Attelabus nitens – ink on paper

This drawing was a quick ink sketch I made when I got a new pen. The pen is designed for drawing Manga, but rather than being a dip pen, it’s actually a cartridge pen. Here’s what the nib looks like…

I’ve always thought this would be a good idea. Unfortunately it doesn’t hold a zebra G nib, which would have been perfect, but it does look pretty good.

I found a really cool looking weevil in my Collins Complete Guide to British Insects book…

I though this little dude looked awesome. So I made a sketch…

Unfortunately I went off the page a little bit with his rear right foot!

Then I began to draw with the new pen. I was able to make some great textures and create really small lines too. I did have some trouble keeping the ink flowing and had to dip the pen in water from time to time to help draw the ink out. I wonder if I need to put a flame to the nib to burn off the coating they sometimes have? So for places where I needed jet black ink I used my trusty Microns but most of the rest was all with this manga pen. (I did put in a shadow with pencils.)

Because I’d gone off the page, when I framed the photo of my drawing I added some extra space to deliberately make the weevil look like he was just about to crawl across the paper. I liked this effect. I think I will work more in future on placement and framing. Anyway here’s the final sketch…

This was a good little project to test out my pen but the image was too small for the kind of detail I would like on a picture like this (the weevil is only about 7-8cm long in my drawing). I think I will try to find a way to get the ink to flow properly and then have another go with this pen on a bigger sheet of paper.