Urban Sketching with Pens
Why Ink Pens? Many urban sketchers like to draw with ink pens. Urban sketching is usually performed quickly, outdoors, on location. Drawing tools such as pencils and pens typically allow artists to get their ideas down on paper quickly and easily. Drawing with ink pens has a lot of benefits:
High quality ink pens are readily available to contemporary artists. You can buy them at art supply stores and online sites. Most artists experiment to find the right type of ink pen for their urban sketching. See the test strip, at the bottom of the page, that I made in the art supply store.
- Pens are portable.
- They are easy to hold and maneuver.
- They give good dark lines.
- It can be easier to start a painting with lines and then add color on top.
High quality ink pens are readily available to contemporary artists. You can buy them at art supply stores and online sites. Most artists experiment to find the right type of ink pen for their urban sketching. See the test strip, at the bottom of the page, that I made in the art supply store.
Ink Pens vs. Graphite Pencils When artists draw with pencils, they appreciate the ability to get soft pale tones as well as dark shadow tones. Graphite drawings are not considered black and white. With a pencil, you can move smoothly and gradually from light to dark. This graduated shading is called continuous tone drawing. Ink pens create black marks only. Therefore ink drawings are black and white. In ink drawings, tone is developed by using multiple lines on top of each other or by cross hatching lines.
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Pigma Microns are usually my first choice of pen. I usually choose black for my lines, though sometimes a sepia ink has a nice quality for some sketches. The ink is permanent, archival, and has very little bleed if you come over the top of it with watercolor paint or a water brush. I usually use the 01 size to create fine lines in the background and thicker lines up front.
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Starting a Sketch Some artists like to pick up a pen and start sketching immediately. Others like to draw first in pencil. If it is a simple scene, it can be great to just jump in and start drawing with the pen. It can be immediate and spontaneous in result. Some artists prefer to draw almost the whole scene in pencil then ink over the lines with a pen. This gives them control and allows them to make corrections before the permanent ink goes on. See Example
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The Technica Hybrid is quickly becoming my favorite pen for sketching and all-around drawing. It is like a cross between a gel pen and a ball point pen. Supposedly the ink is archival in quality and it is very dark and luscious. It draws out smoothly like a gel pen so it has a nice feel to draw with. I like the 05 size for most sketching.
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Minimal Pencil Start Another good way to start is to make a few marks in pencil to lay out the scene the way you want it. If there are buildings in my scene, I will typically make pencil line marks just to give me the vanishing lines, and then I will start immediately sketching with the ink pen. See Example
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The Pentel Stylus Sketch has a unique flat point. It is like a little plastic plectrum. Depending on how you hold it, it will give you thin lines or thick lines. It's possible to get a nice varied line weight, similar to dip pens or calligraphy pens. The ink, however, is not permanent. It will bleed when touched with water or watercolor paints. I actually like to take advantage of this because I like the way ink washes or bleeds look in urban sketching.
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The pens below show some of the variety of pens, fine liners, and markers that can be used to do line work in urban sketching. Sketching is quick, lean, and fun, so really? Anything goes. If you have a pen, a pencil, a crayon it will work to create a sketch.
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The PITT artist pens are a complete series of pens from fine liners to brush pens. They come in a wide variety of colors and are often used by professional marker artists. Shown here is the fine point black pen that I might use for line work in my urban sketches. It is highest quality archival and permanent ink. Watercolors can safely be painted over the lines without worry of smearing or bleeding.
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