Advice on Inking

Ink can be a messy medium!

Before you begin your work in this medium, here are some helpful tips and tricks.

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  • Always warm up.

Just as you would warm up before exercise, warm up before using ink. Take the time to work on your lines and strokes on a separate sheet of paper before you begin working on your actual illustration. This will ensure that you have proper command of your hands.

This image is of comic book artist Jacob Halton’s inking warm-up, which he does in the morning to “get command of his hands”.

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  • Don’t tape down your page.

Marks are easier to make when moving your hand in certain directions, so move your page around in order to make this possible. Work your hands in the way that they move naturally.

  • Begin with thicker lines.

This is a way to keep warming up your hands. Thicker lines are safer to work with until you feel confident enough to move onto the drawing’s fine detail portions.

  • Work in a way that minimizes smearing.

Don’t try to work on the illustration in a left-to-right method, or in any order like that. Instead, think about where your hand may smear the ink, and work in a way that minimizes that smearing. Some artists place a piece of paper or paper towel under their inking hands in order to help with this process.

  • Address large areas of ink last.

All paper, including watercolor paper or Bristol board, will warp when wet. It’s much easier to draw controlled lines on completely flat paper. Therefore, draw your lines before soaking any large areas with ink, otherwise known as executing an ink wash. Another method is to fill in large areas of ink, and then either allow for drying time or use a hair dryer before moving on to finer details.

 

Pen and Ink Tools – Part 1

In this class, for the most part we will be using a crow quill (or dipping pen) and/or a brush to make our marks.

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However, an almost endless number of pen and ink tools and techniques exist, and it’s highly recommended that you experiment with as many opportunities as possible within this amazing medium. Some substantial differences exist between tools; it’s likely you will prefer some over others. Take the time to experiment and discover your own interests and comforts

 

In this and subsequent posts, we’ll cover the most commonly used pen-and-ink drawing tools and materials. In addition to the obvious ink-specific tools such as pens, brushes, and paper, you may also need to acquire paper towels, white-out pens (useful for reproduction work), an old toothbrush, and a water jar.

 

Quills

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The first pens were made from feathers (quills), bamboo, or reeds. Usually, quills are created from the wing feathers of geese. Other common feathers used for quills come from the crow, eagle, owl, hawk, swan, and turkey. These feathers are carefully treated in order to retain their shape despite frequent wetting and drying. The hollow shaft of the feather acts as an ink reservoir, and ink flows to the tip by capillary action.

Crow Quill

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The modern version of the traditional quill—the steel dipping pen, or crow quill—remains widely used by illustrators today. This pen is included in your supply list and is the one recommended for use in this course. A quill pen can produce either very delicate lines or thicker, more dramatic ones. It can also produce lines of varying width. Check out all the varied lines produced by a crow quill in the next image. When you press down on the crow quill, more ink is released, making the line thicker. Apply less pressure, and the line becomes thinner. This allows your line to vary from thick to thin and visa versa without having to change the position of the pen.

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Aside from the traditional look it gives an image, a crow quill helps to develop hand techniques that are needed for all drawing media. When working with a quill, you must learn to control the pressure that you apply to the nib in order to vary the weight of your lines.

Crow quills are made of both a holder and a nib. The nib is the metal point that you dip into the ink. They come in a variety of sizes and with a variety of point shapes (pointed, angled, or rounded), but all are flexible, have a small hole or reservoir, and are split at the tip, thereby allowing the ink to flow onto the work surface. They also work on the same principle as the feather, sucking up the ink through capillary action. You’re encouraged to experiment with several different types and sizes of nibs in order to see how they all perform differently.

Caring For Your Crow Quill

When using your crow quill, don’t dip it into the ink past the nib. Doing so will cause messy, uncontrollable drips on your artwork and will also damage the pen, shortening its life. Dipping in just past the reservoir is ideal.

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Drawing Pens

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These drawing pens are similar to a felt tip pen, but they use archival ink. Several different brands exist but the most commonly used are the Microns pictured here. Various point sizes make it easy to control line weights. These pens are often used for sketching, particularly for comic book art and illustration. Again, note the consistent line weight and various sizes, each of which is ideal for different purposes. You’re highly encouraged to try using these pens if you haven’t already done so.

 

Brushes As Drawing Tools

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Watercolor brushes and brushes for working in ink are generally the same: they both use water as the dilution and clean-up medium. However, keep in mind that once a brush has been used for inking, it’s difficult to get perfectly clean again, so be careful that leftover ink doesn’t stain your artwork when subsequently using other media. Keep in mind we are specifically discussing drawing here; painterly brush techniques will be covered in later modules.

Brushes used for drawing purposes are generally of a smaller gauge. Though the sizes of brushes you’ll use will vary given the size of your picture (the larger the picture, the larger the brush, in general), good sizes for general inking—such as comic book style illustration—are the number 0 to number 3. These allow for both thicker and thinner lines, but will also give a “drawn,” as opposed to “painterly,” feel.

Also similar to the style produced via crow quill, a brush allows for line width variation based on pressure. For this course, drawing with a brush in addition to the crow quill is recommended. Take the time to practice with both.

Caring For Your Brushes

Don’t dip your brush into the ink all the way to the metal. This will make for a messy drawing tool and will shorten the life of your brush. Clean your brush every time you’re finished using it. If you plan to use it again in a short time, rinse it in water that’s completely clean. Don’t leave your brushes sitting in water for long periods of time, as this will damage your brushes’ tips. In general, it’s better to periodically wash brushes with soap and water, which will not only keep your brushes in good shape but will also ensure their ability to manipulate ink effectively. Don’t use turpentine or other hard solvents to clean, as they’re unnecessary with ink and will deteriorate the hairs on your brush.

Expressive Line : Master’s Study Egon Sheile & David Mack

Lines are where most people begin when first starting to draw. By themselves, lines are powerful drawing tools! They have shape, texture, and weight, all of which can add up to a very expressive drawing if you’re thoughtful about their creation.

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When beginning a drawing, people often carefully inspect an object’s outside edge, or silhouette, as a starting point. They render each line representing an edge or contour. Next, people usually fill in those contours with value.

However, so much can happen using just line alone! A line by itself is capable of conveying all sorts of emotions. In your drawings, lines can and should have life.

 

Try this

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In your sketchbook, take five minutes to draw as many different kinds of lines as you can imagine. Try different movements with your hand, drawing lines from your wrist, your elbow, and then your whole arm. Try different amounts of hand pressure, creating straight lines, parallel lines, curves, and spirals. There’s no wrong or right answer here! This freeing exercise will help open up your expressive drawing skills, warming you up to this medium.

Egon Schiele

German expressionist Egon Schiele is a master of the living line. In these images note how he uses nothing but varying kinds of line in order to imbue these portraits with interest and emotion.

Line Weight

Part of what we see creating the sense of liveliness and emotion in Schiele’s lines is an incredible understanding of line weight.

Line weight is an important drawing concept. Different tools create different kinds of lines, and allow us different methods of varying line weight. A line’s weight, meaning how dark or thick it is, will make that line either move forward in an image (if it’s a strong, dark line) or sink farther back (if it’s light or thin). This is useful when trying to give the impression of something being closer or further away. A heavier line weight will also create emphasis on a particular area of a drawing, which is of course useful in creating our focal points.

In the two images shown here, note how the image on the left is logical. The closest block is also the one with the thickest contour line, which makes visual sense. However, in the image on the right, the line weights of the blocks don’t follow the correct hierarchy, as they don’t recede in space logically.

David Mack

David Mack, contemporary comic book illustrator and creator, is known for his linear figure drawing style. In the next series of drawings, notice how Mack uses only contour lines in order to describe the body. It’s useful to note that he cites Schiele as an influence to his work. His expert use of line weight is especially obvious in the implied shadows that convey a feeling of gravity entirely though varying thickness of line.

The Modern Art of Hatching

Print illustration continued to grow as time went on, with advanced technologies allowing for increasingly better image reproduction. Illustrators on both sides of the Atlantic were becoming household names!

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Charles Dana Gibson, At the Beach

Artists such as Charles Dana Gibson were both depicting and creating the American culture of the time. His pen-and-ink drawings were reproduced in magazines across the globe, and his images found their way into both American homes and the American consciousness. His iconic ink drawing of the “Gibson Girl” was, he said, a composite of “thousands of American girls.” The image shaped the face of American femininity of his generation.

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Charles Dana Gibson, The Gibson Girl

During the years between 1865 and 1917, a time known as the “Golden Age of Illustration,” books and periodicals were the world’s major source of entertainment. This stands as the publishing industry’s most dramatic period of worldwide expansion, and of course that expansion can be seen in the incredible use of inking techniques used by the artists of the time.

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Franklin Booth, A Continent Is Bridged, originally an illustration commemorating the 25th anniversary of transcontinental telephone service.  Note the similarity in technique to the work of Albrect Durer.

Hatching is as relevant to illustration now as it was at the advent of the print industry, though most artists use the technique in combination with some kind of coloring medium, either traditional or digital.

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Mercer Mayer, One Monster After Another, pen, ink, and watercolor

Jeremy Bastian is an American comic book creator and illustrator best known for the book Cursed Pirate Girl. Each illustration is created at a 1:1 scale using a very fine brush and ink. His painstakingly rendered drawings are reminiscent of Dürer in their skillful use of hatching technique, but are perhaps more strongly connected with the pen-and-ink work of the Golden Age illustrators he cites as his influences, Rackham and Tenniel, who we will look at later in this course.

Look at the gallery of Bastian’s work.  When you look at Bastian’s illustrations, take the time to zoom in and really examine his use of line to create value and describe form. Also note how expressive and alive his lines are.

Jeremy Bastian, illustrations from Cursed Pirate Girl

Here you can take a look at a one-page comic created by Bastian for the Eisner-Award -winning anthology Little Nemo in Slumberland, an homage by modern cartoonists to the work of Winsor McKay.

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Master Study : The Art of Albrecht Dürer

As the only way to represent value in printed books was through the use of line, we can easily see how the art of printmaking and that of pen and ink illustration are deeply linked.

To see an amazing example of this idea in action, let’s look at the German Renaissance printmaker Albrecht Durer (1471–1528). Durer demonstrated the true mastery that could be achieved in inked and printed line art. Through expert understanding of line and value, he created depth, volume, and mood.

As you examine the following images, take careful note of Dürer’s use of hatching, crosshatching, and stippling in these images. Consider the incredible sense of volume achieved, and the quality of light, created through masterful use of line.

Call for Entries: collectiveartsbrewing.com

Class-  Here is a chance to get some professional exposure for your work and earn some money from it!  And you thought this was JUST an assignment!

 

Watch this video about the competition from a previous winner.

 

We are looking for the best new and emerging artists around the globe to be part of our FALL 2018 CALL FOR ART.  This year marks an important milestone for Collective Arts. Our beer can be found coast-to-coast in Canada, and in the USA we are available in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Collective Arts will be launching in Chicago and Nashville this fall and our beers can be found in Australia! We want to show the world YOUR work as we continue to grow. 

 

 

 

Project 1: Beverage Label Reboot, Part 2

 

 

Bitter American


DUE NEXT WEEK:

 

PART 2: Concept Sketches

 

  • Create between 3 and 4 concept sketches to present to your art director in your sketchbook.
  • Base these drawings on the feedback you received on your thumbnails. These drawings should be in proportion to the specs of your final art. They should fully and accurately describe your visual concepts to your art director and provide clear images for him/her to choose from.
  • These sketches should be done at a high level of finish, and should use your sketchbook work as well as your reference to help you come up with the best possible sketches.

 

* Continue Collecting Reference Images related to your concepts as well as inspirational images and reference. Be prepared to share your inspiration by next class.

IMPORTANT :

*Be sure to use a ruler to ensure your rough sketches are the correct proportions  BEFORE you begin them.

 

 

Sketchbook Week 3 : Visual Vocabulary

This short excerpt from Yuko Shimizu‘s blog post considers the importance of developing a unique visual vocabulary. After reading this article, consider how you can use your sketchbook as a tool to developing your own visual vocabulary.

 

“ I believe many of you who are reading my blog are aspiring illustrators. If you are, here is something you may want to remember, or to work on, if your art school instructors haven’t taught you already: we have to be remembered by something we are good at, so when a prospective client sees a topic that needs to be illustrated, they know who to call.

 

The most obvious themes prospective clients think of in connection with my work are Japanese or Chinese themes. I am Japanese, but I had also studied Cantonese for three years, and I have strong interest in Chinese culture. And people somehow see that in my work. There are other themes, like sexy girls, action and sports, comic-book look, snow, and water and underwater themes.”

 

What kind of things are you interested in drawing?

What visuals might become important visual signatures for you?  Draw 4 pages exploring YOUR visual Vocabulary in your sketchbook.

Post your thoughts on this along with your 4 Sketchbook Pages.

*Be sure to Tag them Sketchbook!

Week 2 – How Next Level Design is Driving the Beer World

This Article by Veronica Meewes for the online design magazine PUNCH, explores the “new generation of eye catching label design” with a close up on five example breweries and the inspiration behind the labels that have become “ their visual calling card.”

After reading this article, consider how YOUR label design is a visual calling card for the product.  

  • Write a few sentences describing the intention of your label.
  • Find a label design which uses illustration in a manner you find interesting, eye catching or inspirational.
  • POST the designs along with your comments on them for DISCUSSION next week.

Project 1: Beverage Label Reboot

Overall Assignment:

      • Choose an illustrated wrap around beer can or tea box.
      • Label will be a horizontal design:Illustration for a beverage label: You have been approached by a client to who wishes to redesign the packaging for an existing beverage label. You will identify your own client for this project.

5 inches high 6 inches wide for an aluminum can label wrap around label

4 inches high 6 inches wide for a tea box.

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  • This is a primarily Illustrated label. Though text placement should be thoughtfully considered. If it is not hand drawn text and part of the art, then it should not be included in the final art.
  • FINAL Art is required to be Black and White only.
  • Students will be required to present the illustration alone, as well as a digital mock up, indicating space for text.

 


DUE NEXT WEEK:

 

PART 1: Generate MULTIPLE visual solutions for your client.

  • Research, Brainstorm, and Generate 4 Different Illustration Concepts.
  • Draw 5 at least thumbnails per concept, for a total of 20 Thumbnails.

 

Begin by identifying a client who’s label you would like to redesign.  Choose based on an inspiring name, NOT based on YOUR relationship with the product. Research the client and imagery suggested by the beverage, the brand or the name. Brainstorm in your sketchbooks based on research.

From your brainstorm identify at least 4 different concept directions their final illustration could go.  The more thorough your brainstorm, the better the final art will be. Explore these 4 different concepts through sketches related to their brainstorms in your sketchbooks.

You must also begin collecting visual imagery related to your concepts as well as inspirational images and reference images – organized them in a way that works for you.  You will need to compile them into a Blog Post about your working process, when you turn in the completed assignment.

IMPORTANT :

*Be sure to use a ruler to draw the frames for your thumbnails BEFORE you begin them.

*Be sure they are in proportion to the label you are designing.