Touching grass and drawing trees

I've avoided dabbling in ink drawing without drafting with a pencil underneath because the thought of putting ink on the page without a plan fills me with irrational dread, but that changes now! (The avoidance is changing. No guarantees on the irrational dread.) This is also my first time doing plein air drawing, so there's excitement all around.

I hate pretty much every fineliner I've ever tried, so I decided to give fountain pen drawing a try. I went shopping through the pens I already have because I had no desire to buy a designated "art pen" just for an experiment.

I tested the three finest pens/nibs that I have: the Platinum 3776 soft fine, the Platinum steel fine (available in all of their sub-$100 pens), and the Sailor Compass 1911 medium fine. I ended up going with the Sailor Compass because it runs quite dry and puts down a pretty thin line. (Funny enough, these are reasons why I hate writing with it, so I'm actually relieved I've found a use for it!)

The Platinum pens also did a good job. There was no way I was going to use the 3776 as an outdoor pen because it's way too expensive, but I tried it out for the sake of it and it was amazing. On the other hand, I would happily take the $5 Preppy out if I didn't have the Compass, which draws just a hair finer. If you don't have either, I would 100% recommend buying the Preppy for price and general performance reasons.

Fountain pens are smooth and satisfying in a way that fineliners and other pens aren't. I could just get ink on the page without fighting with the pen! Amazing! The Compass was very pleasant to use and didn't even skip like it sometimes does in writing.

Drawing trees has always been a sore spot for me. I find it difficult to partition the tree into basic shapes (and this is a problem for a lot of things since I view images so literally), so I'll be focusing on that as I do more drawings.

I also learned that the standard Traveler's notebook is a pretty bad size for plein air drawing. It's fine if you've got a table, but it's awkward to rest in your lap otherwise. I plan on moving into my passport size notebook once I get some sketchbooks bound, so that should help with portability.