The Secrets to Drawing: Drawing with Ink
Lesson Description
Lesson Sixteen of The Secrets to Drawing Course introduces students to the expressive and versatile medium of ink. Ink is a dynamic tool that allows for both bold, precise lines and subtle tonal washes, making it ideal for creating dramatic, detailed, and visually striking artwork. In this lesson, students learn how to apply ink with pens and brushes, explore ink wash techniques, and apply these skills to draw a landscape combining pen and ink with ink wash for a full range of effects.
Introduction to Ink as a Medium
The lesson begins by examining the qualities that make ink a unique and powerful medium. Ink produces crisp, permanent lines and rich, saturated tones that stand out on paper. Unlike graphite or charcoal, ink is less forgiving, so precision and careful planning are essential. However, when mastered, ink allows artists to achieve remarkable contrast, texture, and expressive mark-making.
Matt Fussell emphasizes that ink is ideal for both detailed renderings and loose, gestural drawings. By combining line work with ink wash, artists can create a sense of depth, volume, and atmosphere that adds drama and visual interest to their compositions.
Applying Ink with Pens
The first method introduced in the lesson is using pens to apply ink. Students learn how to control line weight, direction, and density to build form, texture, and depth. Different types of pens, such as fine liners, technical pens, or fountain pens, offer various line qualities.
Applying Ink with Brushes: Ink Wash
The lesson then explores applying ink with a brush to create washes, a technique similar to watercolor. Ink wash allows artists to produce smooth tonal transitions, subtle shadows, and atmospheric effects that complement pen work. Matt demonstrates how to dilute ink with water to achieve a range of values, from light gray to deep black, and how to layer washes to gradually build depth.
Students are taught how to control brush pressure, brush angle, and the amount of ink applied to achieve desired effects. Techniques such as wet-on-wet application for soft blends or wet-on-dry for sharper edges are introduced. This approach adds dimensionality and a painterly quality to ink drawings that balance precision with fluidity.
Combining Pen and Ink with Ink Wash
Once students have explored both pen and brush techniques separately, the lesson demonstrates how to combine these methods in a single drawing. Using a pen to establish line work and structural detail, and ink wash to create shadows, volume, and atmosphere, students can produce rich, layered compositions. This combination allows for the strengths of each technique to complement the other: pen work provides clarity and definition, while ink wash adds subtle depth and tonal variation.
Drawing Exercise: Landscape with Ink Wash and Pen
The primary exercise in this lesson involves creating a landscape using both pen and ink with ink wash on drawing paper. Students begin by lightly sketching the layout of the landscape, identifying the horizon, key features, and focal points. Pen work is then applied to define structures, trees, or other elements, using line techniques such as hatching, cross-hatching, and stippling.
Next, students add ink washes to indicate shadows, atmospheric depth, and value transitions. Matt guides students in observing how light interacts with the landscape, and how varying the intensity of washes can create the illusion of distance, form, and mood. By carefully layering pen and wash, the drawing gains a sense of realism and visual impact that captures both detail and atmosphere.
Benefits of Drawing with Ink
Drawing with ink teaches students control, precision, and versatility while encouraging expressive mark-making. It emphasizes careful observation of light, shadow, and texture, and helps artists learn to combine line and tonal techniques to create powerful visual compositions. Using both pen and ink wash, students can achieve dramatic contrasts, depth, and a sense of three-dimensionality that enhances their artistic repertoire.
Conclusion: Mastering Ink Techniques
By the end of Lesson Sixteen, students have a strong understanding of how to use ink as a medium. They have learned how to apply ink with pens for detailed line work, use brushes and ink wash for tonal effects, and combine both methods in a landscape drawing. This lesson builds on previous knowledge of value, texture, and composition, preparing students to explore ink further in both representational and expressive drawing projects. Mastery of ink expands an artist’s technical and creative options, allowing for striking, bold, and atmospheric artwork.
Lesson Materials
Carbon Black Pigmented Ink, nylon brushes, water, watercolor paper, nib pen with a sharp nib.
Lesson Resources
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Founder of The Virtual Instructor, artist and teacher. Matt makes learning art easy to understand and enjoyable.
Hi
Thanks for the wonderful work which is making my job as a teacher so much easier. I seem to be battling with the download of the Drawing with Ink EBook. I have tried a number of times to no avail.
Ros
Hi Rosalind,
That file was huge! I replaced it with an optimized version that should improve the download speed. I hope this helps!
Thanks,
Matt
hello everyone
i like to do stippling drawings and i would like some suggestions on how to select different objects
like the example of the black boy and the man on a bike that was shown in the lesson plan tutorial
using ink drawing techniques.
tank you
rudy andrade
That was fantastic . Although I would have loved to see how the sketch was done initially
I to love to do Stippling and would very much like to learn more about this method. Thanks Matt I am really enjoying your Drawing Workshops would very much have liked to seen how you did your initial drawing for this workshop
Doreen
Hi Matt,
I love this technique of using pen and ink. I have just started to draw again after many many years of not drawing. I am learning so many new ways of enhancing a normal graphite drawing.
Thank you so much for the courses, they are awesome and can not wait to get some ink and pen to try this technique also.
Hi-
Is there a photo reference for “Drawing with Ink”,the 16th in the Secrets to Drawing series?
Thanks
Hi Rosa,
Photo references are available for many of the demonstrations. This one, however is unfortunately not available.
This drawing is beautiful!
Matt,
I am having trouble downloading the video for Mod 16 Drawing with Ink, in the Secrets to Drawing class. Is there a problem with it? I’m not having any problem with the other Mod videos. The Ebook downloaded fine. Thanks for any suggestions you can provide.
Hi Doug,
The download links appear to be working normally. Which file are you trying to download? Be sure that you are downloading either the SD or HD version. Also check and be sure that your internet connection is strong and uninterrupted.
Just now tried the download and it worked fine. Whatever was the problem yesterday has gone away (wish other problems were as easy, like world peace!)
Hi Matt, I am currently in the 7 day trial period and while I am enjoying browsing through the different courses and lessons I am finding a lot of the videos are constantly stopping and starting.I am impressed with the courses content and love your method of teaching but I must confess to being unsure about proceeding further because of this problem. Any idea why this problem is occurring?
Hi Kerry,
The videos are set to play in High Definition by default. Some internet connections may not be able to stream fast enough to stream HD. This causes “buffering” which is what you are experiencing. You may scroll over the video and click on the “HD” icon to turn High Definition off. The ‘buffering” will stop after you do this. I hope this helps.
Thanks for the pen and ink drawing. You helped solve many of the mysteries of pen and ink drawing for me. Love the drawing you did of the barn.
Thanks for this course Matt. I’m really enjoying it and learning a lot. One thing that would be helpful is if, as part of the materials for the lesson (or maybe in the e-book) you would provide a clear copy of the line/contour drawing that is used as the basis for the demonstration. For example, with this lesson, the drawing that you were working on was so faint I could barely see it. Thanks!
Love the lesson. Thank you. I never used pen and ink and will be trying it out.
Are students supposed to just copy what you are doing in each lesson as their assignment to practice the techniques?
Hi Heather,
You can certainly do this or you can simply learn and apply what you learn to your own artworks.
I have a dozen books on pen and ink drawing. . . A picture is worth a Thousand Words! That was eye opening! Can’t wait to try that on my own!
Wow Matt! You made this look so easy! I actually thought pen and ink was using a pen to do stippling drawings. I originally found your youtube site while looking for aquarelle and now see that there’s ink wash, which I plan to try.
Thank you so much for all your videos! I’m learning so much and can’t wait to try many of the things you taught us!
Thanks Tracie and you’re welcome!