A Rural Landscape in Ink

 

This week I worked on developing texture in ink.

I began with a basic sketch of a landscape which you might find in the north of England…

 

Normally I would just dive into inking this but I wanted to take some time to think about the textural effects I would use.  So I looked at the landscape and picked out eight different areas where a texture might work well.  Then I experimented with the textures for each of these areas.

I found that I needed more space for some of these areas, so I went onto another page…

Once I’d decided on the marks I would use to represent each texture I began to ink my drawing.

This week I switched over to using Rotring Rapidograph pens which are lovely to use and reliably produce the same line weight all the time.

I mus admit I thought they were superb.  They worked well as soon as I had set them up and never waivered.

I began inking the basic outline…

And then slowly and steadily worked my way through the whole drawing.  Working on this picture was a very restful meditative activity.  Time flew by as I drew and before long it was finished.  Here’s my final drawing…