Days 1 to 11 — Where This Started

I didn’t set out to start a website. I simply decided to give myself a 30-day challenge: one loose urban sketch each day, using fountain pens, ink and the occasional wash.

Day 1 was the Flatiron Building in New York. The idea was simple enough — look carefully, draw more loosely, stop worrying about every line being correct and, perhaps most importantly, learn when to put the pen down. That last bit may take a while.

These first eleven days happened before The Loose Nib existed. They were spread through sketchbooks I already had, alongside notes, experiments and whatever else happened to be on the page. Most of them are in a Draw Every Day sketchbook, the sort you get in garden centres, which my wife gave me for Christmas in 2024. The fact that I didn’t start using it properly until 2026 either demonstrates my procrastination or lack of motivation, or both. The book is only A6 in size so each square was A7, which makes each drawing rather cramped.
I had no idea I would eventually put any of them on a website. So rather than tidy them up retrospectively, I’m leaving them much as they were. This is where the journey actually started.

Looking back at the first few pages, I was clearly still trying to develop a loose style, which I continue to struggle with. There are rather a lot of lines — and apparently I felt the need to write notes to myself everywhere.
I didn’t know it then, but these rather crowded sketchbook pages would eventually lead to The Loose Nib.

Days 9 to 11

Let’s not talk about the Eiffel Tower, clearly still learning a style. Lowest score by The Reasonable Tyrant – 6.5. I liked Day 10 and 11 and doing daily sketches with feedback was helping me develop what I think may well be my style. I was also enjoying the process as much as the finished sketches — choosing the pens, experimenting with different nibs, making mistakes and gradually working out what I wanted my drawings to look like.

Somewhere around here, the idea for The Loose Nib appeared. I asked ChatGPT if The Loose Nib was a good title for a website and, following some to-ing and fro-ing, here we are four days later with a website.

I decided to start a new sketchbook dedicated to my Loose Nib journey. Not because the drawings suddenly became better, but because I wanted a record of where they went next.

Day 12 would be the first page.

Onwards.