Prehistoric Chicken With Pitt Pens And Graphite

This started out as a doodle and ended up as a Prehistoric Chicken. (That’s my closest guess about what it is.)

Anyway, I decided to experiment by using Pitt Pens along with my usual graphite. I’d tried this before and had some success, and this time it went a little smoother.

I used Warm Gray III 272, Warm Gray IV 273, and Warm Gray V 274. They come in the “Shades of Gray,” brush tip 6 pack by Faber-Castell. That pack comes with three cool grays too, but I think the warm grays look better with graphite. I might use the cool gray pens in my next experiment, though.

I used the pens to fill in the comb on top of his head, the feather / scales down his neck, every other band around his beak, and on some of the leaves. Where the ink shows through the graphite, you can see a slight yellow tint. I think that yellowish tint is fascinating, and I want to play with it some more!

I didn’t convert the scan to grayscale so you can (hopefully) see the tint, or at least get an idea of what I’m talking about. (Click the image for a larger version.)

When an inked area was dry, I covered it with pencil hatching to blend it in, but the edges of the ink were challenging to cover completely.

Lessons learned:

1. Use pens in areas that are going to be “hard” edged or are enclosed by a line.
2. The yellow tint adds extra interest to the drawing.
3. Graphite over the darkest pen makes a terrific deep black quickly, but there still is the edge problem.

My Next Experiment:

1. How about mixing warm and cool gray with graphite?
2. Would that give the drawing more depth, or just look awful?
3. I need to invent some different techniques for blending the ink edges.

That’s my report from the Drawing Lab for this week. I’ll report more experiments as they develop. :)

Author: Carol

I'm an artist, an accidental author, and lover of life. I grew up in Yorktown, Indiana, and I've been writing (and drawing) this website since 1999. View all posts by Carol