Drawing With Pen and Ink: Getting Started
Drawing with pen and ink (or brush and ink) adds exciting creative possibilities to your art practice. Here is your guide to tools, materials, and techniques.
By Sherry Camhy
Artists have used ink, one of the world’s oldest drawing mediums, to produce some of the world’s most memorable images. Drawing with pen and ink (or brush and ink) is as challenging as it is inspiring — it heightens an artist’s accurate use of line, value, and composition, develops confidence, and opens new pathways to creative possibilities. Beautiful blacks and crystal clear colors make drawing with ink irresistible.
Here, we present a guide to varieties of ink and their properties, a few words about pens, and a brief overview of historical approaches to ink that artists can still practice today.
Centuries of India Ink
The word “ink” today describes many different compounds. The earliest versions of ink appeared in China around the 3rd millennium B.C. Soot was the primary ingredient of early inks, made of burned wood, oil, or bone. The soot was ground into powder, combined with gum, resin, or hide glue, and dried or baked into a solid form that stored easily.
The solid ink was reconstituted into liquid by abrading the hardened forms against a grinding stone. Mixed with water, the resulting particles made a rapid-drying, intensely black ink. Over time India became the main source of soot, and the inks became known as India inks. Chinese literati, Egyptian scholars, and Japanese sumi-e artists used ink with brushes in a manner that blurred the concepts of writing, drawing, and painting.
Try Making Ink Yourself
You can try a version of this traditional process yourself using an aged ink stick. You’ll also need a slate grinding stone, a brush, and rice paper. First, sand away the ink block’s protective coating by rubbing it with water against the grinding stone, and discard that water. Then, repeat the process with fresh water, yielding usable ink. As the solid ink returns to liquid form affords, you’ll have time to prepare for the intense concentration you’ll need for the brushstrokes you’ll be making.
Drawing With Lightning
Unroll the rice paper on a blotting felt or other nonabsorbent surface, such as glass or an enamel butcher tray. Rice paper, which is made from elm, mulberry, bamboo, or rice fibers, has little sizing. Ink will go through the paper, creating a reverse image.
To prepare a new brush, swirl it in water to remove the glue holding it in shape. Reshape the point, using a cloth so that the oil on your fingers does not touch the brush hairs. Dip the brush in ink, and holding the brush vertically, touch the tip to the rice paper, gently varying the pressure. The first moment the brush touches the absorbent surface is a startling experience. The ink is pulled into the surface and dries instantaneously. Each stroke is final — Van Gogh called it “drawing with lightning.”
Never let ink dry on a brush. When you’re finished for the day, hang your brushes point-down to keep moisture from swelling the holder and loosening the hairs.
Western Inks
As other types of paper became common, artists could work with ink in a more forgiving way. For example, they could draw with graphite before adding ink to complete the image. Before India ink arrived in the Western world in the 17th century, European artists used non-lightfast writing inks, such as iron-gall ink, made from outgrowths on oak or apple trees. Both Rembrandt and Van Gogh worked with iron-gall ink. Over time, their drawings faded from black tones to warm brown ones.
To approximate the color of Old Master drawings as they appear today, try walnut ink. Purchase archival walnut ink ready to use or prepare your own. To make walnut ink, gather the drupes (the fruit) from under black walnut trees. With disposable gloves to prevent stained fingers, simmer the drupes in water in a stainless steel pot for four to six hours. Strain the product through a coffee filter, cool, and filter again. Use the ink as is, or add other ingredients. An old iron nail will darken the ink, vinegar or ethyl alcohol will act as a preservative, gum Arabic will act as a binder, and glycerin will add texture.
Ink Types, Properties, and Techniques
Modern inks are composed of dyes or pigments mixed with a binder such as water-soluble resin, animal-hide glue, shellac, or acrylic. Different combinations of ingredients create ink with different characteristics.
You may encounter these terms on the labels of the many inks available today:
- Writing inks are usually made with dyes, rather than with pigment. To test whether black ink is made with dye or pigment, place a drop on wet paper. If it breaks up into component colors, blue and brown or purple, it is a dye. If the drop spreads with lighter gray edges, it is pigment.
- India ink, sometimes also called Chinese ink, may be solid or liquid, waterproof or non- waterproof, with various tones of black.
- Acrylic inks are made with pigment and a fluid acrylic-polymer emulsion for a binder. They dry quickly into a satin-smooth, water-resistant surface.
- Non-clogging inks can be used in fountain pens, technical pens, or ballpoint pens.
- Waterproof indicates that dried ink will repel other liquids.
- Non-waterproof means application of water will dissolve the ink. Nonwaterproof inks can be rewetted, reworked, and even lifted off less absorbent surfaces.
- Non-acid ink is less likely to damage paper.
- Archival indicates long-lasting.
- When used on a label, the term permanent usually refers only to how stable a color remains when washed.
Working With Waterproof Inks
Waterproof inks can take 30 minutes to 24 hours to cure, depending on the brand. During that period they may be manipulated and even removed from some surfaces, such as plate, Mylar, Yupo, or polyester film. Rembrandt was one artist who used inks that did not immediately seal. He would outline his subject and then rapidly apply water to soften areas before the ink “closed.”
Once a layer of ink has dried, another layer can be added without affecting the underlying layer. Using layered washes helps darken tones and adjust colors. Transparent layers of different colors and values can create complex hues. Try to locate the shadow areas of your drawing first — this may help you judge the subsequent placement of details.
You can create lighter values by diluting an ink. Dilute water-based inks with water and shellac-based inks with shellac medium. Keep these tailored inks in tightly lidded glass containers to store for future use.
Pens
A considerable variety of pens, nibs, and implements are available for drawing with ink. There are quill and reed pens; metal crow-quill pens; calligraphy and drawing dipping nibs; refillable, disposable, permanent, and interchangeable-point fountain pens; technical pens; and ballpoint pens. You can even make your own pens by following Van Gogh’s example and gathering hollow marsh and roadside reeds, bamboo shoots, or twigs, then diagonally cutting their tips.
Ballpoint Pens
Ballpoint pens are their own family of implements. They range from the cheap pens you can buy in bulk at the drugstore to archival roller-ball pens intended for artists. The latter of these give artists impressive freedom of movement, making it possible to continue drawing in any direction, and their line flows fast and evenly.
Pen and Ink Techniques
You can stipple, drybrush, silhouette, outline, fill, hatch, cross-hatch, and pattern all manner of dots and dashes, filling drawings with electrifying energy. You can further experiment with surfaces beyond papers and boards — today artists are using traditional and new techniques on skin, glass, metal, fabric, cardboard, and transparent paper. Colored inks make a full palette available to artists and are an exciting alternative or addition to transparent watercolors, among other applications.
Though in modern times ink artists often limited their use of ink to sketches, illustrations, comic books, and animation, ink is now being used to create all manner of intricate images. So, experiment with a few inks, pens, and surfaces, and see what suits you best. The possibilities are exhilarating.
SHERRY CAMHY is a faculty member of the Art Students League of New York, the School of Visual Art, and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and she also teaches in her studio and at other schools nationwide. She is the author of Art of the Pencil: A Revolutionary Look at Drawing, Painting, and the Pencil. To learn more, visit sherrycamhy.com.
A version of this article first appeared in Drawing magazine.
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