then doing the colours completely on the computer. Will give me more control.

Do you think the blue or the brown works better on the distressed paper? Do add a comment. Also, if anyone knows better ways of distressing paper I'd like to know.