Several years ago after hearing about Inktober, a worldwide October event to promote pen and ink drawing, I decided to give it a whirl. The idea, which originated nearly 15 years ago, was to provide a daily structure to hone skills with a pen. The originator, a fellow named Jake Parker, told others who told others, and so on. The first plan was to make and post an ink drawing online every day. On the website linked above, you can find a list of prompts for a daily drawing, but participants often use their own subject material. And some now participate by doing a drawing a week for an entire year. Regardless of schedule, the idea is to form a regular habit of drawing with ink.
My own art practice has included pen and ink drawing since I began, but not as a primary medium. Instead ink drawing for me is a way to train the eye and hand. Drawing with liquid ink is demanding because ink stays wet, for one thing. And inked work can't be erased, of course. The limitations of drawing with an old-fashioned metal nib are also forbidding. Metal nibs can leak, release ink in blobs, bend out of shape, and more and so are often avoided these days. Technical pens are more favored, but unlike dip pens, tech pens don't permit much variation in line weight. Most I use technical pens in various sizes but occasionally I'll fall back on an old crow quill, a kind of metal nib that's been in use for at least two centuries.
So I'm giving this Inktober another go. Here are the first two. Each is on the same tan paper, though the colors are different in these photos. The first is an ink drawing after a marble Roman portrait bust dating to about 100 CE. The second is a landscape of a mountain path, from an online reference. In each case I made an initial pencil drawing using relatively hard graphite, then completed an ink drawing using technical pen. I like Pigma Micron pens for their opacity and archival qualities.). Later this month I'm going to try some dip pen works.
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