Pen and Ink Artwork

Click on thumbnail for slideshow, click slideshow image or menu buttons to get the story and detail images of each artwork. The gallery has the full artwork series and purchase options, click here to go to the online store. This section only has the stories and detail image samples of some, but not all of my greyscale series.

About The Artwork / Artist

I first started drawing when I was in primary school, it was mainly child like drawing. By that I mean I was drawing with my friend at the time and they were mainly reproductions of Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Goofy.

I then started doing more and more complex drawings and my parents saw my keen interest and offered to buy me an expensive Rotring pen and ink drafting set. I had been using pen and nibs at the time which required me constantly dipping the pen in the ink bottle. When my parents bought me the new Rotring set, it was a big step up as there was a resevoir of ink in the handle that made drawing much easier and less hazardous of spilling ink.

I kept getting better over time and I had a love for Frank Franzetta art and used a lot of his images as references and drew pen and ink versions of his art.

That was back in 1979 and not a lot has changed since then, except I use a bigger selection of pens and diffrent types. There was a long hiatus where no pen and ink drawing happened, because I was just too busy doing other stuff.

I have never had formal training for doing this, it just something I have always done.

Pen and Ink Process

Drawing in pen and ink is not the easiest of mediums and presents many difficulties, however I find the end result very unique and appealing.

I start by finding an appealing reference image, I like to use reference images for certain parts of the drawing to ensure accuracy of the penned result. What I mean here is, have you ever seen a moose or animal drawing that just didn't look right, you couldn't put your finger on it but you knew something was wrong.

For that reason I want to make sure what I draw looks technically right and correctly proportioned and am unable to do so just straight from my mind. I don't see this as a negetive, just my way of doing my art.

Once I have a basic reference image I lay it out on paper with pencil, just basic outlines but with emphasis on critical areas like the eyes or face detail. When I have finished doing the pencil outline part and happy with it, I start the inking process.

Because pen and ink isn't a process where you can just delete and redo it, I usually start at the eyes as they are the most important to get right. If I have three bears in a picture, it would not be un-commen to see just the eyes drawn in ink first with no other detail worked on yet. If the eyes look right to me, I will start penning the rest of the subjects with no particular order of where I am drawing.

I mainly use Rotring and Pigma pens for the drawing in ink part and use a high quality pigment ink for the re-fillable pens. Pigma pens are awesome pigment pens with great color fastness and they are also cool as there is no pen maintenance required.

This is my process in a simplistic way of describing it.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, all I can hope is, you enjoy my type of artwork.

Regards

Robert Andersen

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