Using Ink

 28/02/21 - Week 21

Using ink was a really interesting experience and I did enjoy it but there were lots of difficulties that I had to the point where I am not very happy with any of the results of this task. Obviously, ink is not forgiving and I struggled with this a lot especially in places like the hands and feet as I struggle with these anyway, and the addition of there being no room for error really showed these as my weakness. I think sometimes I was quite nervous to lay down the ink too which threw me off in places I would usually be ok with in pencil.

Here is my first attempt with the ink, I started first with laying down the main shadows with a brush and then going in with the ink to add contour, this was a pretty good method to use as it allowed the wash to dry and the ink to be applied with only some smudging. I like the effect of the ink on both the dry areas and the wetter ones, I think some really interesting and unique things could be produced from this including creating much darker areas with an interesting gradient and texture.

Moving on to my next set of drawings, I started to understand the ink a bit more and was able to play around with the darkness of ink I wanted, I got better at controlling the smudging too, although I still like this effect I found it wasn't something I was looking for. The first piece on this page is probably my favourite out of all 6 since I feel the anatomy is probably the best and the smoothest. It looks a lot more planned out than the others too, I was struggling quite a bit with the sizing of each piece. A lot of the time when I draw I will rub most of the piece out and start again if it is not sitting right on the paper, this wasn't really applicable here though so I feel it made some of these weaker than they perhaps could have been. 

I also tried to be a bit more expressive in the ink wash at the beginning, it allowed a bit of room for error and I think it overall made the pieces feel a lot more loose and have movement to it.

In my last set of drawings, I felt more comfortable with the ink and was using much more contrast, I found dipping the brush into some more ink and then washing it out slightly, allowed me to create a wider range of tones here which I ended up really liking.

I think this exercise taught me a bit about my ability to draw anatomy accurately, it was difficult for me to get it right straight off the bat and with the added difficulty of me trying to work with ink it was hard to replicate some of the anatomy that I was looking at.

I think if I were to attempt using ink again I would like to try to approach it much more roughly, in using the ink it forced me to want to try to get everything perfect straight away but I think there is the ability to create beauty within the imperfections of ink and trying to experiment with this would be interesting for me to play with more.

Anatomically, these pieces are not my best at all but I thought it was important to try to experiment with the medium and not have all my focus in one place. I feel that the ability of the contrast in the use of ink and ink wash allowed for some muscle structure to show up nicer than if I was going to render in pencil, and I think this does help some of my pieces here look a little more functional than those of last week.