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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Ink a Drawing - wikiHow

Ink a Drawing - विकिहो

How to Ink a Drawing


from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

You've done the sketches, you've got the piece, and now you want to ink it. No problem! Follow along to learn how to ink pencil drawings in traditional media - using technical pens, brushes, and good old India Ink.

Steps


  1. Clean up your pencil drawing as much as possible. It's okay to leave a few lines to show where shading/color will go, but for the most part, you want to have a clean pencil drawing with only the base lines present. The picture to the right shows how our drawing looks before we start adding the ink.
  2. Put down the base - first inking. Go over your drawing, tracing over the major lines with a pen. A pen with a fine nib works best here, as this is simply another step to clean up the drawing as much as possible. When you're done, you should have a clean outline of your drawing. Don't worry about line thickness yet - just outline, erase the pencil, and move on to the next step.
  3. Add depth and smoothness - second inking. Once all the pencil lines are gone, go over your drawing a second time, darkening the lines, making them smooth, and adding thickness. Use a brush, a brush pen, or a technical pen of any nib size here. There are many ways to decide which lines should be thicker. Some people only thicken the lines that separate the subject from the background, leaving detail lines thin. In this drawing, the artist thickened the lines meant to delineate shadow. Experiment with different nibs, methods, and styles to determine which you like best.
  4. Add texture. Using a variety of strokes - including but not limited to: hatching, cross-hatching, stippling, scumbling, etc. - add texture to the different parts of your drawing. This is where an eye for detail comes in useful. Once again, you can get a plethora of different strokes from a brush pen, and layer them to add depth and dynamics to a piece. Alternatively, you may choose to use pre-manufactured tones, as is often done in manga.
  5. Add tone. Finish up the piece by adding definition to shadows and contours, smoothing lines, and generally cleaning up your ink work.


Tips


  • Work slowly and don't rush. While sketching is the fast and furious side of drawing, inking is slow and methodical. Rushing is a sure way to make mistakes.
  • When laying down your first and second layers, try to draw using your arm, not just your wrist, to make the lines smoother.
  • Small mistakes can be cleaned up with white ink. Don't use white out - it will ruin your paper.
  • Stippling can be tedious - try stippling to music, dotting with the beat. It will keep you interested and keep you from turning your dots into dot-dashes.
  • If you want to color your work, consider using watercolor. It works well with waterproof India Ink and can add a whole new level of depth to your piece.


Things You'll Need


  • A finished pencil drawing
  • Technical pens in a variety of sizes
  • Brush pens (optional)
  • Brush and ink (optional)


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Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Ink a Drawing. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Woo Hoo!!

Well, I managed to get my slide show feed to work. Not too difficult, but with a wee tot needing attention it's sometimes hard to focus on matters of an adult nature!! I've decided to focus my professional attention on creating toys, or rather costumes, for boys so they can make believe like girls sometimes do.
I don't know if anyone has ever noticed, but as a whole we don't really support a boy's creative nature, which in itself might be part of the problem our country has when it comes to innovative ideas. But I'm not going to preach. I simply want to make things for the parents of little boys who want an option beyond Star Wars and other mass marketed characters and the typical pirate/policeman/fireman/soldier costumes that you can find everywhere. I want to support a boy's sense of adventure and encourage his love of learning through creative make believe.
For now I'm going to go support my boy's need for a nap!!

Monday, April 14, 2008

Not so tech savvy!

So I'm all over art techniques, great visions, creativity, etc. but computers.....not so much! You'd think being married to a tech geek SOMETHING should rub off.....NOPE! Hopefully someday the slide show you see will actually be my work not some weird number person who seems to be the default....Whatever!! I'll play around with my options and see if I can tweak it so it works. And this is why my website is outdated!! Well this and a 9 month old boy!!

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Welcome to my life!

Okay, so it's not necessarily my life but my life as an artist. I haven't blogged before so bear with me at the beginning. I hope to let you into my artistic process a little and hopefully introduce you to some of the craftsmen (and women) and artists that inspire me. Well I don't want to strain myself so I will end this chapter. Hopefully, the next one will be a little more exciting!!