tips with inks
very easy to over-darken using pen and ink yet virtually impossible to reverse if you’ve gone too far. Keep stepping back from your work as you build it up and stop applying ink when you’ve reached a good balance of light and dark.”
7 BEWARE OF SMUDGING
Wet ink must be handled with even more care once it has been applied to the paper. “Always remember to watch your arm,” says Anna Wright. “I still manage to swipe my sleeve across wet ink, which is infuriating. Use a hairdryer to dry the ink if in a hurry.”
8 TRY WORKING WET Just like watercolour paint, ink
reacts differently if it is applied wet-in- wet rather than wet-on-dry. Working on a wet surface will give you much less control over how the ink behaves, but this can be part of the fun of experimenting. If you want to try working in this
way, opt for a ‘sized’ paper – paper with a resistant gelatine layer. Any paper that’s too absorbent will cause the inks to bleed.
9
ACCEPT MISTAKES Anna Wright: “Ink is obviously permanent
so there is no going back. If you are just starting out and a bit nervous, it might be
an idea to sketch in pencil first and draw over the top of this with ink. “However, as you get a bit more confident, it is
much more satisfying to just go for it – it gives the lines much more freshness and a sense of life. If you make a mistake, just accept it and work with it; often the mistakes are the best bits.”
10 BALANCE LINE WITH WASHES
A popular method of working in inks is the line and wash method – mixing dark lines with washes of dilute colour (either ink or watercolour). There is no fixed order for line and
wash work, although be warned that washing colour on top of black lines can often dull them so it helps to consider this when planning a drawing. In order to create a cohesive and balanced artwork, it can be best to work up line and wash in alternate layers on top of one another.
11 EMBRACE ANCIENT TRADITIONS
Learn from Chinese and Japanese painting traditions – not necessarily in terms of style but certainly with regards to your command of the brush. Control is the name of the game. The familiar way of holding a
paintbrush (leaning the brush into your hand at a diagonal angle to the paper) is actually the western way. In the Far East, artists usually hold the brush completely vertically, away from the palm of the hand. Drawing with the brush at a right angle to the page allows for multidirectional strokes.
12
TRY A NEW BASE Pamela Grace: “I generally use
Payne’s Grey or Black ink as a base, but I will add other FW Acrylic Artists’ ink colours to the base to give a more subtle interesting mix. “For example, if I’m using a base
ink of Payne’s Grey, I might add some Burnt Umber or some red inks to counteract the blue bias of the Payne’s Grey. Black ink can have a very warm tone, which isn’t sufficiently intense, so I tend to add mid-blues and sometimes a little red such as Process Magenta or some Burnt Umber.”
Find out more about the artists featured in this story:
www.pamelagrace.co.uk www.inkandpen.co.uk www.annawright.co.uk
Artists & Illustrators 65
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