Tips Two Ways: Research and Dip Pen Nibs

Quickly: Dip Pen Nibs

I was experimenting with dip pen nibs earlier this week and having mixed results, so I asked Twitter for some pro tips. Here’s the thread. If you are at all curious about trying this method of ink drawing, I recommend scrolling through.

Nibs produce a really unique quality of line. When it was working, I kind of loved it.

For better or worse, though, nibs put down a lot of ink, and my chosen paper does not like that. It bled like crazy. Cobwebs everywhere. Strathmore Vellum Bristol, my other paper, holds the ink very well. It’s crisper than a fresh bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. One day, once I make my way through all my Arches paper, I might revisit nibs, using everyone’s excellent suggestions.

So far, though, I am enjoying my extra fine Sakura Pigma brush pen, and I ordered a few Zebra brush pens to try out. If they deliver 80% of the line quality with 0% of the hassle, I might never look at a nib again.

Research Tips!

Patron Audrey asked,

“I was wondering if you have any recommendations for obscure historical fashion resources? I’m working on a project set in 1900s Amalfi and I can’t figure out what fishermen and Italian towns people wore.”

… which is a question near and dear to my heart, because few things have been as difficult to research as the everyday appearance of everyday folks. Kings and queens, they have their portraits. Historical figures, them too. Soldiers and military figures, tons of images for them, thanks to all the thirsty war nerds. But everyday folk are harder to discover.

Clothing Civilians of the Past

For my own work, which is set in Europe and the Middle East at the start of the 1800s, the best resource I have found has been travel illustrations. Western Europeans traveled to my locations of interest, did some drawings, and bound them into big travelogues. Squinting, I can usually get a good sense of what the incidental characters are wearing and doing. Sometimes I get lucky and an illustrator has chosen to render a scene of “common townsfolk.”

Of course, it’s always worth asking, “how accurate is this, actually?” Did the artist have the time to properly observe the people in the scene? Or did he leave the people for last and fill them in at the end, using whatever ideas he happened to have at hand? How lazy was the illustrator? How racist? Did he see these people as people or as exotic decorations? These are tough questions to answer.

It’s useful to compare and contrast with current-day clothing. With modern images and old images side-by-side, can you identify elements that they share? A unifying quality or flavour? Shared fabrics? Common colours? Cuts? Shapes? Apply some thoughtful observation, read a little about the region’s clothing, and you should be able to come up with useful conclusions.

What does the “traditional” or ceremonial costuming look like? This can be useful for helping to understand the materials that might have been used, the peoples’ taste for ornamentation, decorative motifs, and common graphic elements.

Know how fashionable (or “trendy”) your average citizen at work or on the street might be. Generally, I figure up-to-date fashion is for rich people. Meanwhile, what inclination or resources would a fishmonger have to dress any different than his father did?

To the best of your ability, try to check libraries and historical societies local to your setting. I’m in Vancouver, and I know the Vancouver Public Library has tons of photography of Vancouver’s history. You want to see what a storefront looks like or just get a snapshot of a crowd on Granville Street, you’ll be able to find it there. If your story is set in a region of Italy, can you get in touch with someone at a library there and ask some questions? (Talking about libraries in the UK, fellow graphic novelist Tealin points out that, “funding is influenced by public engagement, so even just sending them an email puts money in their pocket, even if it's a dead end for you.” So don’t hold back.)

Finally, what have other contemporary authors/filmmakers/etc been doing in the same period? For better or worse, most of my research has been Jane Austen-adjacent, and there are thankfully a lot of “explainer” books written specifically to provide a modern reader with greater context for Austen’s work. They explain things like how a Regency-era kitchen might work, what types of coins they might have used, how one might travel around England, and so on. They’re great cheat sheets. And the other day I was wondering what a ship’s hourglass looked like, and the MASTER AND COMMANDER film gave me the answer.

Get Very Specific

If you’re looking for visual reference, it is immensely helpful to know the exact, specific word for what you need. If I go to Google Image Search and enter “19th-century carriage,” I will get scattershot results. I will be shown carriages of all sizes and shapes, in all sorts of conditions.

Now, if I happen to know that in the 19th century, during the time of horse-drawn carriages, there were different models and descriptors—just as there are different models and descriptors of cars today—I can find better results. If I put “barouche” or “horse-drawn phaeton” into an image search, maybe someone’s gone to a carriage museum and taken photos of a barouche from every angle, then posted their hi-res images on Flickr. While they’ve done us all a great service by taking the photos, it is perhaps not forefront of a photographer’s mind to apply comprehensive tags to their images. Similarly, make sure you know as many relevant place-names as possible. For example, Izmir used to be called Smyrna.

Diversify

Be sure to try the same terms across search engines—Google, DuckDuckGo, and the stock photo agencies’ own websites. I find a lot of useful reference on Getty Images. Stock photo sites are specifically designed to help you find the type of image you’re looking for, and with a bit of experience, it’s easy to know which terms work best on them.

Treat Research as Exploration

More generally, I’ve found it beneficial to approach research like something to be explored, and less like “give me the answer to a question.” Given the ease of global information availability, it’s easy to think it can’t be hard to find specific answers to specific questions. That has not been my experience. It’s hard to get a straight answer to something like, “would Phoenicians have settled west of the Rock of Gibraltar?” Instead, I went to the library, pulled out every book about the Phoenicians, and started reading (skimming, really—let’s not kid ourselves).

Those are some of my favourite days. Sometimes I will find clues to the questions for which I want answers, but the better part is that in the process of looking for that answer, I’ll find a dozen other notions that lead to a handful of good story ideas that I wouldn’t have considered otherwise. It’s similar to panning for gold.

This is how the first Delilah Dirk book came to be set in Turkey. I had been reading about the Elgin Marbles. Originally, I thought there would be a historical art-theft theme for the Delilah Dirk stories. Instead, one thing led to another, I tumbled down different avenues of interest, and Delilah ended up in Istanbul.

Nowadays, I keep my eyes open for non-fiction centred around the early 19th century. Anything that crosses my radar that might even be tangentially interesting or useful gets noted or borrowed from the library. Like, The Year Without a Summer keeps popping up in different contexts, and I don’t know what I’d do with it, but it seems interesting (and, considering the current climate disaster, spiritually relevant).

Relax

Assuming you’re creating a work of fiction, with fictional characters doing fictional things that never happened, try not to get too bogged down in historical detail-mining. Your audience is, ostensibly, looking for a story, not a textbook. Most of them will not notice that your story set in 1924 prominently features an Alfa Romeo 6C, which was not introduced until 1929. The people who will detect small anachronisms or incorrect details are a small-ish portion of your audience, and the number among those who will let it bother them is an even smaller portion still. 

Now, this doesn’t mean you get to be culturally irresponsible. If you are representing a real-world group of peoples (or even a fictional one that could plausibly be read as an analog for a real-world group of peoples), it is your duty to represent their culture responsibly. Don't make every character a paragon of cultural representation, just avoid careless stereotypes. For example, I know no Canadians who use “eh” at the end of sentences.

You’ll Make Mistakes Anyway

The movie JAWS is centered around the idea that sharks can be ravenous killing machines. But according to fact-based comedy panel show Q.I., every year more people die from falling coconuts than do from shark attacks. In reality, apparently sharks are relatively calm animals. This is all to say that very successful works of fiction can pivot around untruths and get away with it.

Do marine biologists get angry about it? Probably. Like many people, I have spent decades of my life being annoyed by “zoom and enhance,” having from an early age understood the limitations of imaging technology.

Does It Have To Be Historical?

Pause for a moment. Think about your project. Ask yourself, “does it really have to take place in a specific, real-world, historical setting?” Does it tie into a real-world occurrence or drama? Do you want to tell a story that takes advantage of a specific set of real-world social practices and conditions, like Jane Austen’s novels do? Is there a real, good, solid reason to go to all the trouble of historical research?

Think about the Ghibli movies KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE compared to GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES. As far as I can tell, KIKI is set in a fictional location which seems reminiscent of Europe in the mid 1900s. The movie was created by Japanese filmmakers, based on a book by a Japanese author. So why all the European architecture? Beats me. That’s the choice they made, and it works. GRAVE, on the other hand, is written around the real-world fire-bombing of Kobe. Could the same story have been told using entirely manufactured circumstances? Of course. But that wasn’t the filmmakers’ intent, clearly.

What is This, a College Dorm Common Room?

If you spend long enough working on this stuff, it’s hard not to get philosophical about things like, “if I add supposedly ‘true’ elements to a fictional story, certainly the story is still fictional, but do the true-to-real-life elements remain true?” And “how do we decide who to trust about history?” And “what is ‘truth,’ really?” I suspect that knowing the answers to these questions is not necessarily an aide in writing excellent work.

How you navigate all of this—the relationship between your story and any real-world elements, and how you present that relationship—is just one of six billion (rounded down) choices you get to make as an author. You may not make those choices consciously. More likely, they will be a product of your taste and your gut impulses. 

I know where I ended up. I put a flying boat and an impossible sunken city and land-pirates and a British Army sergeant with comically large antique shoulder armour and a religion based on an interstellar swan-deity into my books. I got there by following a vague sense of what feels right and what doesn’t. 

I encourage you to examine your reasons for diving into a historical setting. Mine are not much more complicated than the reasons that, when it comes to desserts, I prefer pie over cake. Once you’ve done that work, go out and poke your curious nose into as many research-holes as you can find. I usually have a research-related book on my bedside table. And go easy on yourself. You can’t possibly be expected to conjure up your historical setting with 100% accuracy. It is lazy thinking to assume that being “accurate” is the mark of good historical fiction. Sure, if you can represent a time and place authentically and draw in a modern reader with it, that might be great. But “more accuracy” does not necessarily equate to a “better book.” Delilah often speaks with modern language, just because it’s funnier. If you get the teacups wrong, your work will still hold up.

But please do be mindful of not portraying other cultures in lazy, incomplete, caricatured, ways. Take some time to understand the potential biases of the historical accounts you’re reading. If all else fails, treat every character in your story as a real, breathing human being, with the same needs and fears and desires we all have, because that is timeless.

Want to ask a question? You’re more than welcome to. You don’t have to be a patron, though patrons do also get to see behind the scenes as Delilah Dirk Four is in progress and are responsible for making all this possible. If you’d like to support some extremely fungible, relatively ecologically responsible artwork, please do join.