Subject: Thank you, Emily, you hit the nail on the head...
...with the style hammer. When I first developed this color ink drawing technique, I was after something that would work like pointillism, but which might move along a bit less sluggishly. The whole idea of pointillism (and of my very similar linear approach) is to mix colors on the retinae of the viewer rather than beforehand on a palette. You might be interested in a brief explanation of the technique.
The inks are Pelikan or other brand name artists colored inks. What I did was to take my palette of ink choices and add the thickest "white ink goo" that settles into the bottom of the white ink bottles to each of them. In this fashion I end up with two sets of bottles in the complete color array. One set are the inks as they come from the factory and the other set is a duplicate batch but with the heavy white ink pigment particles in each bottle of colored ink. I had to buy many extra bottles of white to achieve this, since I dump most of the fluid portion. The point here is that after you shake up a bottle of colored ink with the white pigment added, you get a pastel opaque version of the color!
The actual drawing technique is similar to the layering technique I use in my glaze oil techniques. Often, I begin by laying down an ink wash. For example, if I want something to end up being a sort of golden brown, I might begin with a yellow wash. Once I have applied these washes to the various elements lightly sketched in advance on my illustration board, I wait for the whole business to dry and then lightly rub it with a pink rubber eraser to remove any surface paper fibers or dust motes that may have gotten stuck in the wash ink. Then I coat the illustration board with one spray of Krylon Crystal Clear to seal it, followed by a coat of Krylon Workable to give the surface some tooth.
Then I can apply a layer of line techniques, typically using the transparent normal colors out of the bottle. For the golden brown this might mean that I use contour lines in a dull magenta. Once I've convered the drawing with its entire second layer all consisting of contour linework as described), I again apply the pink rubber eraser and two more coats of the respective fixatifs.
The third (and near final) layer is done in the opaque inks. The reason for the fixatif coatings is to seal and completely separate the underlayers from this opaque overlayer. Without the fixatif barrier, the pen stroke that delivers the opaque ink lines will gouge down into the underlayers and cause the inks below to moisten and draw up into the opaque linework by capillary action! The cool part about this stage is that I can draw opaque pastel ink lines over much darker (even black) ink work underneath!
Finally, after another application of fixatif barriers, I may stroke over some of the opaqued picture elements with yet another grid of contour linework using the regular inks again. Also, I may add tones using color pencil at this stage, which on this small scale works just like scumbling with drybrush techniques. The pencil pigments are picked up by the highest ridges of ink lines.
After a final sealing coat of Krylon Matte Finish fixatif, the drawing is complete.
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I must be clear that most of this work was done in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I did still produce some several thousand client-commissioned illustrations in both color and black'n'white between the mid 1970s and the mid 1990s, but my ink drawing career is definitely over. I am 57 years old and my depth-of-field has retreated a bit from my eyes and narrowed considerably in both the going and coming directions. I simply cannot do this sort of work, anymore, without special prescription lenses. And that I will not do.
This typical deterioration of vision has turned out to be much less severe for me than it is for many others, for which I am grateful, but I am also gratified in that it has provided me with reason enough to return to the oil painting that I loved so dearly in my youth. Of course, I now have the advantage of 30 years discipline and experience in the commercial design and illustration field, which has given me something truly valuable in terms of my methodologies. In the final analysis, though, I would aver that my fine art experiences brought something more significant to my commercial career than the other way 'round.
I am not depressed at this turn of events regarding my vision because I am always glad to let something go, secure in the knowledge that something else will surely materialize to take its place.
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