Month: July 2026

A little diversion about sketching.

~ rupertarzeian ~ 9 Comments

This blog has typically been about fountain pens, as the name suggests. The subject matter has been about whatever pen or related topic happens to be occupying my mind at the time. In this way I have shared my enthusiasm on the subject of fountain pens, which continues to be a major hobby for me.

Over the last year or so, my old hobby of watercolour sketching has blossomed again unexpectedly. This was a pastime that I had dipped into only sporadically, whilst my working life took up much of my time and energy. Since retiring from work, I have rediscovered the simple joy of drawing and painting. fuelled by the online community of enthusiasts and the ease of finding encouragement, tips and inspiration online.

My fountain pen hobby came with a good dose of Gear Acquisition Syndrome! Whilst this has mostly subsided, I now find the symptoms spilling over into the realm of art supplies. I have a weakness for nice sets of watercolour half pans, especially if the word “travel” is included in the name.

During the past year or so, I have been fortunate to attend many orchestral concerts, and a few final rehearsals, particularly at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank. As well as enjoying the music, there is the spectacle and I began to draw a few of the musicians from photographs taken before or after the performances. Violins and cellos are a fun challenge to draw.

A cellist at an open rehearsal.

And then this summer, I decided to bring a sketch book and some watercolours on holiday. This was not the first time I have done so, but it was the first time that I actually used them daily. This soon became a habit and I liked to do at least one picture a day.

Pogerola, Italy on the Amalfi Coast.

One principle which helped me is that in sketching, you are not trying to create a masterpiece. It does not have to be “good.” You are creating something, purely for your own practice, relaxation, enjoyment and satisfaction. The same might go for playing a musical instrument at home. That being the case, it is fine to make mistakes. Indeed mistakes are inevitable but I have taken the advice, to not mind making them. If I try to correct something, it often makes it more obvious. Keeping the work, with the mistake, serves as a reminder as to what went wrong and helps you to improve.

Kruje, Albania. A view from a restaurant.

I make no claim to be proficient enough to teach anyone how to approach travel sketching. I can only share my own experience and say what works for me. There are plenty of others who offer tutorial videos online. I enjoy @tobysketchloose on YouTube, for example. From watching these I gained a better understanding of perspective. I also picked up a couple of alternative techniques for making a picture, such as (1) breaking a complex scene into simple shapes: a row of buildings with intersecting roof lines can be simplified into a series of adjoining rectangles, squares, triangles and so on, from which you move from one to the next. Alternatively, (2) quickly map out the outline of the entire scene using a pen and ink, without lifting the pen off the paper. You then have the whole composition outlined within a couple of minutes.

A bride-to-be at a summer’s outdoor wedding.

The point is, sketching does not have to be complicated. We are just trying to capture an image, for our own records or to show someone else what we saw. It can become daunting to think of all the related topics, such as composition, perspective, proportion, architecture, anatomy, materials and how to use them, use of light and shade, texture, and colour mixing. This can easily become off-putting and deter us from ever starting. But I found it liberating to not worry about mistakes and to enjoy painting with a simple aim of amusing myself, improving with practice and having the satisfaction of creating something to be a bit proud of.

I do feel that I have progressed, when looking back at sketches that I made a year ago. Another nice thing about it is that you look at things with new eyes. Visiting a quiet church while on holiday, for example, you may sit down for a while and try to sketch a dome, or an interesting intersection of walls and roof details.

A London street scene.

Here is another thing: even when you are not sketching, (for example, whilst waiting for a bus, or held at a red light on the road) you may look at the scenery and imagine how you might sketch it. You may improve your technique even without picking up a paint brush!

I also find sketching to be nicely absorbing and therefore relaxing. Unlike reading a book or watching a film (where we are consumers), in drawing and painting we become creators, which is cool and must be a good thing.

Ballet dancers, inspired by attending Swan Lake twice in a week.

As for materials, the kit that I took on holiday recently consisted of an A5 sketch book, with 160 pages of plain paper of 140gsm from Talens, Art Creation (sold in TK Maxx), and a pocket set of 12 half pans of Aquafine watercolours, from Daler Rowney (which are student grade, not artist quality). I brought a collapsible cup for water although in practice I used this only in our accommodation. Whilst outdoors, I used water brushes from Derwent. It was the first time I had tried the water brushes and I found them very convenient and better than expected.

This set up was deliberately compact, lightweight and inexpensive. I found the paper quality to be pleasant enough to use and I did not want to have an expensive book or block of top quality paper that might make me afraid of messing it up. Occasionally, where I have later wanted to have a picture on better quality paper, I have treated the sketch book version as a practice and then made the picture again – hopefully with tweaks here and there to avoid the same mistakes.

My old school boarding house, drawn today from a photograph, with a light grey 0.1mm Uni Pin fineliner.

So, how to get started and what to sketch? My sketch book contains mostly people, buildings and landscapes. It is not helpful to say “sketch anything!” but there is really no limit. A picture can be made, ideally, from life but failing that, from a photograph or even from memory. If drawing on location, I find it helpful to take a photograph too, and perhaps to add the colour later. I would suggest that you may paint anything that you find interesting or attractive or a bit challenging. And not to be disheartened if it does not turn out as hoped. You can always start a new page or try something else tomorrow. To borrow a marketing slogan, “Just do it.”

Travelling with ink, June 2026: Part II, Italy.

~ rupertarzeian ~ 13 Comments

Following on immediately from our time in Albania, we flew to Naples to take a two hour ferry ride to Amalfi.

From Amalfi’s harbour, the owner of our accommodation had kindly arranged for us to be picked up with our luggage and taken to the apartment, which was actually in Pogerola, a pretty town up in the hills above Amalfi and about a 20 minutes drive. I was to discover from the bus drivers that it is pronounced “Po-jero-la” (and not as I had been saying it, like Motorola).

The views from our apartment were breath-taking. A terrace looked down over the tower of the local church, with views of the sea beyond and also across the valley with terraces of lemon groves, to the neighbouring town of Pontone, of white buildings nestling on the steep hillside and a ridge of mountain tops beyond. It was a scene that I sketched a few times.

View over Pogerola, from our accommodation.
A sketch from our terrace.

Amalfi turned out to be a convenient base from which to visit other towns along the Amalfi Coast, in each direction, since there are excellent links by ferry and bus. We had seven nights there and began each day with a very scenic local bus ride down to Amalfi. As well as exploring Amalfi itself, we made trips to Capri, and Positano to the west, and Pontone, Atrani, Ravello, Minori and Maiori to the east.

It was wonderful to see all these places although in June, Capri and Positano were already very crowded with tourists like ourselves. It was much more peaceful at Minori, just a short bus ride from Amalfi and we went there a few times to escape the crowds.

This sketch of the Basilica di S.Trofimena, in Minori was a bit too ambitious for me.

As regards fountain pen shops, I found very few on my travels, even though several of the place names – Furore, Positano and Maiori. were familiar from the models, brands or colours of Italian fountain pens long before I visited the towns. There were countless shops for tourists, but (unlike in Rome), fountain pen shops were elusive.

With Ling at Positano.

Amalfi has a very long history of being famous for its high quality hand-made paper. At the top end of the shopping street, we found the Amalfi Paper Museum (Museo della Carta) which is well worth a visit. Once there I would recommend joining the short guided tour to see the ancient machinery in operation and learn the processes used in paper making. This was carried out there and at similar mills, from the 13th century, right up until the 1960’s. Particularly impressive are the rows of huge wooden hammers like wooden crosses laid on their sides, which were operated by a cam shaft, driven by a water wheel. These were used to beat the cotton rags into pulp. Seeing just one hammer in operation, the noise was loud but a row of such hammers all beating for hours, must have been deafening.

The wooden hammers, at the paper museum, Amalfi.

Samples of paper types were available to buy in the gift shop, whether for writing or for water colours. There were dip pen and ink sets and just a few nondescript fountain pens but paper was the story here, not pens.

As well as using my fountain pens every day for holiday journaling, I also pursued my newfound hobby of travel sketching. Sitting with a sketch book certainly added to the enjoyment of this trip, introducing breaks from constant walking, some extended observation and creativity and a pleasing sense of achievement (mostly)!

A freshly completed watercolour sketch of St Mary Magdalene Penitente church at Atrani.

I was to have one bit of extraordinary good luck in my seemingly fruitless fountain pen quests. At the hill-top town of Ravello, (where we visited the gardens of the Villa Cimbrone and Villa Rufolo) I was wandering the attractive lanes of shops and found a Tabacchi. I always check the shelves for stationery in the hope that there might be some uncommon fountain pens for school supplies. But on this occasion I saw in a glass cabinet, a pair of open Waterman boxes. In one was a marbled green fountain pen, with gold coloured fittings. A sticker in the lid read “pennino oro massiccio 18kt.” The sales lady got out the pen for me. The pen was priced at 30 euros. I was not familiar with the model but given the price I assumed that the 18kt must refer to gold plating. It was fitted with a converter, included a pen pouch and one cartridge of ink, which was about four fifths evaporated. She did not sell Waterman cartridges but when I came to pay for the pen, she had reduced the price to 25 euros as the cartridge was nearly empty.

Found one! A NOS Waterman Preface at a tobacconist in Ravello.

Some internet searches soon revealed that the pen is a Waterman Preface, a model from around 1995 – 1998 and that the nib is indeed solid gold! This was a New Old Stock (NOS) pen. I felt incredibly fortunate. I inserted the included cartridge and managed to get nine and a half pages from it in my Leuchtturm notebook before it ran out. The other Waterman pen in her cabinet was a NOS Phileas, in black but was a rollerball or ball pen, also at just 30 euros but which I let pass, not wishing to test my wife’s tolerance further. It might still be there now.

Ling enjoying a much photographed viewpoint at Villa Rufolo, Ravella.

This, together with our Albania holiday in the first leg of this trip (described in my previous post here) was a wonderful time of seeing new places, travelling around by ferry and buses, enjoying meals out and in our self-catering accommodation and usually a swim in the sea to cool off each day. I enjoyed my sketching, and on a couple of occasions, attracted attention from passers by who even stopped to talk and asked to photograph my picture! Going home with a NOS Waterman was the icing on the cake.

Blending in with the locals.