12 Exercises to Draw with Confidence using Ink Fineliners

1. Introduction: Gain confidence using a fine liner ink pens and learn to master this incredibly versatile and challenging medium. Hi, my name is Patty Lenton, and I'm a digital artist and illustrator based in England. I've been working professionally in art for several years now. And one of my absolute favorite media to draw with is nx. Within inks, my favorite pen to use is the fine liner ink pen. I've worked over the years using many different media, including fine liners, marker pens, colored inks and more. I was even commissioned, wants to draw a huge abstract mural in the lobby of an apartment building using paint pens and really fat ink markers. I love drawing with fine liners and ink so much. And whilst I've worked over a range of different commissions and illustrations, my absolute favorite and specialists areas working is abstract pattern making. The exercises that I'm gonna be showing you today, I've used myself to gain confidence when using ink fine liners. And I'm hoping that they do the same for you. Over the course of this class, we're going to be looking at 12 different exercises and activities to help you gain confidence when using ink fine liners. We're going to be looking at techniques such as mark-making, shapes and patterns. And shading will also be freeing our creativity using exercises like drawing with your non-dominant hand, doodling, focusing on tiny details and drawing in one line. I'm also going to be sharing some of my own personal tips and tricks, as well as recommendations for paper pens and other media. As we go through this class. By the end of this class, I want you to be able to draw something using your new found confidence in ink, fine liner pens. Whether that's sharing one of the activities or exercises that we did in this class, or uploading something completely brand new that you have now been able to draw thanks to your new confidence. I can't wait to see what you create. 2. The Class Project: In this class we're going to be covering 12 activities and exercises to help you gain confidence using ink fine liners. Each exercise class provides you with an opportunity to add to your sketchbook. I recommend dedicating at least one page per activity based on the size of your sketch book. Don't worry, I'm going to be recommending brands and styles and types and sizes of sketchbook. In the next lesson, what you need to get started. By the end of this class, you will have a sketchbook filled with new techniques and you'll be brimming with confidence. At the end of this class, I'm gonna be inviting you to share your favorite activity or exercise from this class or something that you've been able to draw with your new-found confidence using ink fine liners. Don't forget to post your project to the project gallery. 3. What You Need to Get Started: Let's go over some of the materials that you might need to get started in following along with the activities in this class. A pack of fine liner pens is best. You could follow along with a biro or ballpoint pen if you wanted. But to get the most out of some of these activities, you're going to want a pack of fine liners with a range of nip sizes. Avoid using pencil as the point of this class is to get out of our comfort zone and embrace the ink. If you're just starting out, I would recommend getting a fine liner set with a wide range of nib sizes. Ideally from size is 0.05 to 1.0, but aim to have at least four or five different nip sizes in your arsenal. My favorite fine liners at the moment are microns secure. A fine liners. I find they're incredibly smooth to draw with, and I just love the feeling of them on the paper. They're great quality ink and I love using them in my drawings. If you want to play with color, you could get a pack of color fine liners, full points, or by rows for color fine liners. My favorite sets, they always have been, and I imagined they always will be our Staedtler try plus fine liners. There's really nothing specifically special about these fine liners, But I love the wide range of colors that they come in. And you can find these in most stationery shops. When choosing paper, standard art paper or even print paper will suffice. Recommend for this particular class, starting a sketch book to gather all of your ideas and exercises. We want to have by the end of this class is a reference sketch book that is just full of ideas and mark making and shapes and patterns and everything that you can refer back to when you're creating your inky illustrations. There are several brands of sketchbook that I would recommend if you're just starting out. See why it's make great quality sketchbooks. And I love their paper. Personally. I also love using Casals own range of art papers. Start small with your sketch book so you don't get overwhelmed with the fear of the blank page. I have a wide range of different size sketchbooks, all the way from A6 going up to a foreign, even a three. If you start around the A5 size, I think that's a perfect size to start starting out. Particularly with these exercises using a six, the page can actually be quite small and overcrowded and A4 and bigger, you might end up feeling overwhelmed with having to fill the page each time around. So I would recommend with an A5 sketchbook to get started. 4. A Note on Confidence: Finally, before we dive into our first exercise, I just wanted to take a minute to talk to you about confidence in general. There's no right or wrong way to take this class. I'll be guiding you with my own techniques and tips. But this is an opportunity for you to find your own inky voice and style. There are infinite possibilities and ink out there. This is just a guide to help you along your artistic journey. As we progress through these activities, each one will get progressively more challenging. Please take your time, follow along at your own pace. And if a technique isn't speaking to you, just adapt it or move along to the next one. There are more challenging activities and exercises that might really hit the note perfectly for you. And simpler ones that just aren't ticking the boxes. That's okay. The important thing is that you're happy, you're enjoying this class and that you're building your confidence as you grow. Confidence comes from within. I can't literally teach you how to be confident, but I can equip you with all the tools, tips, and techniques you need to launch yourself up and get you drawing competently. Now with all that in mind, let's pick up our pens and let's get started drawing with inks confidently with our first activity. 5. Activity 1: Lines: For this first activity, we're going to be drawing with straight lines. No rules allowed. Lines are the foundation of any drawing. And as basic as it sounds, to draw a straight line as one of the greatest skills I've practiced and developed. That might sound strange, but a lot of my work involves straight lines and drawings would just look odd if I used a ruler. There's this scene from this movie. Good night Mr. Tom. And Tom asks this young boy how he was able to draw this line so straight without a ruler. And I don't know what it was. I was eight at the time when I first saw this movie, it completely stuck with me. And I thought it was so incredible that one could draw that accurately without a ruler. Now, I can, for the first activity and the first page in your sketchbook, I just want you to draw straight lines. Do not use a ruler. Start with shorter ones and progressively get longer and longer. If you've got big enough piece of paper like a four or a three, see if you can get all the way from the longest edge to the other longest edge, then same across the other way as well without using a ruler and see how straight you can make those lines as you draw them. This act of just drawing lines on the page. This is called mark-making. And this is the very first step and getting confident using ink fine liners. 6. Activity 2: Lines and Pressures: For our second activity, we're going to be building on our first one of drawing straight lines by increasing and decreasing the nib sizes, by increasing and decreasing pressure to create different effects on the page using different pens from your set, see the differences in nib sizes. Pens I have here. You can see my nib sizes go from 0.05 mm up to 1.5 mm. One of my top tips for this activity is to actually create a reference page within your sketch book showing each of your different pens what the thicknesses and what they look like on the page. This can actually be really helpful later when you're trying to create something specific. And you want to refer back to which pen was it that made that really cool effect? And you've actually got a reference page and you can look at it and say, Oh yeah, it was the one-point nodes. I personally find this tip really helpful and I use it all the time. As you're drawing in your sketch book, I want you to create different lines with different thicknesses and see how they interact with each other and how you're creating those marks. Increase or decrease the speed at which you're moving the pen across the page. Draw straight lines, curvy lines, loopy lines, layer them on top of each other, mix the thicknesses of the pens and the speeds of the pens, really get to know your pens. One of the best tips that I can give you about working with ink is that you need to know your pens inside out. I can't tell you if I if if one of my pens breaks, if one of them stopped working, it dries up out of ink and I have to go get a new one and I can't get that specific pen. It sounds, it sounds really bizarre, but it's actually so important to me. I have to have that brand of pen in a nought 0.3 because that's how I make that particular mark on the page. Once you know your pens inside-out and exactly how they're making marks on the page. That's how you're gonna be really confident saying, I know exactly how to draw that and I know the pen, I need to do it. 7. Activity 3: Straight Edge Shapes: For our third activity, we're graduating from straight lines to straight line shapes using the exact same idea in theory. Again, using a brand new page within your sketch book, I want you to start drawing out straight-line shapes again, without using a ruler. Try drawing squares, rectangles. Rhombus is pentagons, octagons, stars, any shape you can think of that has straight lines at the core. You can make them increase and decrease in size. Layer them up, makes the thicknesses think about the speed and the pressure and how you're applying the pen to the page again, my shattered pieces start by me drawing a border around the page. And then every straight-line shape and size, which I then fill with an abstract ink pattern. Every straight line on these pieces has been drawn completely free hand, no ruler, no pencil to show the way. Now we're gonna be trying the exact same exercise using rounded shapes. 8. Activity 4: Rounded Shapes: At this point, you should already be feeling more confident using your ink fine liners. And you can start to see the person hair, excuse the pun. But we're now going to be moving on to round shapes and getting a little more fluid with our drawings. Again, on a new page of your sketchbook, I want you to practice drawing circles, ovals, teardrops, hearts, and swells. Any shape you can think of, which has a rounded edge. In the same spirit as drawing the straight line without the ruler. One fun challenge is to try and draw a circle perfectly without a compass. It takes a lot of practice to be able to draw that beautiful, perfect even circle. And I'll admit it's still something that I struggle with today. As you draw your shapes in your sketchbook, mix them up exactly as you did with your straight line shapes. Think about increasing them in size and pressure. Changing the nib sizes, maybe changing halfway through shape. Change the speed at which you draw them, make them tiny, make them massive. You can layer them on top of each other, makes the thicknesses, and make them concentric. Here's a piece that I drew imaginatively named circles, made entirely of circles in different pen sizes. These last four activities have really looked at the importance of mark making and getting the pen on the page. Hopefully by now you're feeling a lot more confident in this area. And now we're going to be moving on to our next stage of exercises, where we'll be looking at gradients and depth. 9. Activity 5: Gradients in Ink: One thing that people have told me scares them when it comes to working with ink and particularly ink fine liners is that the drawings have no depth. This is something that I completely disagree with. And in this activity I'm going to show you why. There are many techniques for creating depth, tone, light, and shade using ink. First up, one that we've already covered in our previous exercises is pressure. Again without pressing on your pen so hard that you break the NAB. Think about how light touches with the ink on the page and heavier, heavier touches using the exact same pen can create different depths and lightness and darkness within your ink. Pressure can be used very, very well within ink illustrations. And this is something that's definitely worth practicing within your sketchbook. Stippling. This is the process of adding dots closer together or further apart to create depth and shade within your drawing is very similar to pointillism in painting, where artists like Sierra would paint using only very tiny dots. These dots would then create a pattern and color and shape and shade within paintings, even though they're just working using dots. Hatching is the process where you are drawing using straight lines to create shade. So you can draw the lines very close together or very far apart to create the impression that the shade is lighter or darker. Cross hatching is just like hatching except instead of lines just going in one direction, you're literally crossing them over each other. So if you think back to our activity where we were practicing layering lines on top of each other. That was crosshatching. You've already had a go at that cross hatching again, same as hatching. If you cross hatch the lines very close together, you're going to create a much darker effect. And if you cross hatch them further apart, you're going to make a much lighter effect. Scribbling. This is exactly what it sounds. You are literally scribbling on the page, scribbling in different intensities, very, very tight scribbles together and very, very far apart scribbles, you're going to be able to create a lot of light and depth and darkness in your drawings. It's also, in my opinion, a more fun way to draw depth and light with a drawing, hatching and crosshatching can be quite rigid and stippling can take an awful amount of time. But scribbling is actually super fun. And the idea of drawing something and then scribbling all over it to create that depth is actually a really fun way to draw. One activity that works really well is on a page of your sketchbook, draw a long thin rectangle, and then make a gradient using each of these techniques. So pick one end of the rectangle and make that your dark as possible. And then slowly, slowly all the way out to the other end, make it as light as possible, or vice versa, started the light end of the rectangle and then make your way across getting darker and darker and darker using these techniques. Mastering ink gradients, enlightened depth using these techniques is a great way to add more intensity to your artworks. 10. Activity 6: Making Patterns: Now that you've mastered lines and shapes, you're gonna be able to put them together to create patterns on the page. Abstract patterns is one of the core aspects of my art style, whether I'm working with ink or creating digital illustrations. I want you to start with two shapes. Find an interesting way to make them interact, and then repeat that across. That, that's a person. You've made your first person. How about a passive lines? What would that look like? Look back through your sketchbook for inspiration on how you've created marks on the page and how you might turn that into a pattern. You could draw sets of lines to fill with a pattern. They can be straight or wavy or a mixture. One great way to practice passing making in your sketch book is draw a grid and fill each square with a different pattern using a different technique, different mix of shapes and sizes and nib sizes, pressures, everything that you've learned about mark making up until now. Keep practicing creating these patterns. And not only will your confidence grow, but you will have a sketchbook filled with different patterns to reference back to later at the drop of a hat. 11. Activity 7: Doodles: I am a big doodler. You should see my notebooks. It's not just in sketchbooks where I do my notebooks, my work notes, meeting notes, recipe books that all full of little doodles and squiggles and shapes and lines. I can't stop doodling. To get started with doodling, pick a point on the page and just start from there. Try and add to the page without leaving a gap and keep going until the page is completely full. You'll do those can be figurative, such as flowers, moons and stars, rainbows and sunshine, leaves or vines. Or they could be abstract shapes leading from one to the other, like circles and squares, lines and triangles. As you practice your doodling, think back on your activities so far and your mark-making. Flip back through that sketch book and find examples of things that you could then use to doodle in the same way that you did with your pattern-making. 12. Activity 8: Using Your Other Hand: This next activity is a really fun and challenging way to get out of your creative comfort zone and boost your confidence at the same time. For eighth activity, we're going to be drawing with our non-dominant hand. The purpose of this activity isn't to become as good at drawing with your left hand is as you normally are with your right or vice versa. It's more about unlocking the other side of your brain to make drawing with your dominant hand easier and therefore giving you confidence. E.g. if you were to draw something really simple that you're familiar with, say a flower or hot, with your non-dominant hand first. And then try and draw it now with your dominant hand. And see how much easier and more confident you feel drawing with your dominant hand. One trick is to set yourself a short timer and then give yourself the same amount of time with your other hand. You're bound to see how much easier is now drawing the same item. Another trick is mimicking. Try drawing with your non-dominant hand and see what kind of marks you're making on the page. Drawing straight lines or even very basic shapes can create different effects because you're not using your main hand. Looking at a shave which has now got some wiggles in it, or different effects with the ink trying to replicate that with your dominant hand. The important thing to remember about this activity is that it's not about becoming ambidextrous and being able to draw perfectly with your non-dominant hand. If you already are ambidextrous, you've clearly got a leg up on the rest of us and you can probably just jump straight ahead to the next challenge because this isn't going to be challenging for you at all. But the idea is that instead of perfecting your non-dominant hand, you're actually trying to free up your creativity and open up new possibilities in mark-making on the page. 13. Activity 9: All in the Details: So far in this class, I've shown you a lot of different ways to do general mark-making and specifically abstract patterns on the page. Now so excited to show you this activity because it's actually one of my personal favorite ways to draw. When drawing figuratively. I want you to take an item, anything at all, something detailed. I'd recommend avoiding anything made of glass or highly reflective. As we want to be looking at something that has a lot of details, it's very easy to draw. I want you to start by thinking about the details of the item that you're looking at. Say we are drawing a vars, focus on the rim of the vase and then the lip, and then maybe a little bit of the neck. And then slowly you're starting to build out the shape of the vase. Instead of that immediate, I'm going to draw a vars and then fill in the details. You can go even further by really zooming in on the detail of your item and thinking about there's a tiny bit of shading there, there's a little crack here. So you're really focusing on the details of that drawing. For me, this is a great way about getting confident using the very, very thin pens in your arsenal. I'm always tempted to go for really thick pens and make big marks. That's what a lot of my drawings are. But being confident in creating those really tiny details with this really tiny nib pens is hugely beneficial. One tip for making this challenge a little easier for you is look at the item head-on and not on an angle. If you're looking at the item straight on, you're going to be creating the shape very flat. And that's going to make it a lot easier for you, making the marks on the page, anything on an angle. You're then also taking perspective into account, which is great if you're already feeling confident and you want to do that, go for it, That's going to be brilliant to see. But if you find that you are struggling, imagine like the vars that it's flat and you're looking at it very square rather than on the angle. And you're having to figure out all the perspective as well. It's very tempting to try and draw any item as an outline first and then filling in the details. But personally and I hope you found to doing this exercise that is actually great fun, starting at a single point and almost discovering the item as you draw it, going out from that single point to create the whole drawing. 14. Activity 10: Single Line Drawings: For our tenth activity, we're actually going to be looking at drawing using one long, continuous, single line. Single line drawings have become very popular in media and style at the moment. People have them done as tattoos and very minimalist illustrations. And I find that it's a great way to get super confident using fine liners. Pick an item, start with something basic. Examiners want you to attempt to draw it in one long continuous line. You can go back over your lines you've already drawn if you need to. Try to not take your pen off the paper. If the thing that you're drawing has a big gap, such as a face and you need to get across the skin to draw the eye. Just go for it. Think about where a line might make the most sense artistically within your drawing. And if you're not sure, just do this anyway. This is definitely one of the more challenging activities. If you're feeling overwhelmed, don't worry, just start small. Think about something little that you can draw that you're familiar with as a shape. And then slowly build up into more complicated illustrations. 15. Activity 11: Drawing Letters: This one might seem a bit odd, but I've always loved drawing letters and punctuation marks. It's something I've done since I was a small child and it's something that I've continued to do in my adult life. As an illustrator. You'll be tempted to pencil the shape of the letter out first, but don't write the letter or a punctuation mark first if you're struggling to visualize it. And then use that as a guide in your sketch book. You can draw it as a straight line shape and then add embellishments to it. Or you could draw it as a block letter. Then add patterns and lines to make his more unique piece. As always, as we have done throughout this class, remember to reference your sketchbook for mark making patterns and shape ideas as you fill out your letters and punctuation marks. Another fun challenge is to combine letters together. You can match downstrokes, such as putting H and L together or j and k, even V and B, you can make one larger than the other, such as E and T, or T and X, or C and H. You could put one inside the other, such as 0 and x. As we move on to our final activity, I'm hoping you're feeling full of confidence and your sketch book is full of practices. 16. Activity 12: Embracing the Mistakes: Here we are at the final activity, embracing the mistakes. One of the biggest fears people have about ink is how permanent is. Am I completely understand? I felt the exact way when I was starting out. There's definitely comfort and safety working in pencil as you can erase it. Even media like acrylics, you can build up the paint and you can cover mistakes you make. With ink. It's so much more final because once you've made that mark on the page, you can't exactly go over it without creating something else. And I believe that's where a lot of people feel the fair when drawing with ink, fine liners with ink. If you slip or smudge or feeling something you weren't meant to within a pattern, it can feel like your work is ruined. And I just want to give you the confidence, same as I have in the past, that your work isn't wherein there are ways to embrace this and transform it into something new that you maybe hadn't planned for before. I want you to take your drawing and deliberately add something incorrect, such as a line or a smudge. Now I want you to think outside of the box, your art is a living thing and it's now in a state of evolution. It was going to be x. Now we've done something else. It's not going to be x anymore. We're going to need to keep going and turn it into y. To quote the wonderful Bob Ross, there are no mistakes, just happy little accidents. I won't lie. Even being super confident in ink fine liners and pens Doesn't take the annoyance out of making mistake. There's nothing I know to do to stop them being annoying, but at least you won't be afraid of making them anymore. 17. Your Project: Well done. You've made it through 12th activities designed to challenge your thinking, builds up your confidence and your creativity using ink fine liners. By this point, you should be feeling really great. A sketchbook filled with ideas and inspiration, patterns, mark-making, and more. For your final project, I would love to see which activity you connected with most, which one will be the most confidence, which one had the most surprising outcome for you, whether it was general mark-making, drawing with a single line, creating patterns using your other hand or any of the other activities in this class. I would love to see it. So please snap a picture of which one spoke to you the most, or something that you've drawn with your new found ink, confidence and post it in the projects gallery. 18. Final Thoughts: Congratulations and thank you so much for taking my class. It really means the world to me. During this class, we have been exploring ways to gain confidence using fine liners in a wide range of techniques, including mark-making, shapes and patterns and shading. We've also been freeing our creativity using exercises like drawing with your non-dominant hand. Doodling, focusing on details, and drawing in one long continuous line, reaching the end of this class, you should now have a sketch for brimming with examples and exercises and a newfound confidence. I can't wait to see what you draw with this new conference. So please don't forget to post your project to the project gallery.