I couldn't agree more, Ken! Wes must be strong as an ox to use his arms so much, but his scraping rows are beautiful.
While he doesn't use his legs and lower body the way Richard recommends, the even rows and clear individual scrapes of even depth are precisely what Richard teaches.
I also was really interested in his homebrew marking inks. I just acquired some red and black pigments and tried mixing it with machine oil as he suggested (though he used mortar pigment I'm hopeful any dry pigment should work equally well). I'm off on a business trip tomorrow so I didn't have much time to experiment, but I can report that it works just as Wes said. It's very different than using Canode or Dykem high spot, though.
Wes said he'd post a video about marking inks, but I did just discover one thing on my own: I think trying to mix the pigment and oil directly in the tin was a mistake. Far better to thoroughly mix on a plate and then transfer it to the tin, I think.
I'm just using dry artists pigment from a company called Gamblin and machine oil.
I noticed when I used a brayer to spread it on the surface plate that I still had some dry clumps because I hadn't mixed it thoroughly enough. The dry clumps were definitely thick enough to cause bad readings.
I think mixing on a plate thoroughly, and rolling it out thin with a brayer and really working it for a while before scraping it back up to store it in the tin would have worked better.
Here's a part with the red base layer applied:
And here is a markup with a fairly thick layer of black on the plate:
Sadly, it's not really much higher contrast than I was seeing with Canode or Dykem. It does seem like a reasonable choice for roughing, though.
I want to try some more experiments when I'm back. I've also ordered some special high contrast pigments that should be fun to play with once I receive them.
Regards,
--
Rex