Sketching In Pen & Graphite

Welcome to my channel everyone. My name is Mark and I'm a professional artist and an art professor. And in this short lesson I'm going to show you what I think is one of the easiest, most compact sketching techniques requiring nothing but a pencil, an eraser, and a pen. Let's get started. The pen is a wonderful sketching tool and can be used on its own. But let's face it, it's not the easiest drawing method and its main drawback is shading, particularly when you want to put down large areas of value. This requires a lot of experience with different hatching methods, but even then there are times when you want very soft values or very gradual transitions that are just difficult to access with a pen no matter what your skill happens to be. This is why the pen is often used in combination with wash, and many old master pen and ink drawings are done this way. Washes allow the artist to build up value very quickly, and also allows you to create very soft, delicate transitions. But unfortunately it also requires additional materials such as a brush, a palette, a water container, and a paper towel, making it impractical for many situations. Fortunately for us, there's a simpler way of creating soft, wash-like effects, and the easiest one is to pair your pen with a graphite pencil. This is something many of you carry anyway to do underdrawings with, but I think this technique fully exploits the possibilities of what the pen and pencil can do together. Here is how it works. Let's say I want to do a drawing of a sphere. I'm going to start my underdrawing with my graphite pencil. Here I'm using a Kaweco Mini Clutch 2mm pencil. I'm going to sketch in the sphere, figure out where the light direction is, so light's coming from here, and let's say the shading is on this side, and then we also have a cast shadow on this side, like so. Then I'm going to go in with my pen. I'm using a Kaweco Sport with an excellent custom-made steel flex nib from fpnibs.com. Let's throw a little bit of shading on it. So here I'm going to be using cross contour hatching, where I'm putting down several layers of curving form following lines. By the way, if you're not familiar with various hatching techniques, I've got tons of videos on it on my channel. Cross contour hatching, my favorite. Cross hatching, parallel hatching, single directional contour hatching. The good thing about this technique is that I don't need to get a full range of value with my ink because part of the values are going to be done using the pencil. So I can be fairly rough with this, and even if it looks somewhat rough and uneven right now, the pencil is going to help even things out. So what I'm going to do is just put in the core shadow, which, if you're not familiar, is the darkest part of the shadow. Then I'm also going to indicate some of the cast shadow here, and just like when working with wash, I need to anticipate where the graphite is going to go, because part of the values are going to be done using the graphite pencil. So let's go just ever so slightly darker here. Let's see, what else do we need? Let's go just a touch darker right here, and if we need to go darker with the pen, we can always do it after we put in the graphite layer. And now, once this dries a little bit, let's give this a second, we're going to start going back in with the graphite pencil. So we're going to try to get a fuller range of value here. I'm going to indicate where my highlight needs to go, and using the side of the pencil, so I'm going to extend the lead a little bit, I'm going to start putting down very light values of graphite. You can crosshatch with the graphite layer too, but I find the contrast between flat areas of graphite and the sharpness of the pen to be very pleasing, the same way the flatness of washes and the sharpness of the pen are pleasing. And as far as the hardness of the graphite, you want to go either 2B, I believe this is a 2B graphite lead, or a little bit darker, 4B, 6B might be going a little bit too dark. Okay, so I indicated the highlight, and now I'm going to start throwing some graphite into the shadows and starting to go darker. Great thing about graphite is that it's not a transparent material, but it's not fully opaque either, so the ink layers will show through perfectly fine. Let's throw a little bit more graphite into the shadows here, like so. We can soften the edges of the cast shadow, and just change directions here, it's going to allow me to go ever so slightly darker. And we can add a background. The graphite layer is very good for this. Again, holding the pencil sideways allows you to create these very flat wash-like effects. If I want to go softer, I can always rub down the graphite with a paper towel. However, I don't care for perfect softness, and I think leaving the strokes in the graphite actually has a very pleasing effect. I think if you crosshatch with the graphite layer, it makes the drawing too busy. So again, the contrast between the soft, flat strokes of the graphite and the extreme sharpness of the ink works really well. And the great thing with graphite is that it stays put, so if after I put down the graphite layer, I want to go ever so slightly darker with the pen, I can do it. This is not like charcoal, where the charcoal would mix in with the pen, and you're going to have a mess on your hands. In this case, you can always combine one layer on top of the other. There's a lot of flexibility. And of course, the main advantage of graphite, besides it being a lot easier and simpler to work than washes, you can erase out graphite. So if, for example, I decide that I need a very, very light reflected light here, I can use my eraser and put it in, which is something that you can't always do with washes. I can always erase a little bit of the graphite. Very, very flexible technique. And then the order in which you do things is also fairly flexible. So I start off with graphite, then I put down the pen, then I go graphite again. I can also do something like this. So let's render another sphere, starting with a graphite layer. And then I can do more rendering of the graphite by covering the entire area with a gray wash. So I can start like this. Try not to lose my drawing. Let's put in the cast shadow. Let's put in a little bit of the shadow. So I'm rendering more with the graphite here first. And the advantage of this is twofold. First of all, it makes it a little bit easier to see where the ink needs to go, because I already have a darker value. So I can use the graphite to indicate the core shadow, like so. And then I can go right in with the pen. So let's be a little bit more judicious about where we're going to use the pen. This nib has some flexibility to it, which gives me some line variation. Then here, on the lighter side, I'm going to just barely, barely put down any indication of line at all. So I'm using more dashed lines, which gives me more of an atmospheric softness. And I can go in and put in some hatching. By the way, in this case, the ink I'm using is not pure black. This is Roher and Klingner sepia ink. I think it's called Lily. This is a waterproof sketch ink. In this case, though, the ink does not need to be waterproof. You can use water-soluble ink. That's another advantage of this technique. No water or washes involved. Nothing's going to get washed away. You can use any ink you want for this technique. And you can see how well the ink goes over graphite without any problems whatsoever. Let's create a little bit more of a soft transition from the core shadow into the lighter part of the shadow, like this. And then the advantage of having initial tone is that I can work in both directions. So I can take an eraser and I can start erasing out the lights this way. So this would be the equivalent of working on tone paper. Here are some highlights. Here's a little bit of light coming out from behind the shadow side of the sphere. We can go back in and go slightly darker in the shadows, just working back and forth between the shadows and the lights. The graphite can be used to create much softer transitions than can be done with the pen alone. So this technique is very good for a number of different purposes, including time scales, meaning that I can do quick sketches with it and I can also do very highly finished work that takes several hours. This is a very, very flexible technique. It can be done on a variety of papers. So for example, I'm using a very smooth multimedia paper in this Talens Art Creations sketchbook. So just two different ways that this technique can be used. Okay, so we have some simple spheres. Let's see how we can apply this technique to a landscape. I'm going to start my landscape with my graphite pencil. One of the advantages of the two millimeter clutch pencil is that it can be extended to be very long so you can use it sideways and put down large flat areas of value. That is the one advantage of the mechanical clutch pencil over regular mechanical pencils. Mechanical pencils are linear. They can be used for crosshatching. I like them for initial sketching, but the two millimeter clutch gives me a lot more versatility in terms of the kind of strokes I can create. So I'm just going to do a very quick initial sketch. It can be kept soft. I'm going to simplify this considerably. There's a lot of busyness going on in terms of the palm fronds. I'm going to simplify the depth a little bit also, not just to save time, but also to create hopefully a more effective composition. A lot of busyness here that I'm going to try to simplify as much as possible. While I'm here, let's put down some of these really interesting cast shadows in the foreground. That's going to help push the space forward. We're going to ignore these seated people here. Let's put in a few additional details. Since the format of this composition is narrow, I've squeezed everything together. Now let's switch to the pen and let's put in some line work. The balance between graphite and the pen is really up to the artist. You can do a drawing that's very heavy on the graphite and light on the penwork, or vice versa. Heavy on the penwork, light on the graphite. The same way you would find the appropriate balance with your pen and wash drawings. You can do a drawing with lots of wash where the pen plays a supporting role, or a drawing where there's lots of line work where the wash plays a supporting role. In this case, it's going to be kind of a balance of the two. I'm using the pen to introduce some texture. I'm going to also use it for some shading. I'm just going to use the pen here to introduce a lot of strong texture. That's going to help push this tree into the foreground. Here, the texture changes. I'm going to record the change in texture here. Here, make the line work really strong. Again, one of the advantages of having a pen with a flexible nib like this is the strong line variation I can get. Make the lines very, very strong here. Just like when you're working with wash, you have to anticipate that you're going to place a darker wash over things, which might obscure some of the line work. You can make the line work a little bit stronger to compensate for the softening effect of the wash. Let's put in this tree here. The area is here. Maybe I'll put in a tree back here. I'll put in some lines just for the branches. For the leaves, I'm going to leave them alone. I'm going to let the graphite do the work here. Let's put in the second tree here. It's a really beautiful texture here. I can't make it so strong that it overwhelms the foreground elements. As beautiful as that texture is, I'm going to have to soften it for the sake of atmospheric perspective. Back here, even though there's a lot of strong texture, I'm going to simplify it, reduce it down. Otherwise, it's going to break my sense of depth. We have a bunch of fronds here in the foreground. This is where my pen work can really shine and be stronger than even what I'm seeing in the image. Particularly when you're doing quick sketches and even longer work, this kind of simplification is very necessary. In this image, the initial reference is quite busy. If I'm not careful, this tree also has some fronds to it. I'm going to make sure that they're softer. Here there's a lot of confusion, so I'm going to make sure that the fronds of the palm tree in the back separate out and look farther away than the fronds of the foreground tree. Whereas in the image, those two things are quite confused. I can't tell which is which. Let's put in a few on this side. All this stuff feels a little bit busy right now, but again, keep in mind that we're putting wash on top of this in the form of graphite, which is going to have a softening effect. All right, let's see. There's a little wall here. Having a diagonal here is going to help with the depth. Let's put in a few additional bushes here. Here's a bush. There's a wall here. Let's draw it. There is another tree here. I'm going to eliminate it. There's some stuff here in the background. I'm going to soften it. There's a bunch of foliage here. I'm going to leave it alone. Let's put in just a little more texture and the foreground element here. Okay, now we're ready for the graphite wash. We're looking for big values first, so let's flood this tree with a darker gray and then think about light direction. The palm fronds can be thrown mostly into shadow, and then we can work on getting that modeled shadow and light pattern on the grass, which is very easy to do with wash, not so easy to do with just a line with just a pen. We're going to throw everything here into shadow, which is going to help the lighter areas of the plants come out and pop to the foreground. Now we can get that shadow pattern on the ground. The great thing is because the graphite is light gray and transparent, there's almost no way for it to interfere with the line work. This is a danger when you're working with wash. If you make the washes too dark, they're going to get in the way of the lines. With this technique, it's not possible. Graphite, no matter how dark, is never going to go as dark as your lines. There's no risk that your drawing is going to get confused where the washes and the lines end up doing the same things and you create something that's very busy. The pencil can also be used to create texture, but generally speaking, I would use the pen for that. Keep those jobs separate. Let's finish up with a little more ink just to go ever so slightly darker. Now I know where the darks really need to go. I can be more effective and bolder with my decisions. Let's add some more details on the fronds here. We can hatch if we want. We can add some texture details here to the ground to get it to pop forward. Maybe the grass here could use a little texture. Since we have a tone, we can also use our eraser to go lighter. There's some patches of light on this tree. We can use our eraser to lighten those spots. Here's the completed drawing which demonstrates what can be done with a pen, a graphite pencil, and an eraser. I hope you enjoyed this demonstration, and if you did, please subscribe and stay tuned to many more lessons like it. Thank you for watching, and see you back on my channel very soon. Bye-bye.