Images and Leaks

"I just want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares."
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It's time for some more tangled stock images from GraphicStock. If you missed my first post about them, you can read it here. Some bright colored pencils before I got my hands on them...

And here they are after...

I love bright colors, which is what attracted me to this image in the first place. And I love the contrast against the black tangling. The next one I worked on is a bit different. 

First I tangled inside the bird. I don't know how well you can see it in the picture below, but I added some Printemp swirls above the bird. I thought I was using a white gelly roll pen, but it turns out it was a souffle pen. That means that it puffs out from the page a little, but the color is very subtle. 

I thought it needed something else... something to ground it, if that makes any sense. So I decided to make a border. Unfortunately, based on how the paper had been cut, it either needed to be a really skinny border, or one that went off the page. Since I often like when part of an image is drawn so it's partly off the page, I decided to go with that. 

I wanted it to stand out a little more, so I picked up a Micron 02 to work with instead of my usual 01. I had not gotten too far on the border when I realized that the pen was leaking all over my hand. Luckily, amazingly, it stayed on my hand and didn't get on the paper. More about the pen in a minute.  I guess the border going off the page looks okay. After some shading and white highlights I was finished.

Now, back to that leaky pen. Did you know that the microns can leak if they are shaken up? It sometimes happens during shipping, from the package being thrown around (the mail/UPS people are probably about as gentle as the luggage handlers at an airport!) But they can also start to leak if YOU shake them. If you're the kind of person who talks with your hands, you should make sure you're not holding a Micron when you talk. Here's what my pen looked like.

But did you also know they can be cleaned and almost always be perfectly fine to use again? Wash off all the ink on the pen, then rinse out the inside of the cap. Use a q-tip to wipe around inside the cap, rinse again, and keep doing that until the q-tip comes out clean. If you don't clean out the cap and just put it back on the pen, it will get all inky again. I've saved a few pens by following these steps. 

Here's hoping that you don't have to clean a leaky pen too often!