Pitt pen and water-soluble crayon
So hard not to break the rules sometimes! I love, love, love the ink only drawing. But, sometimes it is just impossible for me not to add a little color. This Koel bird was a prime example. I drew this from a black and white only image from the Animals, Mammals, Bird, Fish, Insects etc. book I have been using. I decided to look the bird up to just learn some more about it, and the images I found show the bird with brilliant red eyes and a green toned beak. The sketch was begging for the color.
I loved this little Jack Russell Terrier that was running around on the lava stone at the beach on The Big Island of Hawaii. i took several photos of him. I think I might do a couple more sketches of him.
Pitt Pen Medium Point
Behind again on my sketches, two more to do today.
Art Projects 
I, like you think a little splash of colour would just finish it off, I won’t tell if you do! Karen
It’s amazing what just a little color will do! And, I suppose that rules are meant to be broken. I am staying true to the the main purpose I think by not using any guidelines, so there is that 🙂
It the lack of guidelines and leaping in pen first that is the hard and downright scary part. I can do it sometimes, but more comfortable with a quick rough out of the main objects first. Karen
Oh boy, the old guidelines thingy. My ink bible is “Rendering in Pen and Ink” by Arthur Guptill of the publisher Watson-Guptill. Arthur is dead and wrote this decades ago but he used pencil guidelines. He’s got a great little example of a paint can and brush done with pencil and then rendered in ink.
I use pencil guidelines because I need them, and need to erase, but even when I ink over them my lines tend to be wonky. I find when you get in groups there is subtle persuasion to put that ink down, perhaps even the suggestion that “real” artists do not need pencil under drawings, but if you want some guidelines, you like them, it isn’t a crime. I am already uptight enough about drawing without worrying about the correctness of using pencil under my ink.
Amazing how these things get started and everyone second-guesses the method they enjoy. I understand about training and doing art freeform, but if you enjoy it more with guidelines it seems to me to supersede arbitrary rules of perfection.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong at all with the pencil guidelines 🙂 What is interesting about just ink only is that it is helping me get over the fear of putting a mark down on paper. Because I know I can’t erase it (the ink), somehow it does seem different. While I am doing one ink only drawing a day, I am still using pencil guidelines of other works. It’s really a personal exploration…just trying different approaches. I really like approaching a sketch in ink only…but I also like putting in some pencil guidelines. Thanks for the book reference–I am going to look that one up.