Inking Basics: Drawing with pen and brush

1. Inking Basics: Introduction: Hi, I'm Tim Eggar. I'm joining you from Joshua Tree National Park. So for this class, what we're gonna do is learn from nature how to draw with ink and do landscapes. So the reason why I'm out here is because you can always look at a photograph and draw. But what I'll do is all actually be out here breaking down rocks, trees, bushes, different details and teaching you how with the with brushes or with pens how to drop it. The reason why I'm teaching this class is because I feel with the right knowledge and the right tools. Anyone who likes to ink or draw can really become better at it and really excel at painting nature or landscapes. So what we're covering this class includes what supplies I use and recommend. We'll create some marks. I'll show you how to do some different kind of marks with ink, and then I'll simplify how to draw trees, rocks and bushes So you can use that knowledge to your class project, which will include composition, composing a landscape and then completing a landscape or a drawing of a tree. Something in nature. What you'll need for this class are some sign of some sort of ink, like India ink some sort of brushes and pens and paper and then illustration board is what I use, and you're welcome to use that to in a later video. All cover exactly the tools that I use so you can see what I recommend, So let's get started. 2. The Right Tools: now, before we get drawing, what I'll cover are the supplies that I recommend. You don't have to use these, but I'll just give you some knowledge into what I used and what's worked for me. And so I'll start with paper in this class in the next class. I'll do some just random markings just so you can see. And I'm using just normal copier paper, nothing fancy. And then, as we move on and do our more finalized class project, I've got this illustration board, which comes in a variety and a lot of different people make it. But it's basically like a cardboard that has a nice thick. It's nice and thick, and it has. It holds the ink very well. I'll jump into the pens that I use. Uh, you can buy pens either in packs or on their own, and I've done a variety of both. What I normally use are the fabric Castel line. It's just they make a good product, and so in this pack I get a variety, which I'll show you here, what the pens are and what they do. Just some normal marks here that you can see the variety so they're split up into either like tech pens, which create lines, or the more brush strokes that you see which are created by the brush in the soft brush. And so these these air nice cause for line work. I won't really going toe too much, but it'll give you if you're doing like mountains in the background or like clouds. They're just a nice thin brush or pen, and then the brushes doom or of a more of an organic kind of you can do like bushes Or just they could grass. So I like to have a variety. And then another thing I've purchased is the fabric. Estelle is a really big black 1 99 and that's good for like shading. I think if your shading and something or doing a shadow, some sort of shadow and then another. This is a pen tell brush pin, which I enjoy a lot. So basically, for pens, I would say, get a variety, give either technical tech line pens or the brush pens, and that'll suit wealth suits you well, and then this is very important. These the brushes I use. Siri seven Windsor Newton thes air handmade These are really nice. They're not cheap. But once I started using them, it transformed the way I drew. So this comes with seven and about four or five of these air kind of more thin and then some thicker, more brushes here. And what these air great forest you see here is really just giving organic line. And then the ink that I use you can use any kind of India ink. This is the kind that I use, and it's just a nice dark ink that holds well in the illustration board. And it just gives us that nice black. So you and you may say, Oh, this isn't very much, but a few drops goes a long way, and then a nice tip free here is if you go out to eat fast food or something, and they give you salt or sauces, come home and wash washout those little basins and then they're good for holding your ink. And I have I have, like, 20 of these that I just use Teoh put my ink in. So in the next class, what role do is show you what the's pens really do and how they will help us in our landscapes, but hopefully this gives you a nice array of the kind of supplies that will be using. And I use that I truly recommend. 3. Making Your Mark: So in this class this will be different for everyone. But what this is is basically practice. To get to know your tools and to see think about what you're gonna be drawing. If you've got a landscape in your head or subject matter that you want to be drawing and then you'll think Okay, what? How will I achieve the things that I need to draw? So in my drawing, I'm gonna be doing a landscape out in the desert, which includes trees, bushes, some rocks. And so I'm going to start thinking about how I'm going to use my brushes, my pens to achieve the marks I want. So I'll show you just some of what these tools will do and how we can make different marks to achieve some really cool things. So their Indian just take a few Arabs here. It's all started my brushes. So what the brushes conduce you is a variety of things. And the reason why I used brushes is because they give you this very organic like thin, too thick line. That's really great. So I'll start thinking, you know, one of the lines that I'm gonna need and work of my brushes do for me. Um either, like these little lines for for grass or bushes were like shadows. They can do kind of this nice little shadows in here, or you can also use your brushes to do the outlines of rocks. And it's hip I have is if you're doing a final drawing, it's nice to have a sheet of paper like this off to the side so you can kind of dab and say , Oh, there was a lot of ink on there And so you kind of dab the ink off, and then you can go to your illustration board and start drawing. But like things like rocks to do an outline of Iraq were like shadows. It's good to have brushes like this. I could do one more brush here just to kind of show you. And then in the Series seven, this is the number three brush, and this gives you more of a just a thicker kind of a shadowy like it's good for shadows. And once it kind of gets drier, it gives a nice like texture, so you can do like a dry brush type thing. Maybe the shadow of your rock is more dry. Or maybe you're doing dirt, and you want kind of a texture along the dirt. So the brushes air very good for this kind of organic thick and thin lines, or shadows. And then I'll show you what my pens conduce you for your landscaping. And so when we're thinking about the brushes and pens, it's a lot of the same is what we just saw. And so you're gonna think, like, how should I use my brushes? If you're using a brush pen, think about it. Is anything that would have kind of, Ah, a real flowing line like your grasses or your or maybe some land like a hill or even maybe I'll see if this works. Some sort of like a light mountain or cloud in the background there. Mountain range. So what I love about the brushes or the brush pens is that thick to thin. And that's not what you get when you do these tech pens. So the tech pens off switch to a new sheets. You can see the tech pens these think about is like a stroke and illustrator. The beginning and the end are pretty much the same thickness and they don't have this nice flowed end. It's just it just kind of ends, which at first I didn't like. But then when you start using it like you can use it for, like some cross hatching of of shadows or it is great for, like the outlines of some stuff in the background of your drawings because you just kind of it gives it like a real thin. You're like shadow lines. It just gives it like this really thin, thin lines for your background or we'll pry. Use it for, like, tree bark where you kind of start, start with some lines just to give it structure, and then you go in with your brush and then you kind of start filling in the different shadows of like tree bark, like the pen kind of got us going for structure and then the brush pen. It kind of takes over and does the shadows. Something like that. That's kind of quick. Another thing we can kind of think about is like I'm doing a lot of Joshua trees which have sharp leaves, so it's like good to have these pens that'll do, like thes knife sharp leaves and they're good for, like, cactus and things like that or every doing leaves of a tree. Stuff like this is these pens air, good for doing like groups of leaves. And then when you kind of it fills out from a distance, it's like, Oh, wow, I've got It's like a tree So it's so it's good to have a mixture and it's good to just play around with this stuff and see what it does. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments as you're doing this. If you have any questions for me about what pens you should use, but hopefully is covered a good amount so we can start to learn how to think. 4. How to Draw: Trees: we're going to start our journey learning how to draw trees, What I'll do in these next few videos. The how to videos is I will show you how to drawn object. I'll simplify it into a couple steps and then I'll go into nature and using footage on location, I will be showing you how I draw these objects. When we think about drawing an ink with a painting, Uh, an artist gets to use color and light to depict things. And this is a painting I did a few weeks ago. I'm just kidding. This is Monet. So what he did was used color and light to show the river, the clouds, the sky and based on the color, you can see the objects. And so the challenge we have. But also the fun of it is with thinking, is that we have one color. We have black. So are objects are gonna be depicted through lights and through duck through lights and shadow. That's pretty much in outlines, so it's very simple, but it can be challenging to ah, lead your please your eye through an ink drawn. And so that's what we're gonna do. So we'll start here with trees, and I'll give you some steps on how to draw trees. Trees can pretty much be broken down into branches. What's your first do is think about the branch structure and then you add leaves. And even though there's thousands of trees in the world, I feel like most of them can be broken down into branches and leaves. When you draw them. Of course, the leave type will be different. A pine tree will have, Ah, the pine needles. And then the Joshua Tree, which you'll see soon here, has like sharp needles, are sharp kind of palm fronds. It's very interesting, but this is pretty much how will simplify it, and that will go out into the desert and I'll show you how I will draw a Joshua tree. So I'm out here to look at the Joshua Tree and to really look at how it's how it's built, pretty much you know, they got the trunk and then Thea the branches of top. Now, how will start? This is basically but these lines of the tech pen and I'm gonna make the structure of the tree, and then I'm gonna add the details of the the leaves in the palm fronds, so to speak. So what I'm doing right now is just making my skeleton of my Joshua tree. So this is the first step of drawing a tree, which is to identify the branch structure into, to be concerned with the branches and then be concerned with everything else. I'll start doing a little bit of detail, the rough texture. But what I'm basically doing is mapping out the whole shape of the tree. Now come in here with one of my brushes and I'll cut to an image here of Joshua Tree. You see the shadows, how harsh they are. This is what I'm doing with the brushes. I'm there with my branches. I'm doing these kind of really thick, thick, shadowy parts with a brush, and then some parts will be more light than shadow. But a brush is good is good for this sort of stuff. The rough, the rough parts of the tree. You could need either use your brush toe to form the two sides of the branches or the actual branch itself, like I'm doing here. The my brushes forming the the full branch rather than the the outlines of the branch. And now that I'm dealing with a lot of the dark parts, let's look here, the at the trunk. The trunk is so rough, I'm not gonna make it that detailed. But here I am. I've got dry brush, and I'm just going to imply that rough texture of the trunk. Now let's go back out and look at thes stippling, the real rough parts of the of the branches and and And let's look at how thes actual leaves air made. So basically the top is still living in the bottom, just kind of dies off and kind of folds over. And so what I'll do is I'll have real lively stuff on top, and then down here, they'll kind of be falling and dry. So right now I've gone in and with my tech pin here, I'm really adding a lot of detail to the ends of these branches. So you see how they're really kind of perky at the top and then kind of falling over here towards the bottom, where the where they've kind of died off. So a lot of this will be really sharp, which I can really achieve well with my tech pens. So I've got a nice mix of brush doing the dark shadows and then these tech pens to in the sharp, sharp, sharp ends of the tree. So I urge you to mix it up. When you're doing different parts of your tree, your branches could be brush and you're or leaves can be pen. That's why you experiment. So you just can't keep going with ease. Sharp, sharp, sharp. These ends, which are really fun to do. So I'm pretty pleased with how this is looking, and hopefully this helps you think about drawing trees. 5. How to Draw: Rocks: Okay. The next stop on our journey is to learn how to draw rocks. And so what I'll do is take you through the steps to simplify rocks, and then I'll show you how to draw few. So the steps the drawing rocks are fairly is fairly simple. What you first think about is your outline of Iraq. An outline of Iraq can either be circular. It can be kind of square. It could be jagged or sharp, and so I like to draw my outlines with brush, so they kind of have this thin and thick quality to the outlines. And then the second step, you think about where the light is coming from, where the shadows are and you with lines or or brush strokes. You fill in the shadows to really give the rocks of shape in a nice form so you can see in these two different steps it went from being kind of a blank circle or a bank blank shape to really having some definition in the bottom right corner. Here you will see a shape that will commonly see in the examples from Joshua Tree, and now I'll take you out there and I'll show you some rocks, close up and draw some examples. Now, when I see this rock formation, I'm thinking I gotta draw this. I really like how the light coming out from this angle and casting the shadow kind of in these bands and lines and under the cracks here. And so what I'm gonna do is draw from this angle on the side here just to just to kind of have left the shadows and everything really show and is gonna be, uh should be a pretty dramatic angle, like or that have the shadows fall. So what I'm doing here is I'm I'm using my tech pan my technical pan like a medium to draw . Awesome. Just guidelines quick little lines that will probably get covered up by brush lines and what this does. This lets me identify the shape of the rock and the rocks that make up this formation. She's a really light kind of quick, pretty free. And now we're coming here with my brush and I'll just start laying out the shadows which will really make this rock really come to life. And so what I love about these brushes is you just can't get these lines with a pen. And so I'm gonna fill in all these little these little shadows that are that are in the in the rock and underneath and make these little cracks like these little all those shadows that make up the the rocks are so cool. So that's basically what I'm doing here. And then I'll come in here and just do these start doing these really tiny little cracks that make up some of the texture of the Rockies Air fun to dio Now start kind of going around the outline of the rocks with my brush and covering up those those first lines that I made with the tech pan. So what the tech pen does for me is it sometimes serves as, like, a pencil like just let's me kind of throw down some lines, start planning, And so I'm gonna kind of look of the shadows and see these cracks and memorize where they are and kind of go in here and fill some men. And I'm not doing this with the intention of it. Looking photo identical. It's just kind of a guide, so don't feel like you're landscapes have to be perfectly, perfectly accurate. You're basically representing a place and putting your artistic spit on it. And the way these brushes usually work is you put some in Khan and then your first mark starts with, like, real thick mark. And then as you go along, you're just kind of trailing off. And that in kind of runs out. So what? These cracks, You're using that to your advantage. I'll just keep doing these little details, filling these in really quick, just kind of every time you do when you add a little bit of character and depth. And now what I want to do here is let's look at the texture of these rocks and now see this ? How that said, Shadow that crack there. That's very cool. Let's feel how it's very rough. The rock is not smooth, so I'm going to use my brush here, and I'm gonna go back to my drawing and really get this rough texture. I'm not gonna overdo it, but what I'm doing here is I put some in con now. It's pretty dry, so with the very dry brush kind of going in and just adding some texture just at this lower part because I don't want I don't want the rock toe look perfectly smooth. I'm just going to some Dr Rush here just to give a little bit of character. Two very my marks and just add a little bit of a little bit of texture. And there you go, that's this is taking shape. 6. How to Draw: Bushes: the next stop on our journey is learning how to draw. Bushes and bushes are so different, and there's so many. So I'll cover a few here and all, simplify it, break it down, show you a few different types, and then I'll go out and we'll find some bushes and I'll show you how to draw those. The first step is really just breaking down the bush into simple shapes. So you see on the left here I have two circles and then the middle. It's kind of a leaf shape, uh, where it's kind of round and fat on the normal, say wide on the bottom and then pointing at the top and then the two on the right. These are gonna be very common out in Joshua Tree. It's kind of a semicircle up at the top and then on the bottom right. It's like a fan shape. And so the first step is to identify the shape and to kind of pay attention to what kind of either leave for hay or grass likes substance or structure makes up the bush, and now the next step is to fill in, um, the's shapes with actual leaves And like, the first step, you can either kind of lightly sketch. Um, or you could just think about it in your mind. So you're imagining those simple shapes. And now, in this next step here, what I have on the left, I've used a a very fine tech pen to do some leaves that are basically semi circles around it. And then the middle I used my brush to, ah, to make the leave, leave leaves. And I've used the shadows to really work in my favor. So the shape is being implied on the left, where the light hits it. And then on the right side, it's all shadows of leaves. And then on the right side here, these Joshua tree type bushes, I've used some dry like a tech pennants kind of rough and, uh, basically just used some line work that implies this dry hay, uh, type bush. And so those air plentiful out of Joshua tree. So now do a little bit more so you can see how to draw bushes here. Now, I'm going to start with my technical pen, and I'm gonna do some, uh, some bush here that's common in Joshua Tree and I'm going to start just basically making two marks here and doing the overall shape. So I'm gonna identify my shape, and then I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna do some real light light lines just to kind of make a straw, dry straw texture to this to this little bush and every line. You should just think how my making this look better. How? My adding depth. And I'm gonna Cohen here come in here with my pen, tell brush pen and just to some marks to make some shadows. So I'm going to do shadows underneath. Do some inside here. Just add some depth to it. So this is a simple bush that's common in, like the desert and Joshua tree. This next one I'm going to do is is pretty much from this photograph, and I'm going to just use my pen, tell brush pen and once again make these little marks that just identify the shape so I kind of have that as a guide. Instead of using pencil, I'm using my own brush to do some light to do some light marks so I know where to go. And then I'm really emphasizing the light coming from the left and really doing some shadows here. So the left side of my bush bushes are really just some light leaves. Just stay here just to make a shape here. And then as I go on the bottom and on the right side here, I really emphasize here the dark shadows just to kind of build some depth. So how I'm using my brush pan is that every little dab helps create the outline or helps create the shadow of a leaf. And this is a more like fluid shape. Now do one. That's kind of a tree kind of a bush just to give you some options here. And what I'm doing is using my brush pen to do some light branches just to set the branch structure of this bush, and then I'll go in here with my technical pen. It just makes a real quick, uh, you know, very, very simple little leaves just to fill the bush, and I'm prime not going to take this all the way full, like I wouldn't have finished drawing, but I just want to show you just some just one of the ways you can draw a bush last tree here, so I'm just doing some quick marks. Just add add some depth to this bush and that can go in here with the same brush pans I use earlier and just add some real quick dabs just to really fill this out. And this brush plant. I love using it. It's It's so quick in it, you can really just kind of quickly fill out a shape of leaves and stuff like that. So here's 123 options of different bushes. 7. Class Project: Composition: as we start our class project and draw our landscape. You want to start thinking about composition before you lay down any ink. So let's say we drew a landscape and we did a tree and then the mid ground and then the mountains in the background. And they were all the same brush and all the same marks and detail, like all thick. It would be fine, but there'd be no sense of depth. And so what we want to start thinking about when you are starting your illustration is you want to divide your landscape and I'll show you some examples here of different landscape photos that I've taken. You look at these and you can start to see foreground, mid ground in background, and you want to just identify the areas of each one. And what that does is it will give some depth to our drawing. So I'll show you an example of something of Joshua Tree here. No, in this landscape that I'm going to draw. What we see here is this will be my focal point, the tree and then off to the side here, this mid ground, the rocks are gonna remembered ground in these bushes and then the mountains over here gonna be back my background. So up front, I'm going to use thick lines and thick brushes and with the tree, I will use very thick Inc for that. And then back here, it's gonna be less. Just a second ago, I showed you the thick lines and the drawing I did that didn't have much composition. It was just kind of the same lines. I redid it to show you the foreground here, the mid ground in the background. So up front I used thick lines. And then I have water and land kind of a river going through it. And then as you go towards the back here, you see, it's I used. I used thin, dry brush, and then I used a pen for the mountain so that it would kind of your I would start with the tree and go back to the clouds in the mountain. So that's showing composition. What we're gonna try to strive for in our class project 8. Class Project: Drawing Your Landscape: It's time to work on our different landscapes. And what I did on my art board is I draw a rectangle just to give me kind of Ah, a shape of how I want my drawing to be And I'm gonna start thinking about my mid ground and just laying out some lines with the tech pan just toe kind of set up by mid ground and draw some quick marks here, Uh, that will be a guideline for the rock formation in the mountains to the right. Just like in my rock. Uh, how is drawing with the rock formation? Earlier, I do some tech pen lines, and then I covered up with a lot of brush brush pens. And now I'm gonna worry about my not worried, but think about my foreground and the tree structure. So I'm just laying some lines to kind of get foreground, mid ground background established, and then Aiken start filling in. So I got my brush pen here and I'll start doing the trunk of the tree. And like we talked about with our foreground, you're really gonna do You're strong big brush marks in your foreground and a little bit in the mid ground, and then the backgrounds really gonna be just a couple of lines just to kind of guide your I. So I'm gonna do some thick minds here. Just establish the main parts of the Joshua tree in the front and then do some rough stuff here around just kind of setting up the shape of the branches and we'll call them leaves. And it's up to you how dark you want the foreground in the shadows and stuff to be. I want harsh shadows just because the light and dark in the desert is so dramatic. But maybe yours is a little more sensitive. Maybe you're doing Ah, a nice you know, forest where you don't want such harsh shadows. That's really up to you. No, I'm also going to do is set up my foreground with some, uh, some of the bushes upfront, and I'm going to start with the tech pin just to lay out some of these dry bushes and then I'll go in with a brush pen and add some darkness and and and fill it in. So I'm just doing some quick lines here just to establish the bushes that will make up the foreground. And and then as I go towards the back, it'll, uh, the Bushes will get a little more abstract and more like lines than actual brush brush marks. So we'll leave a lot of this pretty dark up front and kind of get real loose and Messi with the bushes in the front, which is fun to do and what the's thin brushes air really good for? Are these little details of, you know, just a rough rough trunk and the straw like texture? A lot of times are going and have a lot of detail with these little brushes after I've already used the tech pin and uh, the brush pan No cut to my image again here just so you can see it. You see how dramatic these shadows are on the underside of the rocks. That sort of really going to try toe carry out with details doesn't take long to with this brush to really take the kind of boring outlining of Iraq, and ah really add character to it. So that's what I'm doing right now. Then I had these tiny little shadows with the tech pen, So one of my pieces of advices vary earmarks, which basically means I'm using three different tools right now. Uh, if not more in concert. So they're all doing their part. Like the tech, Ben lays down little lines, the brush pen lays down thick minds, and then these different brushes lay down different shadows. And so I'm using them all back and forth. You know, I've got him in one spot and I'm just grabbing him as I need him. So I say, vary your marks. I want you toe think about the different marks you can make in one drawing at one time pretty much just to give it variety you don't want. You don't want to drawing with just one. I mean, you could, but you wanna drawing with just one pen? There's too much stuff in nature that is so varied that it's good to have different tools. We'll start to kind of fill in some of this mid ground here where your I will kind of be lead back. It was this little cactus little cat die here. It'll service my big ground. I don't want this video be too long, So I'm gonna cut out here. I just can't and look at this landscape looking. So look what I need to do left here. I've done a little bit, uh, of detail away from camera, but that's just to save some time. I'm still gonna do some important stuff here with different tools. So what I'm doing right now, I'm I'm adding a little bit Mawr would have added, are more brush strokes to the tree, real loose stuff. And now I'm gonna go in and add final detail so you'll get to see all that. So I'm adding nice brush strokes to the foreground just to make a darker upfront so that your I will start up there and then go back towards the rock and then I want to fill in. I want your eye That kind of moved back through here. So I'm going to do all this little pen work of of mid ground little marks. Just your eye kind of goes through. So I'm doing a lot of quick, quick, quick, quick pen work just to service my mid ground to kind of bring your eye back real quick stuff. I love going fast like this. I think it's a lot of It's a lot of fun to kind of be free. And yeah, you wont love every mark like this stuff right here. I would have made a little lighter. Um, but, you know, you make mistakes and you learn from him. And I'm doing some detail here to finish out the Joshua tree. So this is all with the tech pen, and I'm gonna use just little marks to make these really rough Really pointing. I love the juxtaposition of the broad shadows and almost messi shadows of the trunk with these real fine lines. So I'm gonna finish up here with just filling in some little details and just doing some quick kind of filler. Sometimes I feel like these These little bushes that were all Penn Tech pen are a little too not enough character to him. So I'm just adding a little bit of brush here. This will pretty much wrap it up. Uh, I'm pleased with this. I'm gonna scan it in and we'll have a final product here. Thank you for ah, taking this class. I really appreciate it. And I hope you've learned something about thinking I look forward to seeing your either landscape or tree or whatever you've drawn in ink. So please post that. And if you have any questions, post your questions to the community page or reach out to me directly. Instagram is Tim Eggert. I will get back to you very quickly. And if you post a project, I will comment it. And you tell you what I think so see you in my next class.