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A flat lay of my tools. What’s missing is my sketchbook, where I play and experiment. I explain these items more fully below.
Twig Pens & Postcards is my first venture into traditional media. Lacking formal art training, the learning has been steep, but also enthralling. This dissection partly serves as a reflection for myself, and also as an explanation for those of us who are curious about my process.
Influences
My practice is grounded by the works of Chng Kiah Kiean and Melanie Chadwick.
Based in Penang, Kiah Kiean (or KK) is a celebrated urban sketcher known for using twig pens in his creations. His loose yet expressive style of twig pen(s) and chinese ink captured my attention and imagination. KK’s work is the gateway to this journey.
In my meanderings, I subsequently stumbled upon Melanie Chadwick’s gorgeous plein air takes of coastal Cornwall. Likewise, I was taken by her (seemingly) effortless and fun approach to rendering breathtaking landscapes in watercolour, pastels and colour pencils.
This led me to wonder: what if I combined KK’s twig pen with Melanie’s mixed media techniques? The aesthetic of Twig Pens & Postcards was thus born.
Twig Pens
Every artwork in this series begins with a twig pen. It’s my only tool for sketching the outlines. When I’d first started in early 2024, I simply used fallen branches that I found, and carved them into a point.