Bamboo pen and Indian Ink

When I was in Italy last year, a parting gift was a bamboo pen from Marcus. It has proved my absolute best tool for drawing and complements my style perfectly. It doesn’t hold much ink but picks up water nicely to give a variety of tone and breadth of stroke. It scratches and flicks dots of ink as it catches on the paper.

It’s impossible to hold like a real pen as it is chunky, thick and long, but hold it near the end and it encourages loose drawing marks and random hit and miss.

This can be further exploited by dipping it into water, or spraying water, dripping, flicking and using a watercolour brush over the surface.

Quick drawings in situ can be completed in ten minutes or take half an hour with more time spent looking at the subject rather than the paper. It forces you to decipher the scene; pick out what is important and leave the unnecessary.

This was one such day at Northcott Mouth and the resulting work hanging in the exhibition ‘Colours Of A Tangled Coastline”