Transcripts
1. Introduction: Today, I want to share with you a really fun thing
to do with ink. I call it inky landscapes. Ink is a brilliant
medium to use, no matter how experienced
you are with art. Beginners can use it,
professional artists can use it. It's extremely versatile
and very user friendly. And it's a great
way to learn how to achieve value in your paintings. Value means a full range of
tone from light to dark. You can paint with ink,
you can draw with ink, and it dries really fast, so you don't need a lot of time. I'm Catherine Jennifer.
I'm an artist, art educator, and
mother of four boys. I teach in person classes. I run an art club in my village, and I'm a top teacher
on skill share. And I love helping people to discover and develop
their own creativity. In this class, I'll show you a simple three step process to make your own
inky landscapes. We will first do a war
map where you practice how to achieve a full
range of tone using ink. Then we will do a
1 minute painting where we unleash the inky beast, and then we will do a
quick inky landscape in three simple steps. We will work small
postcard size. And you can use
this technique to create mementos of
your summer holidays or to make meaningful and personal holiday cards to send to loved ones. You can also use this technique
as a productivity tool. It's a great way to start
your day feeling good, no matter what you have to do. All you need is a bottle of ink, a dip pen, and some
watercolor paper. I did this with my art club, and I'm excited to
share it with you. It's easy, it's therapeutic,
and it's so much fun. So grab your supplies
and let's get inky.
2. Project: The project for this class is
to paint an inky landscape. Step one is to find a photograph
to use as inspiration. This could be a landscape from your summer holidays or
you're welcome to work. From one of my photos, you will find photographs in
the class resources section. There's also a link
to a Pintresbard which has royalty free
images which you can use. I suggest that you paint along with me as you watch the class.
3. Materials: Equipment wise, all you really need for this class is some ink. I'm using Windsor and
Newton Black Indian ink. This is water resistant. You'll need some paper. I'm using Dilarawi
Aquafine smooth. I find that smooth
or hot pressed paper works best when you
want to use a dip pen. This is 300 grams or 140 pounds. And you'll need a
brush and a dip pen. I've got a range of brushes. This is a small flat brush, which will be useful
for the washers. I've also got a very small
brush for detail work, and you'll need a dip pen. This is just a
fancy glass handle, but it's a very ordinary nib. And you can buy dip pens very cheaply online or
at any art store. If you don't have a dip pen, you can use a stick or
something like this, which is a carved bamboo stick. Then I've got a little palette, and I'll use this to create the different tones of my ink. I've got a pencil and eraser, something to place
my brushes on. This is just some kitchen towel. And I've got two jars of water and a spray
bottle of water. So gather your equipment. Don't worry if you don't
have all these brushes, just gather what you've got, and we'll do the first warmup which is creating tonal washers.
4. Warmup: So now we're going
to do the warm up. It's very, very simple, but it's a great
way to learn how to control tonal value using ink. I'm working just
on printer paper, and you can access this
from the class resources, or you can just
draw one yourself. You don't need to do this on
any kind of special paper. I'm going to put 33 pools
of water in my palate. And then I'm just going to
start by dipping my brush in my ink and going into
this receptacle. And this will be my dark
ink, my dark value. Then I'm going to wash my brush. I'm going to go into
my medium value. And I might want to darken that. I'm going to wash again and
try and get it super clean, and I'm going to go into
my light water here. And as you can see,
there's still plenty of ink in the bristles. So I'm going to start
with my light box, and I'm painting in
a very light tone of ink, just like that. Then I'm going to just adjust this medium one and
paint my medium tone. And I think I'll want
to darken that a bit. Now, that looks
like it's too dark, so I'm going to pull out. So I'm cleaning my brush and I'm picking up just
like you do with watercolor to take out
some of the pigment. Okay. And now I'm going to
do my very dark box here. And this is pretty much neat ink to get a really black black. Perfect. Now I'm going
to try and do these in between ones, which
is the tricky part. So if I start with this, this is looking darker
than I want it. So I'm going to just
pick up a little bit of it with my tissue paper. Okay. So I'm trying
to get this one to be darker than that one. And for this one, I want
it in between those two. It's actually quite
tricky to get the values. Exactly right. And you might need to practice
this a few times. That is a bit too dark. It's going to pick
up. That's better. Okay. I'm going to
borrow from this one and just pump in that one, and the papers starting to
be at a bit angry there. But that's basically all you
need to do for the top row. For the next row, we're going to do some warm ups
with our dip pen. Now, it's very hard to control tonal
value with a dip pen. What you can do you can
start with your dark. And I just want you to try out the pen and make some marks, scribble, get the ink to
flow off the pen nicely. You can pretty much
fill up this box so that you have
a good dark tone. Now, I'm dipping in water. I'm going to see what happens. It's still quite dark. So one of the ways I can control
the tone is by adjusting the type of marks that I make and the number
of marks that I make. I'm going to
actually wash it off my brush and see
what happens. Yes. So here, I've got a lighter
tone of ink with my dip pen. Okay. Now I want to
get an in between, and that's going
to prove tricky. But that's working. So I want you to try
different marks, see what different
marks you can get. Try different directions
with your pen. Just play and get a
little bit warmed up. Then for this one, I want an overall tonal value that's in between that and that. It's quite hard
to get enough ink onto a pen from a palette. But that's more or
less what we're after. Nice loose marks, so that it's an overall tonal value
in between those two. For the third one, I
want you to first wet this whole row of paper with
a nice bit brush like that. So it's nice and wet. And then I want you
to do the same as that with your dip pen. So we'll start here
because I want you to see what happens when you work with your dip
pen onto wet paper. It's completely
different, and it starts to have a
mind of its own. And you cannot really
control it very much, but you can make
beautiful marks with it. Okay. And you start to get these beautiful ink
qualities coming out. And if I was pretty much
wash everything off, it's, you know, that's not
good enough ink, really. But that's basically all you
need to do for your warm up. So have a go at that yourself, and then we'll go on
to the next section, which is our 1 minute
painting. See you there.
5. One Minute Painting: The next bit is really fun. This is where we
unleash the inky Beast. We're going to do a
1 minute painting, divided into two 32nd sections. The first 30 seconds are
for painting with brush, using ink, and the
second 30 seconds are for using your dip pen. And it's really important
that you stick to 30 seconds. You need to get a timer or use your mobile phone and set it to time 30 seconds and then stop, no matter what you've
got on your page. No, cheating allowed. The point of this
is to loosen you up and discover how
much fun ink can be. And I'll show you what I mean. Now for this, I'm
going to work from this royalty free image
just as a reference, as a starting point in my mind. And I'm going to set my
timer to 30 seconds. Okay. So I've got
everything ready, big brush, ink, paper. And I'm starting
my 30 seconds now. The first thing I'm going to do is actually just paint with some water just to loosen me up, and then I'm going to come
straight in with my ink, and I'm just going to do that. And then I really
don't have much time, so I'm just going to indicate
a little bit of this river. Lovely. And I've
got 9 seconds left, so I might pop in a few trees. And what else can I do? Some sky. And that's 30 seconds. It's really not
much time at all. Now I'm going to put down the brush and pick
up the dip pen. And I'm giving myself
another 30 seconds, and I'm only going
to use the dip pen. So ready? Here we go and start. And with my dip pen, now I've got this
beautiful wetness, so I'm just going to
draw really loosely in here and see what beautiful, happy accidents can happen. And I'm going to let it do
its thing on the paper. And what we're going for is just some really
lovely free Mark. And that's my time up. So that's what I mean when
I say a 32nd painting. It's quick, it's very free. And if you start with water, then the ink can react with the water, and it's
really, really fun. In case you're
completely in shock, I'm going to do another one on the Dai uni paper so that you can see that
I'm not completely mad. And while I do that, this
side is going to continue to merge and blend and do all sorts of beautiful
inky things. For this one, I'm
going to work from this beautiful
royalty free image. I've got my 30
seconds ready to go. I'm going to start just with water and ready, steady start. So Oh. Get some trees. Get some ink. This time I can go
all the way along. Isn't that beautiful?
Wash off my brush. There's a kind of a
path coming down here. And then I'm trying to think of tonal values even
as I do 30 seconds, I'm thinking, What can I achieve
in terms of tonal value? 2 seconds, that's it. Okay. Now I'm going to have another 30 seconds
just with dip pen. Ready. Get it ready. Ready, steady start. So what have I got?
I've got some trees. I want to try and
make the most of the water that I've
already got here. And maybe if I want to
get some thin lions and some thicker
lines. Maybe here. And there's a few
trees I can add here. And it. And there we go. 30 seconds goes by so quickly. But what we've ended up
with are two very loose, very beautiful paintings
with interesting marks that you wouldn't have made
if you hadn't been in such a hurry and
so free with it. Now that you've seen
what you can achieve in a 1 minute painting, you
can do lots of them. The point is to work
quickly and let the ink do what it wants to do. Don't worry if your paintings
turn out really messy, just take another piece
of paper and try again. You can even do it on the
back of a cereal box. In the next video,
we'll go on to painting our quick inky
landscape. See you there.
6. Summer Landscape: I'll do this in three steps. The first step is a
quick pencil outline just mapping out the main
shapes in our painting. Then we'll do some inky
washes using a flat brush, working from light to dark. And the third step we'll draw with our dip pens. That's it. Get your stuff ready and
follow along as I do the demo. Before we paint our
inky landscape, I just want to show you these 1 minute paintings now
that they've dried. And as you can see,
we've got all sorts of really beautiful marks that are formed with the ink
reacting with the water. The marks are loose and
expressive and energetic. And that's what you're
after with ink. So this painting should take
about 5 minutes in total. And I'm going to work
from this photograph, which is one that I took in
France on our summer holiday. It's a beautiful old house
in the gorge Du Tan. You'll notice that I changed
the photo to black and white so that I can
clearly see the values. This is one I've already
done of this scene. So this is what I'm aiming at. And as you can see, it's
really, really small, and I'm going to paint
the same thing again, a bit bigger, just so
you can see the process. This is another one I did
also in the Gorge Town, just some canoes, river, really loose and really simple. So the first step
is some drawing, and I'm going to
very simply draw in the main sections of my picture. So I don't want too much detail. I just want something that will guide my paintbrush
as I go along. And I'm not too concerned about it being exactly accurate, although already I
need to change this. The line coming down is probably
the most important one. So it's about there,
and the pitch of the roof is something like that, with a little bit of a
chimney coming up there. And then coming down. And then there's a hill
coming up sort of like that. There's a wall coming in. And I want to keep this quite loose so that it can
be quite expressive. And then there's two bits of detail down here that I like, which is some roofs of houses and a little tiny house
peeping in just there. So that's about all you
need as your pencil sketch. So the next stage is coming
in with an ink wash, and we're going to start
from light to dark, just like you do in watercolor. I've got my three tones
ready here in my palette. And I'm going to start
by just putting in a very light inky wash to
indicate the buildings. Nothing fancy,
nothing stressful, enjoying the feel of
the brush on the paper. If you half squint your eyes, you can get a real sense of the different tones in an image. And at the moment,
I'm just looking for light tone, mid tone. This will be a bit of a midton and then the darkest tones. And it's a good idea to use the biggest possible brush
you can for the job. So I've just switched over to a bigger brush so that I can get looser marks and get
them in more quickly. And then I'm going to
do the darkest tones. And for this, I'm just going to get this hill pretty
much in like this. And I'm taking care not to let the two areas touch just yet. I've touched a bit
there, that's okay. Just control it a bit more
easily with my flat brush. Just block in the
darkest tones like that. This kind of painting
is intended to be very, very relaxing and not
stressful. Okay, lovely. Now I'm going to take a slightly more
controlled round brush. This is I think it's
a number six round. And I'm going to just see what other detail
I might want to add with my paint brush. So I actually want this to dry before I can add any
of the brick lines, so I'm not going
to do that, bit, but what I could do is Come in with a little
bit of a dark here. And for the bushes over here, I'm going to come in
with a mid tone wash, but then I'm going to draw
over it once it's dry. You do sometimes have
to wait for your ink to dry before you come
in with your pen. So that's something
to keep in mind. I'm going to just
indicate the sky with a very basic
thing like that. And I've got some running away there, which I didn't want. So I'm going to pick
it up with tissue. And use the opportunity to create some cloud
effects there. I want to keep some areas of
the paper completely white, just like you do
with watercolor. But I might just come in with a tiny little
inky wash there. So can you see how I've
got basically three tones. I've got a light tone, a
mid tone, and a dark tone. Going to let that
dry a little bit and then come back in with my
dip pen to add the details. The nice thing about ink is
that it dries quite fast. So if you are impatient like me, it works for you. I'm going to just
start with this roof, and we really want to
pay attention now to the quality of the line
that you are drawing. So try to use your dip
pen in a way that you get thick lines and thin lines
coming out of the same mark. And the way to do that
is to alter the angle of your wrist and to swivel
the nib as you go along, and you get different
kind of marks. While this is still
a little bit wet, I'm going to just draw in a
bit of the hedge over here, and I'm going to use
these happy accidents because I don't know how
this is going to end up. It's going to end up different
to that, and that's fine. It's part of the joy
of ink drawing is that you don't you never can quite anticipate what
you're going to get. These bushes are
all quite textured, so I'm going to come in
with little bits of texture here and just enjoy
making loose marks. There's a tree here, which I've completely ignored
right up until now. So I'm going to bring in some
of these pushes down here. Now, another thing with
ink is that less is more. So try not to overwork it. Let the ink work its magic and stop before you do too much. There is a bit of a bush here. There we go. Just
feel how wet that is. It's damp but not
completely dry. Let's see. Yes, I can
come in with my roof, something like that. My chimney. I'm not trying to capture
every single detail. I'm just trying to get a sense
of this beautiful place. Like that. And then there's
a lovely little window here. Still quite wet paper. And then with my very, very tiny brush and
some light ink, I'm going to just
indicates just feel how e it indicates
some of these bricks. Not too many. Just want to give a sense of the
perspective happening here. A you see how sometimes even just the
tiniest amount of water on your brush can create
a beautiful line. And that's pretty much done. I can add a tiny bit
more detail here just to define that a
little bit more. And over here, there's some sort of speckledy thing going on, which I'd quite like
to try and capture. So just going to
wait a little bit. I'm going to have a
go at a few speckles. Nice. Uncontrolled and hopefully make for some interesting
little marks. Last bit over here. I might just fill in a
little bit of tone here. And just define edge
that a bit more. It doesn't matter if
you can't completely tell what's going on because you can't really
in the photograph, so Add a few dots here. And that's pretty much done. Apart from the tree,
which I keep forgetting. So this beautiful
tree just going to pop in a bit of water. How can I completely ignore the one tree that's
right in the middle? I'm going to come in
with my ink and just do that and let it do its thing. There's one more
thing I want to do, which is just come into this gap and define that edge
just a little bit more. So because I think that might
potentially be a bit weird. There. And I might just add a few bits in paint paint brush over
the top. There we go. So that's it. I hope you enjoyed seeing how simple this can be. The steps, pencil, and then
tonal washes light to dark, and then dip pen. It's intended to be fun, stress free and easy. So have a go at your
own inky landscape and don't forget to share it. I can't wait to see
what you create.
7. Winter Landscape: If you want to, you can make your little painting into a festive holiday card
to send to someone. I'll show you some ideas
for how to do this. I'm going to follow the
same three step process as in the previous painting. So the first step is a
light bit of drawing. Okay, so that makes
for our basic sketch. The next step is
light tonal washers. I've got my three
pots of water ready, and I'm going to start with
some of this background. Okay, so that's step one, a light wash for the background. Now, this tree, I'm going to go one tone darker and the house, I'm going to go one tone darker. So the house, I'm
going to come in, let's see, yes, perfect. I'm just going to block in
the main areas of the house. I'm going to have to simplify because I can't possibly
get all that detail. I don't want this to
touch that wet edge, so I need to be a
bit careful here. Lovely. Just like
with watercolor, the less that you can fiddle with the ink on the
paper, the better. So one clean stroke is better than lots
of fiddly strokes. Great. Now, what I actually
want to do is let this dry a bit before
I go too much further. So in the meantime, I'm going to do I'm going to
tackle this tree, and I'm going to try and achieve a tone that is slightly
less than the house, but slightly more, slightly darker than the
background trees. Now over here, we've got a white roof and
we've got white snow, I'm going to go
with a light tone. I'll do that in a
minute. So going to go with a light tone for the tree just so
that I can see where the tree ends and
the roof begins. And now, while that's
still wet in this tree, I'm going to come in with a few dipend lines just to try and define the treeness
of it a little bit. So and I'm not trying
to be accurate. I'm putting in marks that are a shorthand for
leaves and letting the ink work do what
it does on the paper. I've got a little bloom there. That's fine. It's part of
the charm of this medium. So you can see it's starting
to say tree with snow on. And it's just some simple
crescent shaped marks, really, that are
suggesting snow. Is is more, so we don't
want to overdo it. Okay. Now I'm going to put in a medium tone line for the
underneath of the roof. Just like that. And I'm
going to let that dry a bit. I can come in and
tackle these windows, which have quite a lot of
light and reflection in them. So I'm going to use
a very light tone, almost a clean line, and I'm just going to put
in some basic shapes. I'm looking at the
shapes inside the glass, and I'm noticing the
negative shapes as well. Great. I need the background
trees to have dried before I can come in
with the dark trunks, but in the meantime,
I'm going to draw in the roof a little bit more. If you get too much ink, it's the same as in watercolor, you can pick up
with a clean brush and just knock it
back a little bit. There we go. My sprec. Now, this is dried. So the last thing I'm
going to do with ink is paint in these
dark tree trunks. Going to start from the
bottom and just pull up with a whole arm stroke. You want to try and might work even to turn
the page around, and you want to have a
full arm stroke right from the shoulder to try and get that straight line. There we go. That's pretty much it
for the painting stage. One last thing we could do
is just indicate a few very, very light shadows on the snow. And I've pretty much coming in with as clean a brush as I can. I'm just going to indicate
perhaps a little, there's still so much
ink on that bristle. I'm just going to
try and indicate a little path coming
to the house. It's much darker
than I was wanting, so I'm going to pick
up come in again. So hopefully, that's
given you an idea of how to choose a wintry
scene that would suit a holiday card and use the same three step process
to do your painting. Pencil, then light washers, medium washes, dark washes, and a bit of ink pen. In the next video, we will
ling up the card with a few special extra
bits and turn it into an actual holiday card to send someone.
I'll see you there.
8. Make A Holiday Card: So as you can see, I've
stuck my little ink painting onto some
red cardboard, and I've added a little
frame in Christmasy green. At your local craft store, you can find things like this, which are Christmasy
holidayish papers, and they just fun
things to work with. And you can make all sorts of things with just a
simple set of paper. So I've added this little frame and then two more
finishing touch. I'm going to add some of these, which are adhesive gems, and I'm just going to stick them onto this tree as if they were Christmas lights
because you'd need sparkle. Everybody needs more sparkle. And let's have one down here. There we go. And then the final touch is I'm
going to add a star, a gold star on the top
of the tree, like that. There you go. Nice and
shiny and sparkly. And don't forget the
most important thing is to sign your ddle painting. So Here we go. Don't forget to think about
the inside of your card. You can do something that
links the outside with the inside and leave a space
for your beautiful message. And most important of all, write the message, pop
it in an envelope, and send it to somebody. Wouldn't you love to receive a beautiful handmade
card just like that?
9. Conclusion: I hope you enjoyed creating
your own inky landscape, and I hope you found it
simple and easy and quick, if your inky
landscape turned out to be an inky mess,
don't worry about it. Ink can run away from
you very, very easily. And the thing to do is to look for what you
liked in that painting and then take that bit of information and move forward
and make another one. These little landscapes are
not intended to take long. They're not meant to be hard. They're meant to feel easy. And sometimes what you need in art is to do the thing
that feels easy. So remember with
Inky landscapes, Lessie More, have a light
touch, keep it simple. Most of all, enjoy doing it. Once you've finished
your painting, take a quick photo and upload it into the
project gallery. I would love to see
what you've done, and that way, I can offer
some personal feedback. This bit is important. Think of someone who needs a hug or a word
of encouragement. Take your inky landscape, turn it over, write a message on the back
and send it to them. Imagine how special
they will feel to receive a hand painted
card from you. If you enjoy this class, please leave a review
on Skill Share. If you want to connect
with me, I am on Instagram at Catherine
Jennifer Designs. On Facebook, I'm also at
Catherine Jennifer Designs. On YouTube, you'll find behind the scenes
and process videos. And if you never want
to miss a thing, then please sign up for my
newsletter via my website. Until next time, happy Inking, happy painting, and
thanks for watching. And,
Catherine Jennifer, Artist, Art Educator, Designer
