Drawings of the city with gel pen step by step. How to make miniature masterpieces on your nails with a gel pen

Remember your school years, well, who hasn’t sinned by sketching something arbitrary on the back page of a notebook during a boring lesson. And if you had artistic abilities, this activity was captivating and was expressed in sketches of reality, caricatures and caricatures of your friends or teachers, funny pictures, and so on. Funny, but nothing more.

If we turn to classical drawing methods, then a ballpoint pen has never been considered a tool for creating drawings. And as it turned out, it was in vain. Modern artists who have freed their consciousness from stereotypes, using ballpoint pens, achieve amazing effects. The pictures come out rich in color, volume, and vibrant texture. Some of them resemble photographs when executed, others look like high-quality computer graphics, and there are others that look like engravings.

Of course, to get such images you need to have talent and skills in working with a ballpoint pen. But you always need to start somewhere and try. Moreover, ballpoint pens in modern office supplies have acquired many new properties, you can choose pens with different thicknesses of the drawn line, various color shades have appeared in a fairly rich palette, the quality of the ballpoints in the refills allows you to draw without blots and unmarked areas.

To draw, you need to choose a good ballpoint pen that will not stain, that is, will release ink evenly from the refill. If the desired drawing should consist of lines of equal brightness and almost indistinguishable width, then use a gel pen. If you need halftones and the ability to vary the color intensity, then it is better to choose a ballpoint pen with regular ink.

When using a self-writing pen (that’s what a ballpoint pen was called when it was first invented) for drawing, keep in mind that ink consumption will be more intense than when writing, which means you need to prepare extra pens. One painting can use 3 to 4 standard ink refills.

And the most important thing. An ink pen, unlike a pencil, does not allow mistakes; all strokes, lines and dots must be applied confidently and accurately, because the ink on the paper remains forever and cannot be corrected.

In addition, when using a ballpoint pen for drawing, you need to be extremely careful: the ink does not dry immediately, so accidentally pressing your palm or finger into fresh lines can easily smear them or leave your mark. Not such a simple technology as it seemed in school lessons.

Now let’s look at the masterpieces produced by masters who are fluent in this technique.

English artist Andrea Joseph draws directly on notebook sheets, which is very reminiscent of school creativity and sketches for cartoons or children's books.

Lucas Salgado from the Argentine city of Santa Fe draws his girls with a ballpoint pen without any special art education. This is what talent means, which can manifest itself even from simple ink lines.

Samuel Silva, a lawyer from Portugal, draws colorful ballon pictures of incredible realism and vividness that reflect not only all the shades of nature, light and shadow, the entire universe, but also all shades of emotion, volume and shape as if they were bright, accurate color photographs.

Abadidabou Sarah Esteje, a French artist who is a designer by profession and enjoys photography, creates stunningly realistic animal pictures using a blue ballpoint pen. Portraits also appeared among her works.

Juan Francisco Casas Ruiz is a Spanish artist born in La Carolina. Juan has a professional art education. One day he took an ordinary blue ballpoint pen and sketched a comic portrait in ink. This activity fascinated the young Spaniard so much that he created dozens of sketches of people in shades of blue ink, which in terms of the accuracy of their depiction of nature cannot be distinguished from photographs. Among these sketches there are many sensual and even erotic images of girls who happily become models for the original artist.

Chinese artist Zhuge Qingjia also draws only with a ballpoint pen, carefully drawing even the smallest details.

Tim Jeffs, a remarkable animal artist from the United States of America, depicts portraits of animals on paper, painted in the finest detail, and uses a ballpoint pen and black ink.

Extraordinary creativity, which can be classified as graphic realism, has enough followers and admirers and cannot but attract attention.

Used every day by office workers, school and university students, it is also an excellent drawing tool. Gel pen graphics have a great advantage: the drawing is clear and rich. Although, on the other hand, it will not be possible to erase incorrectly drawn strokes with an eraser. Since the prices for pens are low, drawing with them is quite profitable and economical. Decorative graphics made with gel pens can become an original and interesting addition to your home interior.

Where to begin?

For inexperienced artists who are just looking for their skills in drawing, black gel pens are perfect. They will help make the drawing refined and sophisticated. Graphics with a gel pen for beginning artists will not be difficult to perform, you just need to take into account some features.

Pressure

There are different ways to press pens onto a piece of paper. To get a continuous thin line, you need to use direct pressure. The pen is placed perpendicular to the paper and a straight line is drawn. This method is perfect for drawing contours. You can draw by pressing the tool at an angle. The result is dull strokes. If you draw lines in one direction in this way, you can create halftone transitions. Intersecting lines will help deepen and enhance shadow areas.

Paper and its structure

When using a drawing method such as graphics with a gel pen, you must also take into account the structure of the paper. If you choose smooth paper, the lines will be clear and even. If you draw on a rough surface, the lines will turn out short and choppy.

Circuit

In order to avoid making irreparable mistakes in your work, you first need to draw an outline using a regular graphite pencil. Then minor mistakes can be removed with an eraser. This procedure must be done after tracing all the details with a pen. In this case, you need to wait until the drawing dries completely. The lines drawn with a gel pen are generally of the same thickness. It depends on the diameter of the rod. To draw lines of different thicknesses, you need to choose pens with different ball diameters. When drawing, it is better to use several gel pens, since different dyes have different densities. As a result, you can get lines of varying saturation, which will create a unique effect.

Patterns

You can draw anything using a technique such as gel pen graphics. The patterns, for example, turn out simply fantastic. When drawing patterns, you can allow yourself to realize almost any fantasy on paper. To make the drawing original and unusual, you need to use more than one gel pen. If desired, you can add colors to the pattern and take multi-colored gel pens. If the artist’s imagination does not allow him to go wild on paper and draw an exclusive pattern, then the Internet will provide a huge selection of various designs and ornaments. You can view such pictures, combine them, and ultimately draw something of your own, simply based on the selected pictures. Or just stop at one pattern and draw only that. In any case, the picture will turn out beautiful and interesting.

Some subtleties

The cores of gel pens are usually thick, which allows the artist to draw using an extraordinary dotting method called dotwork. Since colored tools always don’t draw very well, graphics with a black gel pen will be much richer and of better quality. It is important to remember that the gel paste tends to dry out quickly, so the stick must be used within a few weeks, otherwise it will stop drawing. Graphics applied with a black gel pen will lose some shine and color after 2-3 days from the date of drawing. You must draw lines on the paper very carefully, since it will be impossible to wipe them off. It is also important not to forget that you cannot touch the finished drawing, because the gel can be smeared on the surface of the paper.

What else is important to remember?

Graphics with a gel pen should be applied in accordance with the position of the fibers of the sheet, that is, from top to bottom. The painted part should not be touched with your finger, otherwise you can change the saturation of the lines. It is best to choose high-density paper for drawing, and work with light pressure, because the gel paste has the property of “pulling” the sheet. If gross errors occur during drawing, which simply need to be removed, use white or other covering materials. We must remember that graphics with a gel pen require the precision and accuracy of the artist. Of course, the first time the drawing may not be of very high quality. But everything comes with experience. Over time, the drawings will become clear, and the confident hand of a master of his craft will be felt in them.

Who wants it?
Drawing and ink from scratch

I will start this post with “wanting”, because in the matter of acquiring the ability to draw with a pen/pen, personal desire is even more important than talent and thin. skills.
Typically, drawing in any other technique begins with pencil construction, corrections, possibly changing the composition in the process, and therefore active use. In general, no one bothers you to make a pencil drawing according to all the rules for drawing with a pen/pen, but this post is just about how to learn to do without it.

First of all, those who want to learn how to draw “without an eraser” should have patience, a small amount of time (but every day!) and a lot of desire. Why do I attach such importance to desire? Because very often, especially at first, you will be disappointed in your work, and as a result, in yourself, in your skills, and only desire will prevent you from giving up on this whole thing from a high tree and deciding that you can do it without this skill. live in peace.
Below, I will show some techniques that will help you get a normal result, and also give examples of mistakes and unsuccessful jobs that you should not be afraid of. I hope all this will help maintain the desire to learn and prevent feelings of inferiority from appearing =)

So, the tools:
Pens. You can draw with ballpoint pens, gel pens, or something else. I prefer to draw with either ink or liners.
I had to draw with reusable “Uni pin” fine line liners, but apparently, either they are for smoother paper, or we did not agree with them in Feng Shui, but their rod wears out faster than the refill runs out. We only refilled them once, and that was when Leo was writing in his notebook and not drawing. Perhaps they are not erased, and the rod moves away from the body when pressed, but for some reason I didn’t have to notice any special brutality in myself during the drawing process. The most popular sizes are 01 and 02, sometimes I use 03, but that’s when I don’t have 02, and very rarely 005 for particularly small details, when I even decide to draw them.

Liners from Faber Castell are very similar to “Uni pin”, one of the series even has the same cases, only the inscription is different (I don’t have them now, so the photo is from a different series)

But most of all I like Centropen liners. Although they are one and a half times cheaper than "Uni pin" and two times cheaper than "Faber Castell", they are in no way inferior in quality and the rod does not go anywhere. The only difference is that they are disposable, but considering the fact that the rest are thrown away before refilling, the savings are not bad.

Paper. Unlike, it’s most convenient for me to draw with a pen in notebooks - all the waste paper is together, it doesn’t get lost anywhere and is always at hand. For works and ink I use, and for liners I have a cheap Chinese notebook with paper of average quality, so that it would not be a pity, because the paper goes out in reams, and the drawings there, for the most part, are not the kind that you should be proud of right now.

The paper is grayish, with a density of 98 g/m2, which is quite enough for double-sided drawings.
When I’ve copied this notebook, I’ll switch to good ones with beautiful white paper and nice bindings, which have been waiting for me for a long time =)

Now we take the tools in our hands and start drawing. Basic rules/tips:
1. draw anything: objects on the table, furniture in the room, chandelier, interior, view from the window, flowers on the windowsill, etc. or from photographs (animals, birds, people, but don’t get too carried away with photographs)
2. draw without construction as it turns out: clumsily, with errors, extra lines, compositionally incorrect, etc.
3. at first it is better to take a thinner pen so as not to blacken too much
4. lines need to be drawn quickly, without trembling over every millimeter
5. every day. Even the busiest person can find 10-15, even 30 minutes of time and devote it to drawing; everything else is excuses and lack of that very desire. Leo knows very well and first-hand what deadly busyness is (1 job, 2 hack jobs, full-time study + diploma - and Leo had this). Therefore, I ask you not to write to me in PM and comments, saying, “I would love to, but there is no time,” there is simply no desire and there is laziness, and there is no need or point in notifying me about this.
6. Before evaluating the result of your work, you need to copy 100 pages, no less. I now have 101 pages copied, I draw on both sides of the sheet, fortunately the thickness of the paper allows it, but there is no point in putting each such work in a frame. Many pages have 2-3 small drawings.

How to make your life easier at first:
You can build a drawing with dots. Actually, the construction is more in the mind than on paper, but by putting a point in some key place, we create a visual support for ourselves

Connecting the dots

Now you can tint and detail, but in sketches of this type, this is unnecessary. Here it is important to convey shape, movement, and somewhere to emphasize the volume with a careless touch.
I have no more than 10 completed works in my entire notebook.

Most often my ducks look like this

The main mistakes that will definitely be:
Problems with the composition, crawling out of the sheet or too much space from some edge. To avoid this, you can at the very beginning mark the extreme points of the object, at least by eye

Disproportionality (it turned out to be a very beaked duck). Heals with time and practice

Incorrect perspective, general clumsiness (here the perspective is lame on all four legs, the verticals are generally gloomy)

The jar of honey has gone crazy

What is necessary and useful to draw:
Interior - no matter where you live, you can always draw what it looks like without even getting up from the sofa/chair/armchair/bed

All sorts of objects, household appliances, dishes, etc. (above there was a meat grinder - it’s really tough, especially from different angles).
Just a box

If you have one, you can draw a pet from different angles when it is static (you also need to draw it in dynamics, but this is more difficult and later)

It is good to draw indoor plants in such a way as to convey their volume and make the appearance of the plant clear.
Leo's houseplant is an oak tree, it's so obvious =)

For those who don’t have indoor plants, don’t be lazy and buy some kind of flower, put it in a vase/glass and draw

It is also very useful to draw somewhere during a walk - we find a bench/stump, sit down and draw the first thing that catches our eye.
It is not necessary to draw every leaf, the most important thing is to convey the impression, the volume

Or you can draw it if the object is piecemeal

A good subject for drawing is any stone. It is necessary to repeat the shape, convey the texture and not lose the volume (Leo still loses it from time to time)

Drawing from photographs.
Also good, but in moderation and quickly. Open the photo, spend 5-7 minutes on it and move on to the next one

This way you can draw things that are not found in everyday life, all kinds of animals and birds.

Leo likes to take photographs of ducks in Vinnitsa and somewhere on ponds, and then draw them in the evenings

The black and red musk duck drake was so beautiful that Leo couldn’t resist going into details

In general, nothing difficult if you regularly devote time to practice.
Good luck and best wishes to everyone who is interested! =)

Anyone can learn to draw with a pen. Whether a student or a pensioner. Everyone once drew in the margins of notebooks. Some did well, some not so much. Some drew strange images, some skulls, and some little fairies, cuties from manga. And we all enjoyed it.

What do you need to start drawing? Of course, desire and patience. Without these qualities it will be difficult to learn anything in principle.

For any drawing, including with a pen, you need to become familiar with the basics of composition and the basics of drawing. For starters, you can just read it. Drawing theory has never been superfluous, and it is advisable to refresh your memory from time to time. I recently came across a book

If you compare a pen (liner, rapidograph) or a pencil, then these are quite different tools. With a pencil we can achieve airiness in a drawing, learn how to draw correctly on a sheet of paper (you can always use an eraser) and draw realistic portraits.

A pen, unlike a pencil, disciplines. If you draw it, then you draw it. But this does not mean at all that the handle has fewer maneuver options. There are completely different techniques here.

Selecting a tool (handle).

Let's start by choosing a tool (drawing pen). After all, to draw well, you must have a convenient tool, so that, first of all, you like it.

1. The best one to draw is the one that doesn’t drip, always writes, and draws without obvious effort. It is easy and convenient to draw with this pen.

If you choose between ballpoint and gel pen, then it’s better to choose the second one. I have been drawing with a gel pen for a long time. Most of my drawings before 2012 were drawn by her.

There are several tricks to vary the thickness of the gel pen line. If the drawing is placed on a stack of paper, the lines will be thicker. And if you put the sheet on glass or a bare table, the lines will be thinner.

2. Another option is liner or rapidograph. If a gel pen may not write over a pencil or for some reason does not want to work on the edges of the sheet, then a liner writes always and everywhere. practically does not get dirty, lays down softly, without unnecessary effort. Of course, it costs 4 times more than a pen and is not always needed. But if you still decide to buy, then it is better to take liners from Uni and Sakura. Liners have different thicknesses.

My preferences for tool thickness are:

a) the main drawing will be convenient to draw with a 0.3 mm liner;

b) objects in the background - 0.1 mm;

c) and if you decide to “bring it black,” then 0.8 mm will do.

3. The third option is . Many foreign illustrators, such as Matthias Adolfson and . I use a hero 901 fountain pen for sketching and continue to use a gel pen for graphics.

Paper

Any paper will do. You can get a notebook with thick sheets so that you can draw on both sides. I have several types of notebooks. This is a watercolor notebook on a spring, moleskine, ordinary sheets for a printer, fastened with a metal spring, and which I sewed with my own hands. What's convenient about a notebook is that it's always at hand. Just don't take notebooks with textured paper. The texture is more suitable for watercolors. And for a full-fledged drawing, a regular A4 or A3 sheet, as well as any smooth thick paper, is suitable.

In 2017, I drew with a fountain pen on textured paper. The result was also pleasing, but it was still better on a smooth one.

Drawing process

1. Usually, when drawing with a pen, I don't sketch with a pencil. There are exceptions when you need to draw complex architectural buildings such as a city, streets, interiors and other complex objects. Everything that should correspond to reality.

To make outlines for the future drawing and avoid the fact that the drawing will ultimately not fit on the sheet, you can use dots. If we draw thin lines with a pencil, then with a pen we can put dots. And if you tint the drawing, the dots will merge with the main landscape and will not be conspicuous. But, of course, you can make a sketch in pencil, no one forbids it.

2. The drawing process itself should be fast. Draw lines quickly and confidently, even if the drawing turns out to be crooked. Curved drawings can be very lively and interesting. In any case, you need to get your hand used to the instrument. Don't stay in one place for too long.

Prepare plenty of paper and make one sketch after another. Always finish a drawing, even if you don't like it. In the end it can turn out very interesting.

3. What to draw? Draw everything you see. Start with ordinary objects, a lamp, a teapot, a mug, a computer, a cat, a dog, a chimpanzee. You can also draw while sitting at home. Going out into the fresh air and drawing there will also be a good idea. Make your drawings more complex over time. Draw still lifes, interiors, streets, people. Let your notebook always be with you. The main thing is practice and more practice.

4. Don't evaluate yourself after each drawing. Turn off your inner critic. One drawing doesn't mean anything. Build up more luggage. At first everything will turn out clumsy and ugly. As our drawing teacher said: “quantity will smoothly develop into quality.” Patience and perseverance will help us here.

Southern Bay of Sevastopol. Series of sketches

Toning

1. Toning can be different. You can make a drawing in black and white (without gray tones).

2. Can be done with intersecting lines. The lines are superimposed one on one, changing direction. This tinting option will give you many shades of gray.

It all seems very complicated, but at the same time so simple. If you put enough effort into it every day, everything will work out.

Drawing with gel pens is an interesting activity. It does not require any special artistic talents or skills; only perseverance and precision of movements are important. And the drawings turn out interesting.

Drawing theme: “Cat under the stars.” We were planning a simple cat, but after looking at the result, we concluded: the cat, of course, is not simple, but fabulous. A preschooler, even in a preparatory group, cannot complete such a drawing alone. Our cat under the stars was drawn by an adult and a 6.5 year old child. And for schoolchildren, the picture, if performed independently, is quite within their capabilities.

How and on what to draw with gel pens, where to start, you can read in detail in this article. So…

Drawing of a cat with black gel pen

The cat will be black and white, but if desired, it can be easily colored with colored pens or markers.

Sequence of work

1. Draw a sketch with a simple hard pencil with a thin line, without pressing or leaving grooves on the paper. The pencil is erased after drawing is completed. The sketch shows the main details of the drawing: a sleeping cat, a bird, a tree sprout, the sun and the moon. We'll add stars later. As you can see, all the figures are stylized. Anyone can portray any of them.

2. Outline the main details of the drawing with a black gel pen. The usual sequence is from top to bottom, so as not to smudge undried lines. In our drawing it is broken, since we really wanted to decorate the cat first. This is not important for those who draw in the right hemisphere way. We simply turned the picture upside down and continued working. The muzzle and paws with claws are drawn. You can come up with whatever patterns you want. The question arose: why are the moon and the sun present at the same time? This is understandable: the country is fabulous. We wanted to draw a tree, but it turned out to be a sprout to reduce the amount of work for the child.

3. We continue to decorate the cat and the tree. The tree will look better if you draw circles instead of dots. Our leaf circles turned out to be small, more like dots, which is what we turned them into.

4. The painting must be limited in space by a frame. We took the simplest zigzag, supplemented with dots inside and outside. We close the corners of the picture with arcs. The artist Dmitry Rybin, who is engaged in “energy” drawing, claims that energy leaves the picture through the corners. Drawing a starry sky. The stars are large, 6-7 rays.

5. In the real sky there are stars of different sizes. We do the same, so we add small stars like snowflakes from three crossed lines. Even smaller stars can be scattered throughout the remaining unoccupied surface. Draw them with dots. Our picture is quite light and transparent. And if you put star dots with a black gel pen, then it will be night without any coloring.

The picture is ready. When drawing with gel pens, you need to make sure that even the smallest dots and details do not overlap each other or merge. All the irregularities and mistakes that make up a child’s drawing (and not just children’s drawings) are less important. They somehow hide behind the number of small details. From what seems to be crooked and lopsided, something very cute turns out.