An art teacher I had a four or five years ago wanted everyone in the class to have a sketchbook and demanded that we only draw in it with pen. His theory, I think, was that we would all be more deliberate and focused if we didn’t have a safety net; that is, an eraser.
As a pencil devotee and a sometimes overzealous eraser user—the kind of person who tragically rips holes into paper when trying to scrub away errors—I wasn’t a fan of this assignment. For me, drawing anything in pen without lightly sketching it out in pencil first, especially something that might be seen or judged, was unthinkable.
I like drawing portraits and capturing the likeness of a subject is difficult enough when I can make adjustments with a pencil and eraser. How would I be able to do it with ink?
I messed up ALL THE time. Even the drawings that I liked—ones that I’d consider successful—were full of major or minor mistakes. The bridge of the nose was too long, the eyes were crooked, the jawline was all wrong, the proportions were odd, the person I’d drawn just looked nothing like the person it was supposed to be.
I found ink to be liberating in a way that graphite wasn’t. I was able to forgive myself for making mistakes with pen because I knew that mistakes were inevitable. When I used a pencil, I would obsess over every mark—erasing and redrawing, erasing and redrawing. But I couldn’t do that with a pen. I embraced the jacked up lips and weird beards as part of the process.
I tried to figure out ways to salvage the sketches. What if I made the hair a little longer to cover up those lopsided ears? What if I colored in the space behind the head to distract from this mangled chin? I saw that it was possible to recover from my mistakes, even when those mistakes were made in ink.
My pencil drawings may be more precise, but the drawings done in pen are more personal. They’re the expression of natural artistic impulses.
When I draw with a pen, there is a psychological shift. I allow myself to be imperfect, I allow myself to fail, and I think I’ve become a more adventurous artist because of that.
4 Comments
I completely agree/relate with every single one of these statements. I was always afraid of drawing with ink and how you can never go back once it hits the paper, but it is very liberating at the same time. You are very talented!
this is such an amazing way to think about this. i’m constantly scared to draw because i’m afraid of messing up or making mistakes. but thinking about it from the perspective of already knowing there are going to be mistakes and just doing it anyway for fun is so helpful. i love the idea of the pen drawings being more personal because they’re based on impulses instead of carefully crafted accuracy. this makes me want to draw no matter how ugly it comes out. this totally changed my perspective <3
omg!!! i love this this inspires me soooo much
I don’t draw as much as I used to but this post made me want to pick up my blackbook again! I feel like to forgive yourself for mistakes is one of these life lessons we keep hearing, even though I still beat myself up about anything I may have done wrong. I am one of these people who has many notebooks and blackbooks that I quit using just because I feel ashamed of whatever I wrote or drew as soon as it happened. I feel like drawing with a pen regularly could really change the way that I, myself, react to my mistakes, and I really believe it could work for many others. Making mistakes is unevitable, but this has to be seen as a good thing for a change.