Well 2023 is behind us and rather than do the usual thing people do and denounce everything that happened in that year as being a load of junk and never to be thought of again, I’m gonna reflect positively on the artistic journey I took.
2023 was a big year. It was the first time since Covid I managed to travel overseas again for an Ayreon show. I turned my trip to The Netherlands into a six week sojourn that took me completely around the world one full-circuit, stopping in The Netherlands, The UK and The United States. It was an absolute BLAST! I met a bunch of people I’ve known for years and never seen face-to-face and made some amazing new friends. What a year!
Twitch Productivity and Tools
So if you’ve been catching my Twitch streams over the last year you would have noticed the little black Moleskine notebook I’ve been drawing in a lot. Well I started that last year with the aim to finish it in the same year and by gosh did we do it! I filmed a little time-lapse going through each of the pages which you can check out on my TikTok, Youtube or Instagram pages! To save you looking for it though, here it is –
It was a great little book to sketch in over the course of the year. It was almost exclusively drawn in using Tombow Fudenosuke brush pens which have quickly become my go to pen for all of my traditional artwork in this style. They are just so absolutely wonderful to work with. Drawing is smooth, the nibs are very robust and wear gently with use which gives a nice slow development to the line variance you can get with them. They come in two varieties, a blue barrelled pen which is firmer and finer, and a black barrelled pen which is softer and broader.
I will swap between the two as I work depending on if I need finer lines or bolder strokes. As I mentioned they do wear and soften so your line weights may change over the life of the pen, but I enjoy the variance that this gives. They are a very solid brush nib though and do take some punishment.
Get some Links!
Want to pick some pens up to try out? Grab ’em at Amazon through my affiliate links below!
USA – https://amzn.to/48H9o2p
CAN – https://amzn.to/3tF0DXI
UK – https://amzn.to/3tGTrdB (strangely hard to get on Amazon in the UK)
AUS – https://amzn.to/3S0tuz4
GER – https://amzn.to/4aApYCR (broad) https://amzn.to/3tCJHB0 (fine)
The notebook I used this year was a plain soft cover Moleskine notebook. I enjoyed working in it. It folds open flat enough that the spine doesn’t get in the way and the paper doesn’t bleed through 100 pages when using the brush pens. It will bleed to the other side, so I only worked on one side of each page opening, but the next page was always unmarked.
You can pick one up here if you’d like to check it out –
USA – https://amzn.to/48fAnlN
CAN – https://amzn.to/3RM04n2
UK – https://amzn.to/4aDSOlM
AUS – https://amzn.to/3vdymry
GER – https://amzn.to/3RF8FrD
And so we head on into 2024 with a new book, new art, same old Salt.
I was really glad to spend a lot of 2023 with you in your streams (friendbesto_corey). Really happy I found your channel and your art. I hope you have a great 2024!