Pen and Wash - Choose the Right Drawing Pen

What kind of the lines do I want to produce on your next pen and wash? Will it be a technical pen that produces specific line width? Or will it be a bamboo pen that gives a variety of lines as you swirl the pen in your fingers? Ink lines express as much emotion and style as the watercolor wash. So let's look at a few kinds of drawing pens to get you on the right path.

Technical pens

Technical pens are excellent for pen and wash. They produce a uniform line of thickness that comes in different nib sizes. These range from fine lines, like the 005, excellent for hatching and stippling, to thick lines, like the 08. Technical pens come in a wide range of colors, too. Read the labels; not all are water-proof.

Ballpoint, Roller ball and Gel ink pens

Ballpoint pens are for writing, but are a good choice when you want to work with something other than a technical pen. They are readily available for quick drawing and sketching and come in a wide range of colors. They usually come in 3 sizes; extra-fine, fine and wide. Most are water-soluble so can be diffused in your pen and wash to create beautiful effects.

I like roller ball and gel pens. They have the appearance of technical pens because the ink does not shine like ballpoint pens. Roller ball and gel pens are not permanent and will diffuse with your washes.

Dip pens and fountain pens

Dip pen and fountain pens come into two parts, the holder, or handle, and the nib. The holder can be fitted with a wide variety of nib sizes for a wide range of marks. Dip pens uses a dip pen ink bottle. Fountain pens also uses bottled fountain pen ink to refill their reservoir but also uses pen ink refills. Try out the many different nibs to find their flexibility and behavior.

Bamboo and Reed pens

Bamboo and reed can make a wide range of marks. Reeds are more flexible than bamboo and are able to produce sensitive marks and will soften after much use to produce broader line, so handle them with a light touch.

Bamboo is more solid and can create firm lines as well as different widths of marks. You can find these in your local art supply store or you can make your own.

Quill Pens

Quill pens make their own distinctive lines; they are easy to control and inexpensive. You can buy them or make your own from a variety of feathers, like turkey, geese or swan. Do not run out to a nearby farm or pond and remove a feather from our feathery friends. A quill pen has to dry out for many months before they are stiff enough for any drawing purposes. Your local art supply store should have a fine stock at hand.

Fiber tipped pens

Fiber-tipped pens come in a huge selection of nib style, sizes and colors for either lines or filling in areas. You can spend a whole day experimenting with these. They come in regular colors, skin tones, glitter, neon and fluorescent!

All others

Sticks, slivers of cardboard, string, a small tree branch, popsicle sticks, cotton swabs, just about anything that can be dipped into ink, will make exciting lines or marks. Some are around your home right now and others won't cost you anything to make. Enjoy.

Pen and wash is an expressive art form and drawing with a pen of your choice will make your experience more so. Enjoy.

And now I like to invite you to my website: http://penandwashpassion.com/ for more revealing articles on pen and wash, and neat essential art products you'll want for a rewarding experience. Hi, this is Harmon Thompson and I love pen and wash! Also, check out my blog: http://watercolorpaint.wordpress.com/ where you can share your passion for pen and wash painting.

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Drawing With Charcoal, the Oldest Medium in the World

When you hold a piece of charcoal between your fingers you are doing exactly the same as the mysterious people, or even person, who created the works of art in Chauvet's cave, southern France. The cave paintings depict all kinds of animals hunted at the time in a fabulous three dimensional detail which would subsequently vanish from art until the renaissance as much as twenty thousand years later!

In this article I will not discuss the mystery of Chauvet's cave, it's purpose is to give beginners a guide to charcoal as an artist's medium. The best charcoal is usually willow, it is made by heating the wood in a kiln, when the wood starts to burn the amount of oxygen supplied is reduced by covering the wood with sand, it is a delicate process that is much dependant on mother nature being kind with the right weather conditions. When you hold charcoal it has a slippery feel, you will find that it will break easily into smaller shards and when you work with charcoal I recommend that you break pieces up so you have a variety of chunks, some thin and pointed, others stubby with flat sides.

Work on good thick, cold pressed, medium to heavy textured paper. The paper will need to absorb the charcoal, hence the requirement for a rough surface. Now you are ready to draw. With charcoal you are looking for the source of light on your subject. This is the paper your charcoal will never touch. It is the most important element of any charcoal drawing and provides the strange glow that no photograph could ever reproduce. Work around the light. I personally start with fine lines to contain shapes and then shade these in. As your work progresses let the lines become less evident, on portrait work charcoal is an excellent medium for capturing the texture of skin. A lot of work can be done with your finger tips. For example draw a heavy line and then see what effects can be obtained with your fingers. You can smudge the line one way only, thus keeping a sharp edge with the other side fading into the light, or you can gently smudge both sides, this give the effect of a recess where the light cannot reach. You can dab at the line with your fingertips. This will give a dappled undulating effect. Always remember, as you work, the effect of the light on your subject.

You will find that charcoal is a forgiving medium. If you are not happy with an area of work it can be almost completely erased using a normal rubber eraser. I say almost because you should always try to keep the pure white areas completely untouched. When working fine detail of tone I recommend a blob of blu tack. This can be used as a very fine point eraser. You can for example highlight the light reflection in an eye just by gently dabbing with a pointed blob of blu tack on an area you have shaded. If you wish to show reflected light on skin then very gently sweeping a larger piece of blu tack over the area will achieve the desired effect by gently lightening an area.

Finally you should alway fix your work. Fixatives can be bought from any art supplier. It is basically an aerosol can which you use to spray a thin layer of fixative over your work. This gives a fairly good resistance to smudging or loss of tone. Fixing does not stop you working on your picture but it will make you have to work a bit harder with the eraser!

As an artist there is so much to learn. I do not think you can learn about light and dark with any other medium better than charcoal. It is also good to know of the very ancient footsteps you will be following with your burnt willow stick.

Mark Robb is a practising artist based in Haworth. If you have enjoyed the article above then he invites you to browse the website http://firstforart.com/ where you will find all kinds of art materials, art prints and further advice and tips to help you become a better artist

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Life Drawing With Cecil Collins

Cecil Collins (1908-1989) was best known as a painter and had established his reputation in the 1930s to the extent of being included in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, at the invitation of the eminent art critic Herbert Read.

Surrealist influences can certainly be seen in Cecil Collins' earlier work but in later years he developed his own unique imagery based on the iconic archetypes of the Fool and the Angel. The unreservedly spiritual content of his later work revealed his true nature as a deeply spiritual man whose beliefs and principles were basically incompatible with the atheist existentialism of the Surrealists.

Cecil Collins is now generally seen as a 'visionary' or 'metaphysical' painter, and has been described by some historians as the most important visionary artist since William Blake. However, for me, and I believe many other artists, his greatest influence was as a teacher, in particular through the methods employed in his life drawing classes, which I describe in my book 'Archetypal Postures, in the Process of Creativity'.

When I began the classes in 1979, one still had a reasonable chance of getting on the course but by 1985 it had become so popular with students that one had to queue all night during the enrollment week. The students themselves were the proof of his worth as a teacher; amongst them he became in the end almost a cult figure. Through his teaching he was able to show the artist how to 'abandon control' through the process of life drawing. This of course sounds absurd if not impossible, but when one has experienced it, it is less so. We spend our lives striving to gain control, to avoid letting affairs get out of control. The idea of abandoning control would appear to be the height of folly; but the 'Fool' was one of Cecil Collins' most significant icons.

When we have surrendered control we are vulnerable, at the mercy of others, in danger, our only resource is our basic intuition. Control operates through the intellect, which has to be prevented from dominating for good art to result. This I believe was the primary message in Cecil Collins' teaching. For the artist, allowing the intellect to dominate produces dead art. To give life to art it is necessary to by-pass the intellect and allow the expression of emotional spontaneity to operate. This idea is of course nothing new. For generations art teachers and critics have enjoined artists to 'loosen up', to 'express themselves', to 'be spontaneous', but few of them know how to bring it about. Cecil Collins knew! His great achievement was in being able to draw out of his students the ability to freely express themselves through the vehicle of life drawing. This is why he was a great teacher, and his students recognised that fact.

Although the purpose of the classes was to achieve spontaneity by abandoning control, the techniques he employed were paradoxically very structured and carefully orchestrated. The drawings were done very rapidly in black or sepia using Chinese ink or gouache. One was expected to have seven small pots of tones ranging from black to the lightest grey. The basic implements comprised a range of Chinese brushes, reed pens, a quill pen, soft pencils and red and black conte crayons.

The sessions began with short poses, but even the longest pose was rarely more than five minutes. From the outset he imposed his control. He would dictate precisely which tone of ink and which implement to use in which hand, for one was expected to use both hands together. After a certain time, sometimes no more than seconds, he would say 'change', the model would alter the pose and the students would lay down another sheet of paper and start another drawing according to his instructions, one of which was to look only at the model, rather tan the drawing. Drawing was initially done at great speed and the turnover was rapid.

His theory was that, 'at the fast speed the analytical mind cannot work'. Some time later he would introduce music, played prior to each pose, and the students and the model would be asked to stand and move in response in whatever manner they felt appropriate. At a certain moment he would say 'stop' at which point the model would freeze and the students would sit down and draw according to the new instructions. On occasions these instructions required one to draw with one's fingers, fist, heel of the hand, elbows, even the chin and the nose. Sometimes one was obliged to hold the instrument in the mouth (in which case three instruments were being used concurrently), or to place the paper on the floor and draw holding the instrument between the toes.

His secret weapon was a bundle of three foot long brushes which he would distribute once the students were sufficiently 'softened up'. One had to balance one end on the shoulder and make the best of it with the other. After two hours of suffering these indignities one was ready either to walk out or surrender. This was the critical moment; the overcoming of one's resistance, perhaps to being a fool? By this time most new students would probably be feeling quite bewildered, if not confused; but Cecil Collins knew what was happening; Art was happening. In the last hour there was a tangible atmosphere of calm intensity, the pace usually slowed down and some very good drawings were done; and that is all that matters in art; the end result, not the process of getting there, or the 'suffering' of the artist.

Cecil Collins understood that in the act of overcoming adversity, in this case one's resistance, a certain aesthetic power is released. I recollect that at some appropriate moment he commented that 'the manifestation of beauty is often accompanied by pain'. There was no doubt that for the duration of the class one was obliged to be in the present, giving one's attention only to the drawing process and not to the endless thoughts in the mind. With the whole class equally concentrated a powerful atmosphere arose which was almost tangible.

Cecil Collins had that rare ability to bring out of each student his or her own latent power of spontaneous expression which is a basic requirement of good art. It is this that made him a great teacher.

The book Archetypal Postures in the Process of Creativity by Ian Hopton is a record of a typical ceremony that took place during the life drawing classes of the visionary painter Cecil Collins in the 1980s. The ceremony symbolised creativity through a series of archetypal postures enacted by all the students and the model.

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Drawing, Painting, Design, and Sculptural Art Textures

We see textures all around us everyday. We know whether something is soft, smooth, rough or bumpy. Part of painting and drawing is the addition of texture, whether the piece is realistic or abstract. Seeing the interplay of each against the other makes for an interesting and attention-grabbing piece whether in decorative design or visual fine art.

There are various kinds of textures in art and design. Actual or real textures are those that can be touched such as the smooth surface of a metal sculpture or the spiky surface of a cactus. We can readily identify a material by its texture: glass is smooth and slick; sand is gritty and fine. In three-dimensional works, artists use actual texture to add a tactile quality to the work. On canvas, artists sometimes apply paint thickly (impasto) in order to achieve the desired texture. Other artists create a collage, which is added papers or fabric and other materials to create a textured surface.

Visual textures are those that can be created to look like real textures. They are the roughness of a rock in a photograph or the fluffiness of a cloud painted by an artist. In a two-dimensional work of art, texture gives a visual sense of how an object would feel in real life if touched

Invented textures are two-dimensional patterns created by the repetition of shapes and lines. The patterns do not represent real surface textures but the patterns of light and dark suggest texture. The purpose is to create decorated surfaces that evoke memories of unusual textures.

Artists have an arsenal at their disposal for creating textures in drawing media. Various methods include:

Irregular strokes with varied pressure

Unusual shapes

Cross-hatching

Scribble

Soft blended lines, dots, dashes, and irregular strokes

Contrasting different textures that work in opposition to each other like the smoothness of glass next to a rough piece of driftwood. Or soft blended strokes contrasted with finely drawn wisps of hair on a portrait.

Various media such as ink, charcoal, graphite, marker that render textural effects differently

Highlights, shadows and contrasting darks for reflective surfaces

Creation of texture will allow your drawing to come alive with visual interest. Instead of the same kinds of strokes, use unusual dots, dashes, scribbles, small shapes, or wavy and angular lines in order to define the beauty of textural surfaces. Suggest texture by inventing your own using patterns. Let yourself go and look at the subtle surfaces of objects to create the realism or the visual qualities you want.

Textures in painting are many and varied as well. In watercolor, using the dry brush method can describe very textured wood surfaces such as the side of a barn or an old roof. Using splatter is another method that works well in watercolor. The softness of a feather needs delicate handling in order to achieve the visual qualities of the feeling of the feather. Use of a sponge also creates interesting textures in watercolor or acrylic paint.

Abstract painting or sculpture benefits greatly with varied textural surfaces to hold the viewer's interest. Paint strokes can be made into real textural surfaces when applying very thickly with large bristle brushes. Clay has the benefits of easily applying a number of textures to the surface before adding glazes whether in pottery or sculpture.

Consider the addition of texture or patterns in your next painting or drawing. It will add heightened visual and tactile interest to any work of art.

Beth cook is an artist who loves to write about art. She suggests you also check out art classes McKinney, TX and Allen TX art classes.

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