Ink Gestures

So, I've been playing around with getting more fluidity into my gesture drawings. The other day, I found an old ink brush pen and thougth I'd bring it to my figure drawing group to give it a try. The other thing I found was a very small (about 5"x 8") pad of toned pastel paper which is meant to be taken out for plein air studies. Before when I had tried the brush pen, I had been using sort of slick papers, but this pastel paper has quite a tooth. The results were beautiful. I loved how the paper absorbed the ink quickly to a dull matte finish and I was able to get much more fluidity in my lines while still describing the form. The small scale was sort of off putting for me for awhile. I'm a stand up while painting or drawing kind of girl, so sitting with this thing in my lap was a bit uncomfortable at first. But I got the hang of it eventually and here are the results.