Dipping into pen & ink

Pen and ink drawings have always appealed to me. My paternal grandfather was an artist and pen and ink was his medium. His subject matter was rather different to mine - he produced beautifully intricate, detailed pictures of period buildings and village scenes in the English Midlands and the Cotswolds. He was one of those special people that have a profound influence on your outlook in life. Oh, that I had his patience and talent! These are some of his wonderful drawings.

I can't come close to his standard, but as pen and ink is also a very effective medium for botanical and other natural history subjects I was keen to have a go. It was tricky to know how to start and was (and still is) very much a case of me making it up as I went along, but I looked at my grandfather's drawings and a few other ink drawings to try to see how to do it. I am gradually learning to do it properly!

Although it's a very different medium to watercolour, the principle is not that different really. Watercolour is just as much (if not more perhaps) about light and shade as it is about the colours themselves, and that is also the case with pen and ink. It's the interpretation of light and shade that gives the subject form.

The drawing at the top of the post of a field maple leaf amongst oak leaves was done for #inktober2020, based (loosely) on a photo I'd taken the previous year. The bright yellowy-brown of the maple leaf was so striking against the dark brown of the oak leaves that it was just crying out for some watercolour to accentuate it.

Not every attempt has been successful, but this is one of my early drawings that I was quite pleased with at the time.

It's a surprisingly versatile medium and works really well for sketches as well as very precise work.

This is a sketch of the seed head of Alexanders that I did for #inktober2020.

And here's a more precise drawing (also for #inktober2020) based on a study of this plant that I did in my botanical sketchbook.

Earlier in the year I attempted to do the 30 Days Wild challenge. One drizzly damp day I wandered around the garden looking for inspiration. I found this snail and initially drew it in pencil, but decided to have a go at doing it again in pen and ink. For this one I used a sepia pen, which isn't as stark as the black pens, and I think it works well for this subject. The intricate patterning on the shell and the texture of the snail's body ("foot") in which you can see the contractions of the muscle as it moves along gave me plenty of detail to use to depict the light and shade. This little drawing is actually due to be included in a book on pen and ink natural history illustration, to be published next year, by the wonderful natural history illustrator and teacher, Sarah Morrish, from whom I have learnt and continue to learn a huge amount.

This is a Skipper butterfly that I photographed in the summer and drew using the sepia pen again. After watching a tutorial by Sarah Morrish, I was inspired to put a watercolour wash on it, which was a little scary after all the work on the initial drawing, but I was quite pleased with the end result.

This is definitely a medium that I want to explore more in the future and I've also started experimenting with a dip pen and different inks. Watch this space for more inky explorations! I'd like to think my grandfather would have been pleased to see me attempting to get to grips with an artform that he was so proficient in.