Pen Art

There Is No Undo!

Pen art has always fascinated me and I’ve always admired those that can create magnificent works with the permanent medium. Personally, I never considered doing anything serious in pen. As most of you know, pencil is my weapon of choice. It’s easy to use and best of all, if you really screw up, you can erase! And as foreign as drawing with a stylus and tablet is to me, I’d still choose that over drawing with a pen. Digital art has a pretty cool feature when it comes to dealing with mistakes…UNDO! Pen art is that much more scary to me because there is no undo.

Snippets of my 2014 daily sketch book #1

Until recently, I’ve only really seen astounding examples of pen art online. Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest have opened my eyes to the possibilities. But, I’d never really seen anyone doing it live. When I started the job I have now, it didn’t take me long to spot another artist. I’d see him out on his smoke break sketching away. What struck was that he always sketched in pen. Over the years, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to see his work and he explained that he used to draw in pencil during his commute on the train (which is a feat all on its own!). But with the commute and the jostling of the sketchbook in his backpack, his drawing would eventually smudge and smear and lose their detail. The solution for him was learning to draw with pen. He doesn’t even use a fancy artist’s pen. Just a regular ballpoint, although he has his favorites, ones that don’t goop up too much and draws smoothly without skipping.

Snippets of my 2014 daily sketch book #2

At the time, I was also on public transportation and had just made the decision to make 2014 the year that I did a sketch a day. I thought about what my coworker had told me about the pencils smearing and smudging and losing detail. My intent was for my sketches to be brief, but as detailed as possible. And as brief as they were going to be, I still wanted them to last. So I did what he did and tried ballpoint pen. I figured that working in pen would prevent me from getting too attached to the outcome, whereas with pencil I just knew that I’d agonize over getting everything just perfect. I was also going to be working on the bus, so I really had to detach from the idea of perfection. Both of those things would also kind of force me to not invest too much time on something that was supposed to be just a sketch and not a fully rendered piece.

It took a little while for me to get comfortable with pens. And it took time for me to find the right pen. I certainly didn’t want to invest money in artist’s pens for something that was simply a daily sketch. So I went the whole gamut of regular office pens…Bic, Papermate, Pentel RSVP, and even the promotional freebies some of our vendors at work would give us. I finally settled on fine point Pentel RSVP. I learned pretty quickly that with any pen I chose, I had to get into the habit of frequently wiping off the tip. There was nothing more frustrating than making good progress only to deposit a big ink blob onto your drawing!

Snippets of my 2014 daily sketch book #3

2014 was certainly a growing and learning experience and also a “getting out of my comfort zone” experience. But I had such a sense of accomplishment by the time 2015 rolled around. I had managed to complete a sketch every single day of the year! I started to do the same for 2015, but thankfully, my commission work picked up and that took time from doing daily sketches. So while my first choice will always be pencil, I’m proud to say that I’ve added ballpoint pen to my toolbox. Not that I’d use it all the time, but now that I know how to use it comfortably, it’s definitely an option. And for an artist, having more options and more tools in your arsenal is always a good thing.