Where It All Happens – The Drawing Board
Jul 19, 2010 art
Today I thought I’d just post a couple of pictures of my drawing board (since I cleaned it up) and the ‘tools of the trade’.
All nice and clean! OK, apart from the ink marks, but they just won’t come out, I’ve tried… trust me!
On the window ledge is my little lamp, I only use it to light a subject in a still life. On the right-hand side of the ledge is my mannequin, it’s only about 10″ tall and really handy for when I need to draw a pose or sometimes I light it with the lamp and do a quick sketch of it for practice. On the board is some A3 paper, to give you sense of scale… it’s a pretty big board. Top left of it is my masking fluid (white top) ink (black top) then my pencils and ink brushes. Right side of the board is my (homemade) tub of charcoal dust, pencils and charcoal, pastels, pastel pencils then more pastels.
Hey, look, it’s my pencils and what-not! From top to bottom:
- Pipette (for moving ink from bottle to brush pen)
- Masking fluid (for watercolour/ink stuff)
- Black ink
- Sandpaper (for sharpening pastels/pencils/eraser)
- ink pens
- erasers (rubber and kneadable)
- technical pencil
- masking fluid brush
- couple more brushes for blending charcoal/pencil
- ink brush (put ink in the reservoir then effectively paint with it)
- one more ink pen
- (homemade) tortillon for blending charcoal/pencil
- dip pen (for ye olde style inking)
- another blending brush
- another ink pen
- and, last but not least, my battery powered eraser.
Ooh, pastels!
Top left is my tub of charcoal dust, made by rubbing a piece of dark charcoal over my sandpaper and letting the dust fall into the rub, perfect for rubbing in to the paper to give me a neutral tone to start with. Top right is my tin of pencils (the six pencils you see are red, white, charcoal then three graphite pencils) by Derwent. It also has three sticks of graphite (top of the tin) and three stick of charcoal (bottom of the tin). Beside the tin of pencils are some of my pieces of pastel. The thin square sticks are hard pastel, the others are soft pastel. Middle of the photo is my tin of pastel pencils, also by Derwent, these are various colours and are quite hard, good for doing detailed work. Bottom of the photo is some more hard and soft pastels.
So there you go, a quick look behind the scenes of where my pastel and pencil drawings come from!
Tags: blending, brush, brush pen, charcoal, dip, eraser, graphite, hard, ink, kneadable, lead, mannequin, pastel, pen, pencil, rubber, soft, studio
Another two new abstracts, both are for sale.
Another two new abstracts:
Untitled Abstract #2 - Acrylic and ink on box canvas
Untitled Abstract #3 - Acrylic and ink on box canvas
Both of the paintings above and the other abstract painting I did will appear shortly in the shop.
They can also be bought through Bonanzle. See the Bonanzle box on the right for links.
Also, don’t forget to join my Facebook fan page: http://facebook.com/ronnietuckerart
Tags: abstract, acrylic, art, canvas, ink, landscape, paint, painting, paintings, pen, pencil, print, shop
A new ABSTRACT painting!
Nope, not a cartoon, not a landscape, not even a portrait or still life… but an abstract:
Untitled Abstract - Acrylic and ink on box canvas
Was lots of fun to do as I could throw the rule book out the window and just do whatever the hell came to mind. :)
Tags: abstract, acrylic, art, artist, black, blue, box, canvas, ink, lines, orange, painter, painting, red, yellow
Small World – a new watercolour and ink illustration
Mar 21, 2010 ink, watercolour
Once I had a basic idea of what I wanted, I drew a thumbnail sketch.
The initial thumbnail sketch
The thumbnail in this case (shown left) is no bigger than a postcard. Usually thumbnails are much smaller, but I like mine a bit bigger as I like to noddle around and add small details, such as the little fish leaping from the pond.
After I had drawn the thumbnail I looked at it and thought that the bottom half was pretty unnecessary, hence the line through the middle.
The thumbnail, inked and coloured using watercolour pencils
Next I grabbed some watercolour pencils and began scribbling in some colour. I largely ignored the bottom half of the page since I wasn’t going to use it. But then a happy accident occured. I stepped back, looked, and quite liked how the colour was fading out towards the bottom, so I left it at that and began inking the outline.
For inking, I went old fashioned style and used a dip pen with a bottle of ink. I inked the house, greenery and other bits but purposely ignored most of the bottom half making it look like the colour, and outlines, are fading away in the bottom half. This I liked.
But that was only the thumbnail. Now to do it properly!
Tags: dip, earth, illustration, illustrator, india, indian, ink, inked, inking, miniature, paint, painting, pen, planet, quill, small, watercolor, watercolour, world
ink drawing complete – finally!
Finally managed to complete the ink drawing I was working on. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but when you realise that it takes about three hours to cover about one quarter of the A3 page with a 0.1 pen, the novelty quickly wears off! But I managed it. I reckon that it took me about five or six hours in total to finish it. The dark background was done using a 0.8 pen, so that sped things up a bit and the black trees in the background were done with my brush pen, again saving time. But the 0.1 liner pen is almost worn down to the metal, there’s about 0.5mm left of the nib showing.
I’m glad I did it though, and I’d definitely do more. 
Tags: 0.1, 0.8, a3, a4, black, brush, brush pen, ink, liner, paper, pen, white
Working on a new ink drawing, A3 size!
I really enjoyed doing the (now sold) ink drawing I called ‘House by the Lake’. I’ve now started a v2.0 of said drawing using A3 watercolour paper and a 0.1 Liner pen. It’s going slowly, but surely:
Although I have to admit, I’m dreading that big tree on the left and the dark background. It’s taken about 3hrs of drawing to do what you see above! I love ink sketches like this, but sometimes I just don’t have the patience for it! 
Tags: 0.1, drawing, grass, house, ink, lake, landscape, liner, pen, reflection, sketch, trees, water
Cartooning – ink pen, brush pen, or both?
Many people who do cartoons or ink outlines to their pencil sketches often use mechanical/technical ink pens (shown below), also called ‘liner’ pens.
While I do use these myself, I thought I’d show the difference that using a brush pen can make.
Brush pens come in different shapes, sizes, and makes. The one I use is shown left and is a Pentel Water Brush. Normally you fill it with water and use it with watercolour paints/pencils, but I fill mine with Indian ink and use it for cartoon/illustration work. You can also buy a ‘brush-pen’ which comes with ink refills, but I find the water brush more cost effective and I can fill it with whichever brand of ink that I prefer.
Technical/mechanical pens give a constant line thickness, this is handy if your an architect drawing out house plans, but not when it comes to cartooning/illustrative work, you want your lines to be of varying thickness to make it look less-technical.
Tags: brush, brush pen, cartoon, cartooning, cartoonist, illustration, illustrative, indian ink, ink, liner, mechanical, outline, pen, pentel, technical, water brush
A comparison of Derwent Aquatone, Derwent Inktense and Caran D’Ache Neocolor II
First of all, this test is far from scientific… it involved me doing a light scribble of each colour on some rough watercolour paper then applying some water to one half of the scribble. The idea being to show how the colours look, dry, on the paper, and to show the change in colour when the water is added. The reason for the light scribble is that a heavy scribble can not only damage the paper, it makes it harder to remove the scribble from the paper as the colour has become engrained in the paper. A heavy scribble will get your brighter, deeper, colour – but it is usually best to achieve this through layering. I’ve also tried to pick the same colours from all three sets, but colours (and names) vary from box to box, so I could only get similar colours.
So, on with the comparison…
Tags: aquatone, brush, caran, d'ache, derwent, drawing, ink, inktense, neocolour, painting, pencil, stick, water, watercolor, watercolour
and a fourth item goes up for sale on ebay
Yep, another day, another item. This time it’s Lakeside House, which is ink on watercolour paper:
Lakeside House, up for sale on eBay, starting at only £5!
For all my items, currently available, check the Auctiva box to the right hand side of the page.
Good luck!
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