How to Draw with Ink is a nine-week course that will cover observational drawing and formal art techniques through the lens of ink drawing. Each class is designed to build on the previous, so that students can master complex art topics. In this class, students will learn a wealth of knowledge on basic inking materials and how to care for these materials, mark-making, how to vary strokes, values and value scale creation, how to make different textures, how to render shapes, creating volume in work through cross-contour drawing, constructing forms, and more! Students will have completed several value scales and studies, texture cubes and scales, and at least three observational ink drawings.

WEEK 1: How to Draw With Ink: 101 Materials and Lines
Ink is an extremely versatile medium that comes in many forms and has many uses. The most familiar form ink takes is the household ballpoint pen, but we can also find ink in vials, pastes, cakes, and gels. The media can be used to create beautiful lines, flat washes of color, and help artists get their sketches down quickly. Ink is also used in many forms of art, from storybook illustrations to comic and manga work, and even fine art genres like life drawing! With so much variety in the medium, it can be difficult to know where to start and what is needed to work with ink. How to Draw with Ink: 101 Materials and Lines is an ink intro class that will cover different types of drawing ink, brushes and pens for ink, ink papers, care of these tools, and teach learners 2 basic techniques for inkwork. No background knowledge is required for this class. 

WEEK 2: How to Draw With Ink: 102 Line and Line Variation
Once young artists understand the basic materials needed to work with ink, they now need to practice their mark-making and line drawing abilities. Line is one of the most important aspects of working with ink, as line is essential to drawing and clarifying form, creating texture, and building value. How to Draw with Ink: 102 Line and Line Variation will teach learners about crafting beautiful lines, stroke variation, and build their observational skills. In this class, artists will practice blind contour drawing, regular contour drawing, and stroke variation.  

WEEK 3: How to Draw with Ink: 103 Cross-Contours
We will be revisiting our lines to practice cross-contour drawings of simple, organic shapes AND simple objects around the house. Cross-contour observational drawings will help learners better understand how to depict volume and be more considerate about the direction of their lines! Learners will start draw simple shapes such as cubes, cones, cylinders, boxes, and beans with their ink tool of choice. Once they’ve drawn a number of shapes, they will practice creating cross-contours, similar to grids, on top of their shapes. If students are careful with their mark-making, they will find that these cross-contour drawings are wonderfully volumetric! Finally, once learners are comfortable with their organic practice shapes, we will practice drawing cross contours of objects around the house. 

WEEK 4: How to Draw with Ink: 104 Value and Basic Textures
Once your learner understands the basic materials needed to work with ink and has had some practice with lines, a whole new world of textures will open! The ability to capture a wide range of textures with just utensil is one of the biggest benefits of learning to draw with ink. Texture, or the visual tactility of a thing, gives inkwork a sense of life and depth. It also allows different surfaces to be easily distinguishable in the inkwork. Line and value work together, with a little bit of practice, to create different textures. How to Draw with Ink: 104 Value and Basic Textures will teach learners about crafting various textures by reviewing our definition of value, practicing stroke variation, and creating several value scales with corresponding organic forms. 

WEEK 5: How to Draw with Ink: 105 Value Observation & Simple Rendering 
Line and value come together to create textures, but value is an important aspect of the drawing itself. By this point in the series, learners should have a basic understanding of what value is and be eager to take their understanding to the next level! How to Draw with Ink: 105 Value Observation & Simple Rendering will elevate students’ sense of values by teaching them how to “see” value, practice value scales, and render simple shapes. A great understanding of value is essential to creating beautiful inkwork. 

WEEK 6: How to Draw with Ink: 106 Advanced Textures & Combining Skills
With only four lessons left in the How to Draw with Ink series, learners should have almost all the knowledge and techniques they need to draw anything they like with ink! But the trouble is trying to combine all these skills into one cohesive process. In How to Draw with Ink: 106 Advanced Textures & Combining Skills, students will take the technique they have learned about line, values, rendering, basic textures, cross-contouring and observational drawing to create a series of value scales using texture and using those scales as reference to create texture cubes. 

WEEK 7: How to Draw with Ink: 107 The Paper Bag 
Now that learners have significant experience in working with ink, we will continue to build observational skills in the last two classes of this series. In How to Draw with Ink: 107 The Paper Bag, students will take a crumpled paper bag and draw it in several stages to understand how to construct form, apply values to observational objects, and continue to practice their skills in working with ink. At this point, learners should also feel comfortable with beginning to experiment on their own and try to develop their own artistic styles.

WEEK 8: How to Draw with Ink: 108 Drawing Root Veggies
By this point in the How to Draw with Ink series, learners should have a confident grasp on line, value, and texture. These essential elements will come together in this class to practice some observational ink drawings of root vegetables. Why root vegetables? Root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, yams, ginger, onions) are fantastic starting objects for ink drawing because they are easily accessible, usually made up of simple shapes, and have a wonderful array of textures to capture. In practicing observational ink drawings of these vegetables, learners will build their looking skills, continue their mastery of line and value, and get to work with organic textures that they might not have thought of before. 

WEEK 9: How to Draw with Ink: 109 The Final Drawing 
The final and most difficult part of any drawing curriculum is the ability to take newly found skills and apply them to personal works. With all of the techniques and knowledge learners have gained so far, they still may worry about proceeding on their own. Our last class, How to Draw with Ink: 109 The Final Drawing will allow students experiment on their own, because they will have the option to draw whatever they like! Learners can pick to draw whatever they like, whether it be a genre piece (landscape, still life, portrait, history), a figure study or character illustration, a comic page, or abstract works. Their drawings will have to include at least four different values, a textured element, an observational or referenced element, and a demonstration of at least two shading techniques (hatching, cross-hatching, washes or others). For example, a potential drawing could be a character illustration with a referenced pose and outfit, a fashionable fuzzy bag drawn using hatching and washes. 

"How to Draw" classes are art courses based of the fundamental techniques of art and drawing. These courses are designed to teach young artists how to draw anything by building important skills such as mark-making, line drawing, shading, proportions, and more though the lens of observational drawing. Observational art is a method of drawing that emphasizes visual perception with three principles in mind: understanding of the subject, building looking skills, and practice of artistic technique. These classes combine lecture periods, worksheets, and free-hand drawing time to ensure learners understand the material and get ample practice time. In my How to Draw Basics courses, students will learn basic art vocabulary, easily repeatable exercises to practice outside of class, and other basic drawing skills.