In 2018, in order to study animal anatomy more in depth, I decided to make an ink painting series of animal skeletons and skulls. I have also filmed myself painting them.
Since I learned most of my drawing skills by watching other people draw, live or on video, I thought it might be time to pay back and make my own videos to help people. Also drawing time-lapses look cool so here it is :P
https://d.tube/v/skeenee/754uuv200c9If you like this type of video, go give some love to my YouTube channel, its subscribers badly need some company:P I only have a few videos uploaded, but it will grow fast!
Here is a picture of the final result.
If you like it you can get a framed print from my website, or an NFT from a my Makersplace shop. The original is still available, contact me if you wanna buy it with crypto.
I thought I would share something about my process or some kind of tip/technique in each of my posts. I´ll start with the material I use to draw.
I tried many tools during my years of drawing and those are the ones I feel the most comfortable with, that work best for me.
Pen & Ink Fountain Pen , this is one of my favorite fountain pen for drawing. The nib is flexible enough for drawing, and it´s relatively cheap.
Noodler´s Black Fountain Pen Ink, a must have ink for fountain pen drawing. It´s the only ink, and I tried many, that is really water resistant. Once it is dry you can drench it in watercolors, it won´t smear. I can´t count the number of drawings I had to bin because I was using shitty fountain pen ink. I can´t recommend it enough. Actually if you are drawing with a fountain pen and not using this ink, just trash your drawing right now, it will save you time!
Water Brush, I love those and use them for everything from field sketching to clean illustrations. It´s the perfect tool to make smooth gradients, to spread the ink on the paper.
Kuretake Sumi Ink, the ink I use to paint with brushes. I stopped using China ink and switched to Sumi ink a while ago for many reasons. China ink is shiny/brilliant when it dries, which makes it hard to have solid homogeneous area of pure black, while Sumi ink is mate and dries very homogeneously. Sumi ink also gets lighter when it dries, which allows me to push my dark areas without fear of going too far.
Masking Fluid, any will do; I have tried a bunch of different brands and notice very little difference.
Cold Press Arches Watercolor Paper 300g, I love that paper but it´s definitely not made for fountain pens. It has a lot of relief and bumps that make it challenging to pull perfect lines. But it´s the only paper that I know of that sucks ink so well, allowing me to create clean areas of solid black. The trick to draw with a fountain pen on Arches paper, is to rip it off the pack and use the back of the sheet. The front of the sheet has a lot of relief while the back is much smoother.
That´s it for today, I hope you enjoyed this post and that it was helpful for some of you. Don't hesitate to send any questions my way, I´ll try to help you the best I can.
Have a nice day!
