Drawing & Painting Lessons
with Edward Burke
Drawing With a Crow-Quill Pen & Ink
Crow Quill Pen and India Ink Line Drawing Exercise
Drawing with a crow quill pen is beginning to be a lost art form. Aside from the traditional looking aesthetic, this pen and ink exercise helps to develop hand skills that are useful for all drawing mediums. The value of hand skills is important in learning to control the pressure that you apply to the support you are working with.
When you press the crow quill pen down, more ink is released making the line thicker, with less pressure the line becomes thin. This allows your line to undulate from thick to thin and vice versa. With most other drawing mediums, you have to change the position of the implement to create a thick and thin line.
Crow Quill Pen Nibs and India Ink and nib holder.
Below are two exercises using crow quill pen and india ink.
Materials: crow quill pen, india ink, smooth surface illustration board
Exercise 1: Basic crow quill pen exercise
Exercise 2: This exercise is less traditional than Exercise 1. You can mimic the patterns in the exercise below. When you are finished and your handling of the pen and ink has improved, I would encourage you to create a new sheet of your own unique patterns.
