Just experimenting really. Christine is doing a calligraphy course and showed me a technique whereby one scrapes pastels with a knife onto paper and then smudges the shavings with one’s fingers or a cloth to create an interesting background. So I did that and then I thought about the effect of white pastel on black, and the moon’s reflection and so on. And I did a better snowman, again with pastels. Here’s some of the results:

Pastels (and pencil/graphite) go on smudging for ever, so to fix them one needs to resort to this:

Another familiar smell from my childhood!

Along with my 18 fountain pens I have about 12 different inks, so I’ve been playing with them too. Well, two of them anyway. It’s not quite finished, as you can see. The knotwork needs some outlines. Thinking of gold for that because the blue-black is so dark. If I can find another poem the right length, I’ll give this one the Cloths of Heaven treatment.

Flat.