If you consider yourself a beginner at drawing or had yet to use a dip pen for inking a drawing, please let me know if this tutorial was easy enough to follow. This is the first beginner-friendly tutorial that I've created. Your feedback and suggestions are appreciated for future tutorials. Thanks for watching and happy inking!
Fantastic tutorial. Total newbie. I'm keen to learn and would love to incorporate watercolour wash with drawings. Do you use watercolour wash much, or, primarily the dip pens on their own. Thank you for posting this great content. x
I have been watching your videos for a few weeks now, been working up the courage to buy the materials and start. Just got a sketchbook, the speedball starter, and the small plastic speedball ink jar. I was feeding my kids breakfast when I had an idea of something to sketch for my first sketch, and got started yesterday. I was struggling so much with making ANYthing look right. One of the subjects in the sketch is a crow, so I unsurprisingly found this video that I had yet to watch. I have not taken any real art classes, nor have I made much art at all, just the generic stuff in a high school art class. I have understood volumes and gradients fairly well as I have gotten into miniature painting, but I hadn't realized there were foundational practices for scaling the subject, which will help me tremendously moving forward. I sketched/erased the feet of the crow a countless number of times. I am also having to realize that I try to go too big when I start things and burn myself out with the size of the task at hand. I probably need to do more foundational sketches over and over. Thank you for this.
Thanks for sharing about your process, struggles and insights here in the comments. I had similar struggles when I started and for sure, keeping things simple/small/focused helped. If you haven't already checked out Matt's channel @thevirtualinstructor I enjoy how he teaches new artists the fundamentals. Also, check out my 10 tips blog article: longstrideillustration.com/ten-tips-to-accelerate-pen-ink-drawing-skills/
awesome tutorial! Thanks so much! I love how this puts together all the basics of drawing - breaking down subject into simple shapes, countour lines, cross coutour lines, shading, etc to create a complex artwork from start to finish. Also love the inclusion of practice exercises for shapes because it gives perspective on how to apply such practice to an on-going art project. Getting to know the bigger picture and how the smaller parts fit in. Would really appreciate if you do more of such tutorials!
That's awesome to hear. I'll be happy to continue making similar tutorials. As a learner myself, it's my preference to learn the "why" before the "how" and so I'm glad if this style of teaching resonates with others as well. Thanks for watching and for the kind words!
Thanks for including the warm up techniques! One of your previous videos had inspired me to try some inking techniques for the first time, however I had to keep pausing it, since it was not a tutorial like this. Having warm-up techniques demonstrated is really helpful for beginners like me to follow along!
Your video was FANTASTIC!!! ❤😊❤😊❤ I (hobbyist) get easily discouraged with instructional books. Your materials, outline, drafting, pacing, explanation and real time marks/lines were all soooo insightful -- even how you demonstrated the basic use of very light pencil / rolled kneaded eraser. Folks like me often see the end result or watch a 400x sped up Instagram video and get discouraged. Your decisions for making different directional lines and line weight registers in my memory far better than reading it in a book. I appreciate how your other videos feature pen & ink artists that i can explore. Chris Van Allsburg's children's books were one of the few references i had, until now. Again, many thanks and definitely SUBSCRIBED!!!
Thank you so much for the kind note, subscribing, and the bucks. Chris Van Allsburg has good stuff. I'm glad to hear that my instructional style was helpful, welcome aboard! (BTW: I launched a dip pen course on Skillshare a few days ago, you can take it for free with a 30-day trial: skl.sh/3PF5Je9)
Very educational. I never rinsed the pen nib before re-dipping! Excellent tip to keep the nib clean and smooth flowing. I also want to get that nifty Staedtler pencil (with the handy sharpener built into the cap. Genius).
Thank you for your tutorials. I am a beginner in pen and ink and am clueless. I downloaded your Phoenix yesterday and tried my hand at that, but I really struggled. This one is easier. I am going to try this one instead. I watched all your other videos as well. Thank you so much for all your tips.
Wonderful! There were a lot of requests both on RU-vid and on IG for a beginner-friendly tutorial and so I was aiming for this one to be more inviting than my previous process videos. Hope it's fun, let me know how it turns out!
A beautifully constructed lesson. I learned a lot about how the placement of the lines can convey so much information about the form, light shadow etc. Would you share your easel source? Looks just right
Glad it was helpful! The table easel is 20x31 inches. If you do a web search on "Table top easel" or "flat surface table easel" you will find one, and they come in different sizes and models. The one I have may no longer be available (and it's not that stable), it was on sale at Michael's. Sometimes I prop it on a tin box to get my preferred angle for inking.
