A Day at the Beach and Whitelines Paper

Why does a day at the beach go so quickly? It felt good to kick back and record the day :)

On the technical side...
I made this journal entry in a new journal by WHITELINES. This is a Swedish company that makes a toned paper using white for lines. They also offer paper with grids (squared), isometric lined notepads and perspective lined notepads. There are many choices of binding: hard covered spiral, soft covered flexible and glued pads.

The paper has a nice feel. I estimate it to be about 24# in weight. I've been using Pentel energel and Signo uniball ballpoint pens on it and have experienced no smudging. The ink in these pens is water soluble. Micron pens remain waterproof on it's surface.

I used watercolor pencils on the page above with minimal water using a Niji waterbrush. The paper did buckle but, that was no surprise. I think colored pencils would really work well on this surface, perhaps even pan pastels. When you turn the page over you can see a little bleed through, but not nearly as much as you do with Moleskine's regular journal paper.
WHITELINES claims that when pages are copied or scanned the white lines and toned background will disappear.

Click to enlarge

As you can see above, that was not the case when I scanned the page at my scanners normal settings. I had to lighten the overall exposure of the original scan, lost some subtle tones, but the page on the right is a lot cleaner looking.

I do like how the ink really stands out on the paper. And the toned surface is easier on your eyes versus looking at dark lines on a white surface. I liked working on a paper with grids. My type lines remained square to the page :)

Beach birds and other things - Mary Richmond

We've been having a lot of fog but as everyone prepares for the onslaught of tourists this holiday weekend on Cape Cod it was fun heading down by the docks and continuing on to one of the beaches on Nantucket Sound. It was totally socked in by fog and I could barely see a hundred feet in front of me. Birds loomed out of the mist like shadows against the sand as the waves whispered and washed the shore.

I often carry my sketchbook on my walks and just stop and draw as I go. These are a few of the birds I saw along the beach. I didn't have my camera with me so took the pictures of the sketches when I got home.

One of my favorite beach flowers is the lovely beach pea and it has just come into bloom over the last few days. I sat in sand at the end of the sand spit drawing these while listening to boats I couldn't see pass through the channel. Perfect way to spend a morning.