Why snails?
Why not? I like them and the more I learned about them, the more interested I’ve become.
In recent months, I explored more of one of my other interests: ink line and wash. I tried out various papers, drew with a dip pen, and painted with ink and and water. I’ll keep trying some others. I liked the Pentallic Paper for Pens because the line is very crisp, and I liked the delicate wash. However, too many washes made the paper ripple, which isn’t obtrusive when looking at the actual drawing/painting, but the ripples were enhanced when I scanned them. Cleaning up the image and removing the ripples took some extra time so I’m on a hunt for something that will allow for crisp lines with a metal dip pen, and beautiful varied washes.
Things I might try:
- stretching the paper by wetting it and taping it down with brown tape usually used for watercolor
- wetting the paper and “stretching” it by letting it dry on plexiglass
- try out additional papers (so far I’ve also tried Stonehenge Aqua Hot Press, Strathmore 400 Series Bristol Smooth, Strathmore 400 Series Mixed Media, Strathmore 400 Series Marker Paper, Fabriano Artistico 140lb, Arches Hot Press 140 lb, Arches Hot Press 300lb, and Pentallic Paper for Pens). Each one had something I liked and something I didn’t.
I think my ideal paper for this might be: no feathering or bleeding, a relatively “cool” white (I’d like to understand more how that’s done), and minimal effort to use it (no stretching). But I’ll have to experiment and see how much time stretching might take. Who knows, it might be super easy but past experience tells me I might need to wait at least 24 hours to use a stretched piece of paper so it’s dry.
We shall see 🙂
I wrote more about my ink and paper explorations on my Patreon in June, 2025.
Check out these nifty snail resources!
“The History of the World in Seven Snails” on the Smithsonian Magazine website.
“Young Naturalists, Tiny Travelers”, 2016 on the DNR website. Check out the link “Download full story (PDF)” https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mcvmagazine/issues/2016/sep-oct/terrestrial-snails.html
The PDF about “minute land snails” on this MN DNR web page is pretty nifty just to see what kind of images were captured with an electron microscope.
And I learned a bunch of interesting things about snails, their history and history with humans, their biology, snails in art and medieval medicine from this book that I discovered through the Library. “Snail”, by Peter R. Williams, London: Reaktion Books, 2009.