INK PEN DRAWING – FISH IN THE SEAWEED

Today I completed another drawing in my small Rhodia drawing book. I love this little book with its black padded hard cover and elastic to keep it closed, and its beautifully smooth cream coloured pages. When I first got it, the combination of black and cream dictated to me that this would be filled with black pen drawings only, with little accents of gold in places. The ink pens simply glide over the surface and even when I apply a lot of ink, it doesn’t seem to bleed through, or at least only a tiny amount on rare occasions. This little book is one of my favourite ongoing projects.

A development of my “Tendrils, Roots and Seeds” theme

When I did this drawing, I promised myself I would develop the sinuous vertical line shapes into seaweed, and have some fish swimming amongst them.

This is the result.

I wanted a gradation from dark to light as one moved up the picture, so I added the fills and shading to the tendrils accordingly – less at the bottom and more at the top. When I added the background, I began with solid black at the bottom and gradually lightened it as I moved up the picture, changing from solid colour to stipples. It soon became clear that there wasn’t enough contrast in the picture and the fish were getting lost.

I therefore went over much more of the bottom part of the background with solid black, and made the transition narrower. This has definitely improved things.

There are touches of gold, as before – on three of the tendrils, and to add detailing to the fish. The fine tipped metallic gold Posca acrylic pen is fabulous to use and it is quite a rich gold, which doesn’t show up as well in the photo as it does in real life.

I did go over most of the tiny white spots in the black background area digitally as it was a bit messy-looking. I shall work further on the original with the black pen to achieve the same result. It seemed a lot more obvious in the photo than in real life.