David Morales H’s Pen and Ink Drawing Techniques

In revisiting pen & ink, I got Pen and Ink Drawing Techniques by David Morales H. out of the library. Here are some tips from that book.

Tips

I will skip the section on supplies since I am good on supplies; see my Pen & Ink Supplies Guide. The book also contains the usual drawing tips about composition (e.g. rule of thirds), measuring proportions using your pencil, and perspective. I’ll mostly ignore general drawing tips and focus on pen and ink tips specifically.

Pen Grip

Grip your pen in different ways; for example, try a loose grip further back on the pen for large expressive lines, and a closer grip for fine details. Also experiment with using different parts of the arm: control the pen with your whole arm, wrist, or fingertips for different line lengths.

Hatching

The types of hatching (creating shadow with parallel lines):

• Line hatching: Lines in a single direction, e.g. diagonal
• Cross-hatching: Lines in crisscrossing directions
• Contour hatching: Lines following contours, e.g. the curves of the face
• Stippling: Using dots instead of lines
• Tick hatching: Small lines
• Woven hatching: over/under lines, a basket pattern
• Scribbling: disorderly, spontaneous lines

Generalized drawing process

Much of the book is taken up with step-by-step for drawing various subjects, and I’ve generalized what the steps mostly seem to be.

1. Sketch the outline, with pencil or light pen lines. Concentrate on general proportions.
2. Sketch in the interior lines, again with pencil or light, sketchy pen lines.
3. Reinforce/sharpen/define the lines, moving from pencil to pen, and/or using heavier, more confident lines.
4. Add hatching/stippling for textures and shadows. There may be several rounds of this (e.g. hatching one way then another for cross-hatching). Generally, put in textures before shadows, if doing something textured. This seems to be where most of the time is put in.
5. Add final details. Keep it simple, don’t let the final details significantly weigh down the value structure you have set up.

General thoughts

I got an inkling (? get it?) that this book would not be for me when the tips in the hatching section repeatedly stressed patience and consistency. If there’s one thing that I can do with consistency, it’s inconsistent, sloppy hatching.

Throughout the section on hatching, David Morales H. makes the point that hatching succeeds or fails on its consistency: in line weight, direction, spacing, and length (for tick marks). You can and should vary these things intentionally to vary the values, but random or non-meaningful variation will look messy and ruin the effect. His drawings demonstrate that its better to create a few distinct values and make consistent half-tones for each value than to be constantly varying them. Even in scribbling, which gives the appearance of spontaneity, it’s important to keep control over line weight and density to create coherent value structures.

Creating this consistency requires planning and patience, something that is, for me, in short supply.

I knew the book was not for me when the exercises suggested doing either 15, 30, 60, or 120 minute sketches. Those are too long. In my opinion, timed exercises ought to start at 1 minute, maybe even less.

I don’t think David Morales H’s methodical style is the only was to do pen & ink. For example, Claire Giordano tends to emphasize quick sketches, among other pragmatic plein air techniques. So, her ink class includes shorter timed sketch lengths and the use of tools that allow you to work faster, such as the brush pen. This book includes brush pen in the supplies guide, but doesn’t give any examples of its use.

Still, even though I think there is some room to be a little faster and more expressive (and lazier) in ink, I do think it is inherently a medium requiring more consistency and patience than, say, watercolor. It is also missing COLOR. I’m increasingly realizing that color is 80% of the reason I show up.