Drawing with Pattern

ArtSept. 26-30, 2011

pattern: a repeated decorative design

Begin your Ink Drawing with a Pencil Sketch

The first stage in this drawing is to sketch the scene in pencil. Draw the image lightly in line and avoid shading any areas. 

This is the time to make any big decisions about your composition: what to include and what to leave out. At this stage you can change your mind and erase or simplify details, but you don’t get a second chance when you start inking. 

Once you are satisfied with your composition you are ready to start

drawing in ink.

Draw over your Lines with Ink

Using a nibbed pen and waterproof Indian ink, carefully draw over your pencil lines. As the ink can often take some time to dry, it is advisable to plan your approach to an ink drawing. If you are right-handed, start at the left hand side of the paper and work towards the right. This way you will avoid smudging sections that you have previously drawn which may still be damp. If you are left-handed, reverse these instructions. Once the ink is dry you can start to pencil in the patterns and textures of the tiles, slates, brickwork and bushes.

Adding Pattern and Texture

In a detailed landscape like this, it is smart to lightly pencil in the tiles, slates, and brickwork. Without the guidance of a pencil line, you could get into some difficulty when inking these small, complicated areas. However, some artists prefer not to use an underlying pencil line as they like the spontaneity of their marks and accept their ‘mistakes’ or lapses of concentration as part of the natural drawing process.

Some of the walls in our drawing have been patterned with brickwork, while others have been stippled with dots to suggest a pebble dash texture.(Stippling is an ink drawing technique where you apply tone and texture in small dots.) A few have been left plain to evoke a stucco finish. The bushes have also been stippled in graduated tones to convey their texture and form.Slates that are too small to draw individually have been suggested by hatched lines. (Hatching is an ink drawing technique where you apply tone and texture in rows of parallel lines.)

Practicing Tile and Brick Patterns

A landscape drawing or painting does not have to be an identical copy of

what the artist can see, but that it may have some of its elements adjusted to create a better composition. The same applies to patterns and textures. You

can change, simplify or enhance these for creative effect.

Here are some examples of tile and brick patterns, but feel free to invent

variations and use your own approach.

Applying Tone with Pen and Ink

The technique of cross-hatching is used to apply tone to those parts of the buildings that are in shade. Cross-hatching begins to establish the overall form of the image. The shade of a tone can be increased or reduced depending on the number of hatched layers applied: a lighter shade is achieved with a single layer of hatching, while each additional layer darkens the tone.It is advisable to build up the tones gradually across the entire image rather than completing the drawing in small sections. This way you are more able to achieve an overall tonal unity throughout the composition.

Balancing Tone

Once you have established the basic areas of dark and light, you can start to unify the overall tone of the drawing by fine tuning your cross-hatching and stippling. You may need to intensify the hatching and stippling of certain areas in order to balance the different depths of shade throughout the composition. You can also refine the sharpness of the detail and the subtlety of the texture with a more careful control of your cross hatching and stippling.

Use Dark Tones for Windows

After some further work with the tones and textures across the image, the ink drawing is finally completed by darkening the windows. This adds to the solidity of the buildings by suggesting their interior depth. The windows in a drawing of a building are nearly always dark. The one time they can appear bright is at night when they are illuminated from within.

Art 3: Add Watercolor wash