Drawing with pen or brush and ink is an ancient art, common to Egypt and China as early at 2000 BC. The early inks were often made from carbon black, finely ground and dispersed in water or oil, sometimes with a vegetable glue. Today's India Ink is made much the same way and is considered highly permanent as a drawing material since it is not affected by moisture or light.

The brownish ink used by Leonardo da Vinci in his famous notebooks was sepia, made from the inky fluid secreted by an octopus, cuttlefish or squid. Inks can also be made from vegetable dye sources including indigo and oak trees (tannin).

Drawing impliments to use with ink can be as simple as a reed pen that you can make yourself from thin bamboo, thick reeds (grasses) or a large feather. Choose bamboo that is thinner than a pencil and cut it to about the same length as a pencil.

Use a penknife (thats why they call it a PEN knife), starting about 1/2" from the end, use your knife to cut a curve from the back to the point at the end of the front. Whittle at the pen to make it thinner and evenly curved with a point. When you have the shape that you want, carefully cut a slit from the end of the point up to the level of the curve. This will allow the ink to flow to the point. As the pen wears down you can whittle the point again to your satisfaction. The advantage of a reed or bamboo pen is that you can personalize the kind of point you want from a fine 'crowquill' point to a broader flat lettering point. A little experimentation will show you how useful this kind of natural pen can be.

When you dip the pen in ink you fill the center of the bamboo with the ink and it will slowly seep to the point as you draw. First experiment with different kinds of marks and lines, short dashes are easiest. Each handmade pen will have its own personality.

Vincent Van Gogh made his own reed pens to produce interesting drawings. He varied the strokes to suit the distance or forground or describe the texture of the grasses and trees. A simple composition is best for this kind of technique. Design the picture with pencil and fill in the areas with a variety of inkstroke patterns. When the work is totally dry, you can erase the pencil drawing.

There are many kinds of prefilled or cartridge-filled drawing pens available. The smooth and regular borders of lines produced with these pens are appropriate for cross hatching or other linear techniques. Be careful when selecting prefilled pens to know if the ink is waterproof or water soluable, especially if you intend to do a watercolor wash over your ink drawing for the watercolor can ruin a water based ink drawing. Test the ink on the paper you plan to use. Some dye based inks will blur (immediately or over time) on papers with a soft surface

Drawing with pen and ink can be accomplished with simple materials or technical equipment but the intent is the same; to produce an interesting composition through the use of black and white lines.

By Sharon Himes
Information supplied by: http://www.artcafe.net