How to Draw With Ink, Basic Ink Drawing Skills & Techniques
What's included
9 live meetings
9 in-class hoursHomework
1-2 hours per week. The only formal homework in this class will be our final project. Students will be required to confer with me on their plan for their final project in How to Draw with Ink: 107 or How to Draw with Ink: 108. Once their final project is completed, they will also be required to send me their project through the Outschool classroom for feedback. Otherwise, students are only expected to finish their in-class assignments if they do not in class, and generally I recommend students practice art for 30min or more daily. The final project is the only artwork throughout this course I require students to share with me, because I want to see how all their hard work paid off!Assessment
To remove the stress of what is sometimes a very daunting course of study, your learners will not have tests, quizzes, or formal grades in the class. Instead, I utilize positive verbal critiques to provide feedback and encourage improvement. However, if grades are requested I will provide them via rubrics that will suggest a grade. Learners progress will be gauged by the completion of their assignments, execution of techniques, and their class presence (being on-time, listening when I am speaking, and how they communicate with peers).Grading
includedClass Experience
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.
Learning Goals
Students should come away with an in depth understanding of ink drawing skills and techniques such as:
-A wealth of knowledge on basic inking materials and how to care for these materials
-Mark-making
-Shading techniques (including hatching, cross-hatching, and washes)
-Stroke variation
-Values and value scale creation
-How to create textures
-Creating volume in work through cross-contour drawing
-Constructing forms and shapes
-Working with observation
Students will complete:
-Several value scales and studies
-Texture cubes and scales
-Several cross-contour drawings
-Between one and three observational root vegetable drawings
-Paper bag drawings
-A final project in ink, with their choice in subject
Other Details
Supply List
Like math classes need textbooks and literature courses need novels, art classes require supplies too. Your artist will need several supplies for a successful art class. Keep in mind that this materials list is a guide with recommendations based on my personal experiences. Please feel free to purchase the materials that are available and affordable for you. These materials can be used for more than my classes. All materials should be able to be purchased for $40.00USD or under if you do not have any of these materials already. The cost of materials will change depending on brand, size or amount, and where you are purchasing from.
I will provide a syllabus PDF with my policies, all of the lesson plans for this course, and a materials guide to help navigate various art supplies.
REQUIRED MATERIALS:
- Pencils & Erasers. No cost, you should have these items at home. If you would like to buy artists graphite pencils, I recommend purchasing a 2H, HB, B, and 2B pencil (aprox. $1.00USD per pencil), however standard writing or #2 pencils will work. Mechanical pencils can be used as well.
- Ink Utensils. A variety of utensils will allow your learner to experiment with the skills they will learn in class. Your learner could get by with a simple black ballpoint pen for this class, but to get the most (and best results) with this course you may choose to purchase:
+ a set of at least four black felt-tip pens (between $10.00USD and $20.00USD)
+ AND/OR dip pens (between $10.00USD and $15.00USD) with a bottle of black drawing, calligraphy, or India ink (between $5.00USD and $10.00USD). I strongly recommend dip pens!
+ AND/OR soft bristle brushes in various sizes and bristle shapes ($15.00USD) and a bottle of black ink.
- Paper for Wet Media. Paper that is not for wet media will bleed, pill, curl, and eventually become unusable. You must have ink paper! This includes Bristol pads, mixed media pads, or, in a pinch, watercolor pads. Paper pads, depending on the amount, size, and brand can cost between $10.00USD and $20.00USD.
-Root vegetables for How to Draw with Ink: Drawing Root Veggies. Examples include: carrots, potatoes, yams, ginger, onions. The price on this material varies wildly, so I cannot give an estimate.
-A paper bag for How to Draw with Ink: The Paper Bag. Students will need to come to class with any size or type of paper bag. They may come with a paper grocery bag, a school lunch paper bag, a paper gift bag, and their paper bags may be brown, white, or any other color. You can expect to pay $10.00USD for a pack of brown paper lunch bags on a website like Amazon, but there are cheaper options available.
OPTIONAL MATERIALS:
- Newsprint paper to use under work to keep surfaces clean
- Paper towels to blot ink and clean up spills
- Plastic palette with wells (this will be required if your learner plans to use brushes. Palettes are cheap and you can purchase one for under $5.00UD)
4 files available upon enrollment
External Resources
Learners will not need to use any apps or websites beyond the standard Outschool tools.
Teacher expertise and credentials
I am delighted to be able to offer classes that emphasize fine art techniques through the lens of observational drawing. Observational art is a method of learning to draw with three principles in mind: understanding of the subject, building looking skills, and practice of artistic technique. Through this method and practice, learners can draw anything. Completion of my courses will result in a learner who is engaged with art and understands basic art technique. Even students who are not aspiring artists have much to gain from drawing, including improvement of hand-eye coordination and hand dexterity skills.
Along with my bachelor’s degree in art history and studio art from a premier liberal arts institution in Ohio, I also have been teaching since 2016. My online teaching career began on Outschool in 2017. I have taught homeschoolers, unschoolers, and undergraduate students of all ages. My background in art history means that my classes are created with an understanding of historical precedence- I’m teaching what I know works! Many of my classes include examples of important artworks from masters for students to examine and learn skills from. In addition, my many years of teaching art have helped me curate concise and logical drawing curriculum that young artists can easily pick up and apply to their work. Every art class I teach hopes to provide learners with all the knowledge and support they need to grow as an artist.
Reviews
Live Group Class
$17
weekly or $150 for 9 classes1x per week, 9 weeks
60 min
Completed by 2 learners
Live video meetings
Ages: 13-17
3-6 learners per class
Financial Assistance
Tutoring
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