I am going to have a couple of pen-drawing workshops in the upcoming months so I have prepared a rose drawing as the material.
As long as I know from my very limited experience with pen(I started using this device in Jul last year), “he that is the master of values, will soon be the master of pen drawing” is my most important belief.
I wanted to select the best subject to substantiate this and thought about a lily, gingko, tulip, etc., but eventually decided to use a rose.
This is the explanatory material I have prepared for the workshop:
From my, again, very limited experience with pen, I think that the control of the mid-tone in your drawings really makes or breaks the success of your works.
I am going to hand them a paper with the completed rose outline so that they can focus on the importance of shading in the pen-drawing.
Your rose is lovely and it really pops! I agree with you about the midtones. When I started to work with charcoals, I was taught to pay more attention to the shading than anything else, the darker values that is. But after working on a dozen or so charcoal drawings, I’m finding that the mid tones are the most important.
Thank you for your comment, Rain. The mid-tone of the shadow part of the 5th leaf in my “life per leaf” series was the toughest one for me so far. Drawing shadow of the same level of darkness and with no contrast with a ballpoint pen is actually a huge challenge.
