06/28/07 - Sketchbook Inking Practice

Here are two images (actually all on one sheet of tracing paper but too big to fit on my scanner ;-) ) that are inked versions of sketches made in July 2006.

These were done with the my new Pentel Brush Pen on tracing paper. I was still getting used to the brush pen so these are a little rough and sketchy. The line weights on the nude kneeling figure are too heavy on the highlight side but are more a result of not being able to rest my hand on the tracing paper (than purposeful intent).

The clumsily drawn hands I do have to take credit for (need to spend several hours just working on hands!).

On the plaid skirt I was intentionally going for a "dried brush" type of effect to approximate a woolen texture. This brush pen has to be squeezed periodically to get the ink down to the synthetic bristles - so you can get different effects as the ink runs out. Nice for sketching away from home but I don't think I would ink comics with it. Not as responsive as a real brush and you always have to worry if disposable ink pen's ink will bleed through white out corrections.

03/26/04 - Sketchbook - Inking Practice

Scanned as grayscale so you can see the underlying pencil drawing. These were done on bristol, pencilled first (from my imagination/visual memory) then inked with Raphael 8404 #3 brush and Black Magic ink. The park bench scene was inked with a Hunt 102 crowquill pen.

My big problem with the brush is line weight. I tend to keep it too uniform. Outlines on the highlight side should be thinner and even break up a little. Jack Hamm talks about the "T" and overlapping shapes in his book Drawing the Head and Figure. This helps give some depth to the contour line as opposed to it looking like the edge of a cutout.