I was driving home and I saw a pelican sitting on top of a lightpost. It is generally a common sight but for some reason today, I just felt like drawing it in my Hobonichi Techo. Interestingly enough, I had not written about the 52gsm Tomoegawa paper, but while there was some warping with the watercolours on the reverse side, it failed to bleed through – which is a very, very good thing! This was a 5 minute sketch with watercolour. It’s good to be back!

10th May comes and on rolls on Mother’s Day in Australia. This is going to be a sweet one of course .. the down side is that I will not be able to see my mother. She’s been there when I have been filial, when I’ve been a bitch, when I have cried and when I have let out my deepest laughs. She understands me and she is me. In many ways, I am her. So as the day rolls on, I’ll be Facetiming her to let her know how much she means to me.

I made my mother a gift, but it was for Christmas just past. She has it in her house so I will post a pic of it here to brighten your day. Please don’t laugh. This is my first attempt at it.

This is one of my favourite songs. For you, mum

Oh my goodness, how could I have forgotten about my sketch at McCarran Airport as we were about to depart the frenzied New Years of Las Vegas.

It was probably about a few days after New Years. The hum of Vegas had died down to literally a trickle. The carnivale type celebrations of New Years appear to be a distant dream as we set forth to the airport.

This was a really interesting trip for me – I had never ever seen pokie machines at an airport before (only in a casino in Perth because everything else interstate as replaced with mind numbingly boring slot machines).

Anyway, our first flight of the day was delayed by 3 hours – surprise surprise at a US airport. I tell you that was the most stressful experience ever because we had 5 minutes of transit to hop on a connecting at LAX bound for Hawai’i. Then after all that travel, they left my bag in Vegas. Hilarious – not. Had to stand around for an hour for the privilege but you get that with international travel Except it was internal travel. Hotel was in Waikiki so goodness know how I am going to get my clothes.

In a complete twist of efficiency, my bag arrived about 3 hours later from LAX. At 4am in the morning. Screw that. Sleeping in the nud.

I am just amazed my the resilience of Tomoe River paper. I first thought I would give the Hobonichi Techo a try since I have read amazing reviews about the ability of this paper to hold fountain pen ink AND watercolours as well without the usual bleed through the other side.

I receive this fountain pen ink from a good friend of mine for my birthday and I just love the way the ink flows on the paper. I bought two different types of paper – the 68gsm and 52gsm.

The above is a sample of the 68gsm and of course, my personal thoughts so it’s a little bit more pixellated than the date.

Here is the back the back of the 68gsm paper. It’s amazing.

As you can see, the back part of the inkwell that I drew is written over in fountain pen ink (and the bit I left as it was).

I’ll need to do the same test for my 52gsm paper.

So far .. I’m liking what I see.

What I have done is located my pocket Domino (“my Dom”) – I nearly had a heart attack at the thought of having thrown it out. So let’s talk about Dom.

Back around 2005, when I was working for larger accounting firms, I thought it would be a great idea to be organised manually. Most of everything was organised through my Outlook calendar and the thought of having another separate online calendar had not crossed my mind. After all, I spent most of my waking hours at work, and there wasn’t much else going on at the time outside of work. I am digressing, I know.

So enter the Dom. 14 years later, he’s a little bit worse for wear around the pen loops, with the suede having come apart and started flaking something chronic. I was inspired by Kent from Oz’s 2013 video on how to make a basic pen loop. He hasn’t posted in awhile but his videos on YouTube channel are more active than his blog.

My next step was to make it. Easy peasy. Here you find my stuff against the backdrop of my Finn as I made a pen loop for that too.

Dom now comes with me to client meetings – where I would like something small and compact for note taking, yet does the job. I used to bring Finn with me, but he was a bit too clunky to carry about so he can sit on my desk nice and comfy. The hard leather exterior on the outside of Dom means that he is less likely to get scratched and scuffed in my handbag, which let’s face it – there’s bound to be something like keys that will go to town on the surface.

To you, Dom. You are a true workhorse.