Morning Page 9/23

September 23, 2025

For yesterday’s Morning Page I wanted to talk about the pens I was using, but I didn’t get around to it so I drew them today. I really am a pen addict. I love drawing with ink pens, and I like to have the right pen for the right purpose when I need it. Which makes traveling especially tricky, like for my upcoming trip. I can’t take them all with me, but I want to make sure I take what I’ll need. Hmmm.

As for yesterday, I used a Micron 01, Zig Clean Color brushes for the header colors (a new-to-me pen I absolutely love for their paintbrush like tips), and both sizes of my favorite waterproof black pens: Uni-ball vision. Uni-ball visions are super black, super juicy gel pens that take a little time to dry or they smear, but they absolutely don’t move when they are dry.

The two tip sizes really give a lot of choice in line weight, although I think they are mis-named size-wise. Size “micron” should be “fine” because it is a very fine line, like what would be an .01, and size “fine” is not so fine—it makes a thicker line more like an .08! I laid in all the solid black shapes yesterday with this thicker pen without a problem.

Anyway, I think I’m writing right now as if for an audience, but this is my digital journal and here at least in the beginning of this project, there is NO audience except myself! What’s happening now that I think about it is that I would like to write a post someday sharing everything I know about pens--because I do know a lot about ink pens these days, the different brands out there and how the different types perform for what purposes—but note to self: this is not that post.

Anyway, it took me 38:25 minutes to create this page. I used the stopwatch to time the session because on my trip I can only give myself 20 minutes on mornings to complete a morning page. Today and most days I take much longer than that.

My problem with time—and it happened yesterday too—is that I get really involved in the details of what I am creating. Like today, I could have drawn quick contour drawings of the three pens at a larger scale and called it a day…but no, I wanted to capture the colors of each pen and then I needed to re-compose the page beyond just those three pens to include that quote from my reading this morning (which I think so captures in the utter lunacy of our social media times in just one sentence)…and I. Must. Get. It. All. In.

That’s a problem when time is short. It will be a good practice to force myself to take less time and settle for less detail…and maybe the drawings will be even better. We will see.