As said in my June Favourite's post, I mentioned my Windsor and Newton Drawing Inks. I love to use them to create hard shadows in my illustrations as well as to fill empty gaps in my drawings with vivid colours of these opaque mediums.

Despite being watery and similar to watercolour, I sometimes still struggle using them because of how pigmented they are. So after experimenting with them for a while and testing a few techniques, I've came up with ways to use these inks much more easier and effective so you can splash your canvases with inks the right way. 😉



Work with it like watercolour paints

I always thought working with inks would be much more different but it is, in fact, very similar to watercolours in terms of fluidity, texture and finish. So work with it like your watercolour painting, using watercolour techniques like wet-to-dry, dry-to-wet or wet-on-wet.



Dilute with water

Because they are so pigmented, a tiny spill of ink will stain your canvas and ruin your artwork and they can also stain the bristles of your brush. To solve this artist burden, all you have to do is dip your brush in water, similar to how you dilute the pigmentation in watercolour. Before spreading it on your paper, ensure you test it on another so it's in the right opaqueness!



Work in small amounts

Sometimes when I work with inks, I find that they are just ever so slightly thicker than watercolour. So to prevent any mistakes, I like to work in small amounts first, starting with drops of inks. Since they are a tiny bit thicker and little more absorbent than watercolours, that makes it a little bit harder to blend. So I suggest to work in small areas and gradually move along your canvas.



Work with light colours first

They are very vivid colours, so it's best if you started with lighter colours first. Working with lighter colours to begin with will reduce the risks of making a mistake. If you prefer to start off with dark colours, then go right ahead but it will be better if you stay safe rather than be sorry.



ALWAYS CLEAN YOUR BRUSHES

Inks. Do. Stain. A lot. So make sure that after every use you clean them properly! I forgot to clean one of mine and when I used it again, it presented hints of the black I used before and when it dried the bristles became stiff.



So these are just a few tips and tricks I learned whilst I played around with these inks! I wouldn't say they're my new favourite mediums because they are not easy to handle and they don't give me the results I want but they are a nice thing to have in your collection of art supplies! I think they are more preferred for typography or calligraphy using fountain pens because of how opaque they are, but I believe you can use them for when you're drawing manga or filling in something with a solid colour.

If you have any other tips on how to use inks, I would love to hear them and learn some more!

As part of a collaboration with my dear Filipina buddy, we decided to do portraits of each other! Leila, of dearfutures3lf.wordpress.com, had done a digital portrait of me which you can view by clicking on this link. I did a traditional watercolour, done in an illustration style I've been practicing and on which I'll do a post about it all! Hope you like it :D

For the portrait, I drew a rough outline following with rough sketches of the facial features. Afterwards, I moved on with watercolour paints starting with light greys and then gradually moving onto colours. I then refined the outline and facial features with a black gel ink pen to make it stand out more and finished with some hard shading.

Hey!

If you're a wannabe artist who's struggling a little bit in drawing realism then, as a fellow art student, I'm giving you 5 tips on drawing realistic objects!

1. First, have good pencils. This is going to sound obvious, but it's true. No matter what medium you work with in art, you must have good, quality materials so your results can be a good, quality finished piece.

Pencils that I do recommend for good, quality finished realistic drawings are Faber Castell sketching pencils, the sketching pencils that they sell in WHSmith, Derwent pencils and Staedtler pencils (as shown in the image above of my proud 4-hours-worth drawing of an eye). They usually come in packs with 5 pencils, graded from 4H to 3B (the lightest pencil to the darkest pencil). These are the pencils that I personally use but if you don't have these, then make the most of what you already have!

2. Start off with a lighter pencil/hand. When drawing something, always start off light then gradually go darker. This makes it easier to erase any mistakes you made when drawing your rough outline - it is a nightmare erasing a drawing where you pressed too hard!

You can draw with a light pencil, like a 4H or HB pencil, then what I do is swap pencil to a much darker pencil like 2B (I also use this pencil to shade). If you don't have different graded pencils, then draw with a light hand and then press slightly harder on the paper to go darker!

3. Measure, then outline. When drawing a person, outlining guidelines will help you a looong way! This method will make your portrait more proportionate and, therefore, realistic.

From fuckyeaharttutorials.tumblr.com

4. Have high quality source material. This is something that I hear in every art class from my teacher. He tells us that high quality art studies come from high quality source material. Which true though. I mean, if you're drawing an animal from a crappy photo on your Blackberry then you're going to struggle drawing it because you can't see the details of the picture. Print the image you're drawing, large and high quality, on nice paper. This will make drawing that animal easier!

5. Polish your drawings. Once you finished, take your drawing and compare it with the image you drew it from and see if you need some polishing to - e.g. make that shading darker, add more eyelashes on that eye, etc. Reviewing and perfecting your drawing will ensure that it is proportionate and looks like your image.

So there you have it! 5 useful tips that you can use when you're drawing realism! You don't need to follow these tips as these methods may not apply to everyone, but these are just what I do whenever I draw.

You can see my other art tips here if you'd like!

I hope you find these useful and happy drawing!

Hey!

So, on Thursday 12th and Friday 13th I just had my art exam! It was a stressful week since I came back from a french immersion trip on Monday and I had to catch up on my missed work and revision for other upcoming exams and had to prepare for my art exam too.

Here are my finished pieces: