Pen and Ink – Page 3

Getting Started: Seeing Simple Shapes, Part 2

Continuing on from Part 1, which you can read here, I want to show you another way to approach seeing the big shapes and capturing those before you dive into detail. At the top is a finished pen and ink drawing of a white rhino. But you can draw just this… and anyone who has […]

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Testing My Current Inks for Water Resistence

I did this test last week because I’d like to be able to combine dip pen drawings and watercolor for working on location, either drawing first or watercolor first or back and forth, my choice without having to worry about it. The former means that I need ink that can take as wet a wash […]

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Quick Sketching At The Arcata Marsh, Humboldt County, California

I had some time between appointments on Tuesday so I went to the Arcata Marsh, which is a wildlife preserve and also a sewage treatment system for the city (no smells!) and did a couple of quick sketches. Neither took more than 10-15 minutes. There’s great views to the south of Humboldt Bay and the […]

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Trees And Plants- Nib Try-outs

I’ve spent the last three mornings “test driving” a variety of dip pen nibs. There are quite a few nibs intended for drawing, but most were made just for writing. Some are very fine, some make a heavier line, others are monoline or do both thick and thin lines. Most are not expensive, one to […]

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New Nib Try-outs! And A Step-by-Step Demo.

This last couple of months or so I’ve been working my way through the nibs I’ve purchased that were specifically designed for drawing and drafting. For whatever reason, possibly because there weren’t as many made as the ones for writing or perhaps artists/draughtsmen (no “draughtswomen” back in the day) were harder on them, they can […]

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Combining Pen And Ink Sketches & Lettering

I’ve been having fun getting back to not only sketching and drawing in dip pen and ink, but also returning to handlettering. Which is actually full-circle for me since I started using dip pens, including feather quills, for the first time in the 1970s for calligraphy, specifically medieval illumination. Then I worked in a sign […]

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Working With A Two-Nib Technique

I got my dip pen and ink out this past Friday morning after toning some canvas panels for upcoming paintings. I’ve been accumulating quite a few old pen and ink instruction manuals, mostly via archive.org, but also “real” books. At least a couple have mentioned that some drawings may require two or even three nibs. […]

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Dip Pen Nib Try-outs

After a 20+ year hiatus while I focused on oil painting (which I’ll still be doing because I love that too), I’m circling back to my first love…pen and ink. Particularly dip pens, which is what illustrators and artists have largely used from the early 1800s until well into the early/mid 20th century. (Fountain pens […]

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Getting Started: Good Pens For Beginners, Part 1

There are zillions of pens to choose from out there. In the photo above are, from left to right: Sakura Micron, Copic Multiliner SP, Pilot Precise V5 EF, Pilot V Razor Point EF, Platinum Preppy fountain pen, Sakura Gelly Roll, Mitsubishi uni-ball Signo; below from front to back: Pilot Extra Fine fountain pen, Platinum Carbon […]