Home Grown
It’s very satisfying to grow your own tomatoes. Not just cherry or grape tomatoes, which are fine, but full-sized Brandywines or beefsteaks. While other gardeners have been harvesting their tomatoes for a few weeks, my late-maturing heirlooms are just beginning to ripen. And I suppose that’s good. The slow yield has given me one or two to eat and more on the vine to paint.
This page is a bit of an experiment. I recently bought a new fountain pen—a Lamy Safari—and I tested it with a deep blue-gray waterproof ink from De Atramentis called Fog Gray. The extra-fine pen nib is still much, much thicker than my go-to Micron 02 pen. Although I loved the smooth line, I’m not quite used to the bolder stroke. I found it hard to get much subtlety, especially when shading, which I tend to add in ink before beginning the watercolor. I look forward to more testing!
Drawn In 
I love this page, a lot!
Thanks Jude!
Beautiful, I love the red-green tomatoe!! I know what you mean about the Lamy, I tend to use it when I am drawing on larger paper, because of line thickness. But I do enjoy it. I’ll have to find waterproof ink, though….
I like your thought on using it on larger paper. I think I just need to adjust to it, get to know what it does well, and then decide when to use it. The Fog Gray ink was a sample, but I don’t think I’ll buy it. I have found Calli ink (label says: “non clogging, pigmented waterproof calligraphy ink”) to be good. And I’m hearing a lot about the De Atramentis document based inks being waterproof.
I like the ink color and the tomatoes look delicious!
Thanks Carole. I enjoyed the red-green combination.
This is lovely!
Thanks!
These tomatoes are so realistic! The one in the middle jumped off the page. Once again, I’m so impressed. Thank you for sharing!
Glad you like t! I wanted the tomatoes to be pretty realistic and the leaves to be more impressionistic.
Welcome to the world Lamy! I have two that I use all the time.
These tomatoes look delicious – right off the page.
Hmmm…yes, the Lamy is so smooth and easy to write with. Glad to know you like yours!
This looks great! Love it all.
Thanks Brad! I always appreciate your perspective.
This spread really shows the juicy loveliness of the tomatoes – you should be pleased with your growing skills as well as your illustration ones
Thanks Alison!