Child with Rabbit 4"X 5"

This small piece is silverpoint on 8 coats of ground. I was pretty happy with the darks. Those extra coats of ground really made a difference in the values. (You can see this if you scroll down to my earlier post of my retriever in silverpoint.) For me, silverpoint is all about portraying surface texture. You can't smudge it so, like pen & ink, you vary the line to create tone. 

As requested, I'm posting a larger version of the pen & ink on my avatar. This is a drawing of my neighbour's foal "Marcus".  I used a crow quill nib and Winsor & Newton waterproof ink. I love the character of line I get from dip pens and never use anything else. The piece is 11 x 14 and it is drawn on Strathmore 100% cotton paper.

Adding ink and watercolour to silverpoint

I did this piece yesterday as an experiment in adding ink and watercolour to silverpoint.

 Having recently acquired silverpoint drawing materials, I'm enjoying discovering what I can do with them. I ordered my materials from www.silverpointweb.com. There are different options but I used the Golden silverpoint/drawing ground and I stretched 140 pound Arches hot press watercolour paper. The ground is applied to the stretched paper and allowed to dry in between coats for about eight hours (the instructions say overnight but I apply a coat in the morning and a coat at dinner). 

I like the silverpoint alone but I couldn't resist the temptation to see what adding other media would do. 

At the bottom, I show a photo of just the silverpoint and then a photo of silverpoint with india ink added to the darks. The last photo includes washes of burnt umber, burnt sienna and yellow ochre.  

My own conclusion, at the moment anyway, is that I think I'll stick to the silverpoint and work on what I can do with it on its own. It can create some very fine delicate lines and I'd like to work at getting more skilled at creating surface textures. To increase the darks I can add further layers of the silverpoint ground. I have some supports drying right now (on the fifth coat). I may try and go as high as eight coats. The silverpoint drawing here has three coats of ground and I haven't tried a drawing using less. 

 I find that drawing in ink really makes me think about what I'm trying to depict. You have to make choices with ink all the time because you have to use texture to create any kind of tone. I think this makes me concentrate more on the elements of the drawing and I feel I end up with a better understanding of my subject. If I wanted this to be a finished pen & ink I would redo it. There are things I would change and I would take more time with textures. But it's going to be a study for a painting.

I wanted my very first post to be a drawing I did today. Unfortunately, I blotched this one (hazards of ink). Usually, I'm more careful. But here it is: an 11"x 11" pen and ink from a photo of my youngest daughter. The paper's actually bright white so I think my photography needs work.

I will do a painting of this subject (and post it here) but I love working in pen and ink. Creating tone with lines is an exciting challenge. Lines carry so much personality and character.