This chapter covers a lot of material and I thought it best to post my work over two posts. This post will look at all the various techniques and mark making tools for drawing with pen and ink and the next post will have my examples of work in this medium. Additionally I've changed the way I'm working on this final module, working one day a week as opposed to doing a complete chapter in one go over a few days or a week or so. This works better for me as it means I'm not taking lengthy periods away from other work and also I approach each section of a chapter with fresh eyes.
Pen and ink - how exciting. I've been looking forward to this chapter since I quickly scanned the notes after downloading the module. Of course I could have made a start myself earlier, but sometimes it takes a bit of a push to try out new techniques.
The Tools
I started off gathering useful drawing tools: a) biro - my trusty favourite, b) ultra fine sharpie, c) various nibs and Indian ink, d) fine line markers - waterproof e) non waterproof drawing pen/felt:
Using thick and textured watercolour paper throughout, I made a grid for each drawing tool and tried various marks in each square. Each square was 4x4cm
Biro
Biro is always good to work with and good for all round mark making:
Ultra Fine Sharpie
Surprising I didn't automatically think of this, as I always use sharpie for firming up drawing on lino. It was a really good all round mark making tool
Pen nib with Indian Ink
I worked with three nibs, dip pen, 2mm left handed calligraphy nib, split nib. Also Indian ink was a superb smooth flowing ink.
Dip pen
This was a smoother and more versatile nib than I had thought at first. I had a notion that curls and circles would be hard to achieve and give rise to splatter, this was not the case. In fact dip pen may have been my favourite drawing tool in general:
Split nib
This made for some lovely individual marks but on the whole was not good for general drawing purposes.
2mm left handed calligraphy nib
As above, good for individual mark making but not a good all rounder
Fine Line Pens
I bought myself a full set of these (0.003, 0.005, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.8) They were great all round pens to use and of course different thicknesses of nib can be mixed together in the same drawing:
Adding colour / fluid to pen marks
Lots of different water soluble things to try out here and some pre-conceived ideas to be reviewed!
This is by no means an exhaustive list of things to try out but it was a good start, and you might recommend something additionally. I had a go with the following: a) watercolour paint, b) caran d'ache neocolour 2, c) inktense block, d) drawing ink - Winsor and Newton, d) watercolour pencil, e)watercolour fibre pen.
Watercolour paint and the Winsor and Newton inks were of course really good to use. The water colour crayon was not an outstanding medium, however the inkense block, which I was sure would be horrible, was in face a delight to use and gave great variety in the intensity of colour achieved. Water colour pencil was fine for delicate areas and watercolour fibre pens were a great all rounder.
As before I made a grid. Along the top are the various drawing tools and down the side the colour medium. I made some notes down the right hand side. Indian ink is not water fast until it's really very dry, which was an interesting discovery.
Trying out different wetting tools
In the above exercises, I used only paintbrush on the colour. But I had a few other tools up my sleeve. A Caran d'ache water fibre tipped marker and a large 8mm marker, that could be filled with any diluted medium but for this purpose only filled with water. Each of course had it's merits and would work very well if working from life
Trying out water colour pen (which hadn't worked with paint brush but did with the pressure of water filled fibre pens) and biro with colour added - if that makes sense
One final thing
I was checking through my useful books and came across a drawing by Albrecht Durer. It was interesting to note the simplicity of his pen marks and how perfectly they described his subject.
Claire Gordon
27/02/21
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