how to draw scissors
Artists accept fabricated their own pens for as continued as they’ve fabricated pen-and-ink drawings. But accept you approved authoritative pens from … sticks?
This cartoon drudge is not alone a fun, do-it-yourself project, but it is additionally a abundant way to save some money on art supplies. Below, artisan Margaret Davidson shows us how it’s done in aloof six simple steps. Enjoy!
There are two capital considerations aback attractive for a stick to about-face into a pen: It needs a alveolate shaft, and it charge be bendable abundant to cut with a knife.
Three accomplished pens. The two on the alfresco are fabricated from forsythia; the one in the average is bamboo.
Reed has these qualities, as do forsythia and bamboo, which abound in added arctic climates. Aback agriculture I attending for bamboo or forsythia sticks that are about as big about as my arena finger, with a alveolate amount about 1⁄8-inch in diameter. I cut the sticks off abreast the arena with pruners, and again trim them to the adapted breadth aback I get aback to the studio.
I cut the sticks off abreast the arena with pruners, and again trim them to the adapted breadth aback I get aback to the studio.
To get started, you’ll charge the afterward materials:
From left: pruners, knife, mat knife scissors and a allotment of pop can.
Make abiding the alveolate amount in your cut annex is about 1⁄8-incb in diameter. Trim the stick to your adapted length.
Using the pruners, cut one end off at an angle.
Using either knife, barber the bend to the cartoon tip that you appetite — either a edgeless end or a acicular one. This additionally thins the copse slightly. If you’re application forsythia, you may appetite to barber the case abroad from the end, as well.
Steps 1, 2 and 3 for authoritative your own pens.
Pens charge a breach tip, which causes the tip to advance aback apprenticed down, acceptance the ink to breeze smoothly. The best apparatus for agreeable a stick’s tip is a beeline blade. A mat knife works perfectly.
Step 4
Lay your stick on a table with the longer, acicular ancillary at the basal and the tip alike with the bend of the table. Push beeline bottomward with the mat knife to cut a beeline aperture in the average of the tip.
Try to breach the tip appropriate in the middle. This can be tricky, and if you don’t get it absolutely right, you can added trim the tip with your knife until the breach avalanche in the middle.
Next, you charge to accomplish an ink regulator — a tiny but abundantly important basic that will adapt the ink flow, enabling your pen to lay bottomward alike ambit after blubbering blobs at the alpha of every stroke.
With your scissors, cut a band from the pop can that is attenuated abundant to fit into the alveolate amount of your stick. This should be at atomic 1″ continued and can be longer. Bend this band into a “J” appearance by active the band amid your deride and basis feel as you do with crimper ribbon.
Insert the regulator into the alveolate amount of the stick in such a way that the arced allotment is central the pen and the top of the J rests adjoin the pen tip but does not stick up above it. Once the regulator is in place, you’re accessible to draw.
Dip your pen in a jar of ink, grab a pad of cartoon or watercolor paper, and get to work. Aback the point of your pen starts to abrasion out, abate or split, artlessly cut the bendable allotment abroad and appearance a new tip on the aforementioned stick.
Steps 5 and 6
You’ll bound acquisition that altered types of pens accept their own personalities and aftermath altered kinds of lines.
A stick pen lets you be freer than any steel-nib or arrow pen can, as the stick will move in any administration after snagging and will ambit and askew and stop on a dime.
Boots by Margaret Davidson, pen and ink. This cartoon was done with a stick pen and amber peat-based ink on 300-lb watercolor paper. The asperous arrangement of the cardboard interacted with the pen to accomplish broken, disconnected marks that add a coarse affection to the drawing.
Stick pens accomplish broader and added marks than do pens with animate nibs, alike aback the tip is carved to a accomplished point. This affectionate of mark has its own joy — strong, asperous and acquisitive to be seen. The adverse is aerial and vivid, and aback the pen runs low of ink you get admirable broken, scruffy strokes.
Stick pens are accomplished for mural drawing, as you can see in van Gogh’s Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (reed pen, arrow and ink over book on alloyed paper, 9 9/16×12 1/2) by Vincent van Gogh. Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.
For still activity cartoon I acquisition they assignment best on things that aren’t aerial — I apparently wouldn’t draw a applique doily with a stick pen, but added bolt and board altar assignment out aloof fine.
You can use about any ink with a stick pen. Some of my favorites are Pelikan atramentous cartoon ink and Pro Art India ink. I mix my own amber ink from broiled peat-based crystals that I buy from the Cardboard & Ink Arts website. But any ink you buy in the art abundance will assignment aloof fine.
Basket by Margaret Davidson, pen and ink. I acclimated a stick pen and atramentous Chinese ink on rag paper.
Enough allocution from me. Start carving!
“Making Pens from Sticks” is an extract featured in a accomplished affair of Drawing magazine.
