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:
- Use pens in areas that are going to be “hard” edged or are enclosed by a line.
- The yellow tint adds extra interest to the drawing.
- Graphite over the darkest pen makes a terrific deep black quickly, but there still is the edge problem.
My Next Experiment:
- How about mixing warm and cool gray with graphite?
- Would that give the drawing more depth, or just look awful?
- 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. :)