With me, it is either frenzied activity or nothing. Lately it's been more of a dry spell art wise. I never have time. I take my sketchbook with me on my frequent trips but rarely draw anything. I'm to busy or to tired.

Before my trip to Florida I found a partially used hunk of bristle board. I cut it up into usable squares, mostly small in size with a few larger pieces. Nothing larger than 8" x 11" mind you. I brought it with me to Florida.

Peter had mentioned I should try a quill and ink instead of the standard pens I've been using. I was going to be in Florida for a while so I went and found them. Oh, and apparently there are no artists on the Atlantic coast because I had to drive 45 friggin miles to find any art supply store at all!

Anyway, so I started playing with the quill. WOW, I really love it! Now I've never really worked with one before and it is different from the ballpoint pens I normally use. I have more control and the ink flows better but I haven't really mastered it yet. Practice makes perfect so practice I had.

When I finally left Florida, I had completed 8 drawings with the pens and inks I had. This drawing was the last of that set. You'll see the others soon. This is another one of those crazy idea that I had to try types.

I don't know what made me think of it. One of the inspectors has tattoos and one of them was a dragon. That was running in the back of my mind. I saw a show that had an oriental woman on it. I had the purple ink out. So I drew the dragon outline first. Then it all came to me. I wanted a tattoo that was part of the woman. Yes, it's been done to death by others but I've never done it. I really enjoyed creating the scales.

Now I still don't have the control I'd like with the quill so when I drew the woman, she didn't exactly come out like I had hoped. I really HATE her hand! The solid area in the circle that frames her head isn't smooth as I had hoped. There are other little flaws I'm not thrilled with too. What are you going to do? It's ink. Once it's down, you can't really fix it if you mess up. No matter, this is all just practice anyway. I'm going to get out my camera, photograph Connie in this pose and practice drawing her with pencil first so I can lay it down on the bristle board in ink later. Yes, another future project to put off. Well, until I retire anyway, and that's only a short year or so from now!