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ANIMALS36 Drawing With Ink
T o MAKE A QUILL OR REED PEN, keep all your fingers behind basis of iron-gall ink, can also be collected from affected trees,
crushed, and boiled to make a golden ink. For centuries, galls
the blade and cut away from you. Practice to gain a feel for were ground with iron sulfate to make an unstable solution.
how materials behave, then cut a final nib (feathers, for Running fresh, it was gray-purple. It dried black, and turned
example, are surprisingly tough.) You can make ink easily brown with time. It also oxidized and ate or burned paper.
from the boiled, reduced, sieved, fleshy skins that surround Some of Michelangelo's drawings are now a little eaten by
ripe walnuts. Collect skins from the ground beneath trees their own ink. Although oak galls and walnut skins are
once they are blackened. Walnut ink is gloopy, red-brown, harmless, always be cautious when experimenting with recipes.
and delicious to draw with. Oak galls, forming the
REED PENS QUILL PENS
Reedpens dispense ink Quills are highly responsive
quickly, giving a short, d r y t o changes in pressure. They
give a finer, m o r e extended line
mark. Under heavy pressure, than reed and a more organic
they stick and judder forward. line than metal. Michelangelo's
I used these qualities to draw d r a g o n o n p . 2 4 4 is an exquisite
the worms above. Rembrandt, example. Quills are also called
Van Gogh, and Matisse also Dutch pens, since the Dutch
enjoyed them. Scribes of the were the first to realize that
Middle Ages, finding reed they could be hardened and
pens unwieldy, reserved their improved with heat treatment
use for large choir books, and in ash o r sand.
developed the quill instead.
Reed marks The darker left wing of this of a loaded nib. The lighter right Quill marks Quills carry more ink than
beetle was drawn with the wet inky reeds, giving longer lines. The darkest strokes
show paper beneath. of this grasshopper (around the head and
stroke wings) were made first. Paler strokes for
wing, drawn with a dryer nib, appears the legs and antennae were made as
to glisten where the mark has broken the ink ran out.
to
