How I Started Using Pen & Ink for Drawings

Drawing

May 7

When I was a kid, I loved to draw all the time. It was something I loved to do and I could sit down and do it for hours. Trying to replicate the cartoons I watched or the characters I saw from a book brought me a lot of joy. But eventually, around the time when I was a teenager and in highschool, it didn’t feel quite the same to me anymore.

Drawing became a chore for me. Once I discovered painting and how much I enjoyed it, drawing was pushed to the side for me. From then on, I really only drew to keep my skills sharp and to help to improve my painting. Painting is basically drawing with shapes and color and while you’re painting, you’re actually drawing the entire time as well - so having drawing skills is a huge help for painting. And so I continued to draw for that reason. To improve my painting.

Overcoming Fear

In the past few years, I began to draw just for the pleasure of drawing. I was mainly watching some livestreams from Aaron Blaise, who is a great artist and he mainly focuses on animals and wildlife. Seeing one or two of his videos of drawing from life using the toned paper from Strathmore was a huge inspiration for my drawing. So I begun drawing some animals in my sketchbook and eventually I decided to try some pen and ink.

I was always afraid of pen and ink and thought I would hate the process. I always had this thought in my mind that the shading would take many hours or way too long for me to stand. But luckily, the toned paper really cuts down on that shading time.

I was also afraid that I’d spend an hour on a drawing and in one moment, make a wrong line and ruin the entire drawing due to the ink’s permanence. This rarely turned out to be case in reality. All this fear I had was just in my mind.

Failures & Successes

The first couple drawings I did with ink were quite mediocre. I was using some markers which I saw other artists using in their drawings but for me, they just weren’t working out. So I decided to just try some fine liners and stuck with those. And this is when I discovered a process for drawing which I really enjoyed. And the final drawings came out quite well too.

So I continued going down this path of drawing animals with pen & ink on toned paper. I mostly drew them during livestreams on my YouTube channel, which I was doing many times a week.

I Was Wrong (in my mind)

What I really learned from all this and the main point I want to share with you is that - I had this preconceived notion in my head of what I thought about pen & ink. To me, I already didn’t like them - maybe because of some past experience with a school art project, or whatever the case may be. But over time, I’ve grown and evolved as an artist and now I’ve found pen & ink to be quite useful and I enjoy using them for my art. Basically, never say never.

And even recently, I’ve begun to merge my watercolors with the pen & ink drawings as well, which for me really brings some excitement and color to the drawings. I think eventually I might try using a thicker toned paper and experiment with some gouache backgrounds or elements within the pen & ink drawings.

I’m now excited to see how my drawings and process will evolve in the future - when in the past, drawing wasn’t something I looked forward to doing as much.