Pen and Ink Project

Drawing in ink with a steel-nibbed dip pen is an admittedly old-fashioned medium of expression. But pen and ink has a long and distinguished career, likely dating into prehistory. Certainly pen and ink drawing was used in ancient Egypt and other parts of the ancient world. In the middle ages and into the ferment of the Renaissance, drawings with pen were used as preliminary layouts for paintings and can also stand alone as art. In the modern era just over a century ago pen and ink was widely used in illustration, then the most widespread published art. But with photography, movies, color print reproduction and so on, drawing with a pen--whether the traditional dip pens mentioned above or more contremporary technical pens--has fallen into disuse. 

A half-century ago black India ink was the accepted ink and the crow quill was the nib of choice. Various companies still manufacture and sell the small nibs known by the name, which you then mount in a holder. The pen is recharged simply by dipping the tip into the ink bottle, hence the name. 

Once the market for ink illustrations faded, there was still cartooning. Even into our own era, cartoonists of various sorts have used ink as their medium of choice, whether laid down using a technical pen, a dip pen, a brush, or some other implement. But as computer generated drawing has become more and more intuitive and less technical, even older cartoonists do much of their work using a computer and a drawing tablet. 

"Home Place," ink on paper, about 7x12

Imagine my surprise to be asked to produce an ink drawing not long ago. The commission was for an image of a farmhouse and various outbuildings, the client's childhood home. The reference materials were scant, but after a number of studies we achieved an acceptable final result. For the most part the studies were done with dip pens but the final image was a very large drawing. Above is one of the studies done for the project, pen on paper.