Working In Different Mediums, ( Pen and Ink)

Brush and Ink doodle from sketchbook

It’s a great benefit to learn to use as many mediums as you can. 

For one thing it’s fun.  I have worked with graphite, charcoal, pen and ink, watercolors, gouache, casein, oils, pastel, acrylics, markers and with digital images. 

It also gives you different options as far as making your image. Some subjects may lend itself better to a specific medium. 

A short time ago I went on my lunch break and sat in the park to sketch. Instead of using my watercolors as I usually do I started a drawing using a brush pen filled with black ink. That started the ball rolling. I started using that pen more often as well as using a steel nib pen with some india ink. I’ve used pen and ink and or brush and ink before, but it’s been a little while. One sketch led to another and I start to think about the images I can create with this medium. I was having fun again. After working with watercolors for sometime I had to adjust my thinking from all the color and value choices that watercolor gives me to just the black of the ink and the white of the paper.  That little change in thinking because of choosing a different medium will get me through many hours of enjoyable work.










Above is a brush and ink drawing I did in the park. Later I made the drawing on the left using that same brush pen and a steel nib pen.

The Convenience Of Drawing And Painting On the Computer

Drawing on my computer is a great convenience. It’s like having an open sketchbook always in front of me or a clean canvas on the easel with all my paints out, neatly arranged. When life gets too hectic or I feel like I just can’t bring myself to the drawing table I can sit down in front of my computer with my tablet and begin to sketch.  I just like making images and it doesn’t matter what tools I use to create the image.

 

Having a monitor that I can actually draw on helps a great deal. I use a Cintiq 12wx which is an old model. The newer version is  the Cintiq 13HD. These models are their more affordable versions, though if I had the cash I would buy the large monitors. It is well worth the money. You can have a look at their tablets on their website here.

This past weekend I found myself busy with an assignment. The only personal work I managed to do are the sketches I did on my computer in-between breaks. I made use of what little time I had experimenting with some images I made in Sketchbook Pro 6, bringing them into Photoshop to create an watercolor affect. 

  

Also spent time practicing with the pencil and ink brush tools in Sketchbook Pro. 

The Importance Of Drawing

Spending a good amount of time drawing something I intend to paint often helps me in the long run. I have a good idea of how I am going to tackle it, I've made some mistakes and identified the areas that are going to be difficult for me. It's not 100% but it does increase the probability of success. Working as a realist, drawing is the skeleton upon which I build my image.

I had this idea of doing a triple portrait of my son and I've made these drawings ahead of starting the painting. If you would allow me to be my own worst critic I will tell you the difficulty I had in drawing these.

 I had to spend a lot of time developing the structure I was going to build my drawing on. That is to make sure that this reads as a solid head, all the parts are in there proper place and properly aligned, the nose, the ears, the eyes, the mouth. I ripped a couple of pages out of my sketchbook and started over again and what I ended up with may not be perfect but they were the efforts of a good struggle against mediocrity. They were honestly the best I could do at the time.
  
The second drawing was a lot harder to do because of the extreme facial expression. It could very easily have looked like a caricature or just a bad drawing. I don't think it looks like a caricature and I feel I have to live with it for a while before I declare it a bad drawing, but as  a stepping stone toward the final painting it was helpful. I can look at  it and consider what works and what I might want to do differently. The most obvious difficulty is in drawing / painting the mouth and teeth. Jason has a long face, but it kind of looks like I squeezed that area of the mouth in. It does not rest comfortably in the rest of the drawing. I will have to resolve that before I attempt the painting.

One important bit of advise. It is important when you ask someone what they think of your drawing that you go to a person who will give you an honest critique. Close friends and family will think its more important to pat you on the back and say that you are being to hard on yourself- that what you've done is good enough. That's nice but you will never get any better that way. At the same time someone being insultingly honest does you no good either, though it would be better than the first.. We are all in the same struggle to improve.
Be humble as you learn and be humble as you teach.

The following are different quotes about drawing I've collected from different internet sources.

-on Leonardo da Vinci...

It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well. (Sir Kenneth Clark)

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality. (Edgar Degas)

Draw everywhere and all the time. An artist is a sketchbook with a person attached. (Irwin Greenberg)

One must keep right on drawing; draw with your eyes when you cannot draw with a pencil. (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres)

Drawing is the probity of art. To draw does not mean simply to reproduce contours; drawing does not consist merely of line: drawing is also expression, the inner form, the plane, modeling. See what remains after that. (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres)

Draw, Antonio, draw – draw and don't waste time! (Michelangelo)

Drawing is the skeleton of what you do and color is its flash. (Nicolas Poussin)

You can never do too much drawing. (Tintoretto)

Beautiful colours can be bought in the shops on the Riato, but good drawing can only be bought from the casket of the artist's talent with patient study and nights without sleep. (Tintoretto)

Draw every day for at least half an hour. If you don't feel like it then draw until you do. (Author unknown)

One good drawing is worth more than one hundred bad drawings. (Irwin Greenberg).

The artist Andy Warhol explained to Albert Dorne, “Art must transcend mere drawing.”

“Pardon me, Andy,” Dorne interrupted, “but there’s nothing all that f***ing mere about drawing.”

Sketching In Watercolor (What Makes A Sketch A Sketch 2)

I guess this post can be a continuation of my last one about what makes a sketch a sketch. I didn’t mean for it to be. I had meant to do some serious painting this weekend and in a way I did. I had two paintings I wanted to work on but I realized I was not going to have enough time to get far into either one of them. I feel a lot better about a project when I can get a good start on it, I don’t know why that helps me to return to it the next day but I wake up thinking about it. When I go about my day I look forward to returning to it and I think about what I am going to do once I find myself in front of the painting again.

When it became clear I wasn’t going to get a good jump on either painting I pulled out a block of 140 lb. hot pressed watercolor paper, some photos I had taken for reference and began to sketch. The sketch wound up being the triple portrait above. Although I think the head on the right is a little too large I like it enough to try it again on a portrait of my son. One portrait, like one conversation, cannot sum up all of a person’s character so it would be interesting to see how much I can tell about someone I know in three different views in one painting (great, now I have another project to work on).

During the week I also went sketching out doors. Because I’m sketching on my lunch break I really don’t have enough time to finish anything. I do what I can, take several pictures with my digital camera and when I get back to work I print the pictures. At home I finish up the sketch.