Guest Author - Elsa Neal
Pen
Drawing with pen can be an excellent way to learn to control your technique, as the marks you put down can’t be erased. Pen can’t achieve the close shading marks that pencil does, so light and shadow representation becomes a precise study of shape and the creation of texture using hatching techniques.
Any type of pen can be used for drawing, but felt tipped and fineliners are the most popular with artists, followed by fountain pens and even old fashioned quills for the fun of it. Ball point works well for redefining animation lines after the colours have been inked or painted in.
Soft pens or brush pens
Brush pens have a flexible tip - sometimes found as a double-ended pen with a hard fibre-tipped pen on one end for outlining, and the brush tip, for shading, on the other. These pens are ideal for the vibrant art of hand-drawn graphic novels, as they offer solid colour in a set palette. Precise shading of colours can be built up by layering.
Chisel-tipped pens
Remember how much fun it was to colour in with highlighter pens? The range of colours available now in chisel-tipped marker pens makes these a useful addition to an artist's toolkit. The chisel point allows for some interesting marks and these pens are fun to experiment with. Chunkier marker pens are great for big, bold drawings.
Some brands also make refills, making replacement of individual colours cheaper.
While the quick drying nature of these pens usually means some inevitable hard edges and overlapped colour, solvent can be used to wet the area and blend the colour more easily. Some brands include blending solvent in their art marker pen sets.
Brush and ink or paint
A brush can also be used to draw with. Before pencils, and even drawing with charcoal became popular, artists would sketch their subject matter with a brush and paint to make a basic plan of positioning and pose.
You might also try using a brush and a water colour wash to fill in some shading areas in a pencil sketch.
Artists using brush or pen for drawings can also make use of splatter techniques to add interesting texture and depth to an ink drawing.
Although to a lesser degree than with pencil and pastels, the tooth of the paper used can also change the effect of the ink drawing, and is worth experimenting with. For heavy fibre-tipped and marker pen use, you may want to use bleed-proof paper which has a coating on the underside to prevent the ink bleeding through the paper.
For more inspiration for trying various ink-based drawing media, you may like
Sketching Your Favorite Subjects in Pen and Ink by Claudia Nice
or Rendering With Markers by Ronald B. Kemnitzer
