In the bathroom where I'm staying I spotted a rather interesting object this morning - a simple shaving mirror. What I rather like about this item are the number of similar but different shapes all integrated: ellipses, curves, lines and much else. I see real harmony in an artefact like this with each individual element balanced within the whole. So I definitely had to sketch it:
At the same time I've been looking into sketching with an ink pen as this provides a very different experience to using a graphite pencil; for a start you can't manipulate or alter an ink line once it's down on paper but that also means that shading is a wholly different experience as it involves lines rather than graduations in tone. So I decided to sketch the mirror firstly in pencil and then to follow this up with an ink drawing from exactly the same position:
The first thing to note, which jumped out at me, is that perspective likes to play tricks. I was so close to the mirror that the base appeared much more face-on than the mirror which was, itself, inclined at an angle across the plane of my sight. As a result the pencil sketch looks more realistic to me even though the ink sketch mirror is angled much more in line with the object itself. That said the pencil sketch more effectively captures the mirror, I think, with its higher level of shading and general proportions.