This one has a story…
My painting lapsed for a while and I was looking at my stock of material one day and noticed that a certain color of red was getting low. It was made by a company called Pelikan in Germany.
It was this red that I depended on when I painted my subject’s lips. It was thin and transparent but you could do really nice effects with it. It was not a color I would want to run out of.
I started looking around to try to stock up on it and found out, even on the internet, I could not find it. Pelikan ink, yes. That particular color, no.
Luckily, I knew a German girl, Maren Kohlstock, who was just about to embark on a visit to her home in Germany. I soaked a label off one of my remaining bottles and asked her to pick me up ten or a dozen bottles of this color if she could find it.
It was a common brand back there and she came back with the ink and the receipt for around 72 Euros for the trove.
I paid it and made this for her. The signature has been cropped out. This was done on a small piece of white illustration board with no airbrushing. I kinda like it.
I don’t really know if she did.
She moved back to Germany and I don’t know if she took it with her or not.
I cropped the signature out of this scan but
“Paper Dolls by Vann” is how I signed my artwork…
Using, what else?
Pelikan ink!