Pen and Ink Cross Hatching Exercises

Hey, welcome back everyone Rob here from Ram Studio Comics. So in today's video, I'm just gonna do some scribbling really I'm just gonna basically take some of these different pens that I like to use and make some different marks and Talk about why I think that's a good idea You know experimentation wise and and basically trying to figure out what pens you like And kind of the process I take I just created a new class by the way And I'll make sure it's linked in the description box below and I cover some traditional inking techniques one of which is this This thing this and then we even do some drapery Just to cover some things, but then I thought well I should probably share something on the channel here and talk about you know Just some of the warm-up activities that I'll do and you know, just different I don't know if you want to call them exercises I guess it could be that but it's just something I just randomly do with any pen That I start working with so I've got my go-to pens, which are gonna be you know, things like the microns I like this one zebra felt tip I use a couple brush pens one of which is a tombow tombow and then also a pentel brush pen But they all have different things that I I tend to use within my work. So For me like when I grab one of these microns, I'm typically gonna render some cross hatching Something like this. Okay, and you can really do everything with one pen if you wanted to but I really don't use them that way In fact, whenever I'm sitting here just kind of doodling and making marks, by the way, this is the old three I Just do a couple things. I try to focus on what I can generate line wise You know in control and size, okay, so I'm looking at the size of these lines Thinking about okay. What what kind of control do I have at this size for this type of line making? The reason why it's so important is like you're gonna draw these different panels, right? You're not always working on pinups where you're doing these big open areas and you got to see what you can attain in a specific area a Small area or a larger area. So you basically just kind of studying that and then you're trying to create different patterns Differently, you know, maybe the same thing like these are the same but this has a slight curve and then I might go over here and say okay, what can I get if I Do a downward pull and then I kind of stagger the line a little bit Check my screen here Make sure I'm not in the way of and my hand always gets in the way, especially when I'm using a more Shorter pen anyways, my hand gets right over the top of it. It's the way that I tend to draw I don't want to move the camera because then it distorts it But uh, you guys can tell me what you think of that is my hand in the way Is that annoying? But yeah, so like just kind of staggering or stuttering the line a little bit that can be great for certain effects All right, and it's easy to do. That's would be easier right because you're basically Emulating like you have an unsteady hand in a sense and and you want that you want that variation. I think It's really important to play around with all the different variables you can To get a nice variety. So that's that's what I would generate with a micron those types of lines Okay, so anything that's a bit cleaner. I'm gonna go for that You know something that's a little bit more Loose but not a ton. It's still pretty clean pretty tight. Is this Tom bow food? No Suki I don't know what that says, but you know You can see it there hopefully and I'll make sure to list these in the description box below for you but what's nice about this one is It's easier to get a bigger Tapered line so a nicer Larger thick to thin there's still a lot of control here. I really like these these brush pens right here This and the zebra one. I'll show you in a minute, but I think I might like this one better tell you the truth But but again, this is a little bit Subjective to whatever size you're working at So things I like to practice are how close I can get the lines together And control that so I'm paying attention to that as I do this How much I can control a tapered line and get to a nice point? So there's some of mine get a nice heavy start to it really easily, right? But then if I can't get the point I want I might have to come back with a different pen to to do that and so you know, it's not out of the the realm of Possibilities or whatever but I Like when I can get all my rendering out with that one pen at least a specific type of rendering And that's what I'd be doing here Another thing is is you want to practice also? Bringing these together in different ways. Okay. So one way is you can just add this thicker little piece The back it almost creates another pattern, right? These are all in my mind. These are all just patterns that you're creating Yeah, see I don't like that But I it's I need to at least test it to see if I like it and I might even try another little pattern like this Do all sorts of weird little things when I'm inking my artwork Because those patterns are neat. They Introduce another level of detail to the work. So one way to think about think of it is just gradients, right? So for instance, let me go back to see if there's no one Gotta be careful because sometimes these old ones dry out and I got them sitting by my work area I need to just toss and go on to the next one. I buy these suckers by the box because of this No, this one's good. Okay But yeah, so Basically, you want to think about the different gradients you can create with these? Okay, this is a perfect example because you can generate these nice little lines in succession. Let me do it up here So I'll create these very tight little lines We could want tighter than that, but and see it's that's not even a gradient. I'm sorry. That's just a tone That's like a almost reminds me of like zip a tone or something, you know But it's just a tone and then when you go in the other direction And say maybe you go like this All right. There's another tone and you could go diagonally and there's another one so this is kind of a Real clean way to get that gradation, you know one two three, you know, so that's one way to do it There's lots of ways to do it But this is something that I like to use this in comparison or in contrast I should say to these other effects The more the better, you know to me I feel like if you got a lot of these different things going on for background effects and for textures You can you know, you can tell a better story. You can really control Focal points really well, you can just make things look more interesting, you know, if you have this really neat Style of rendering, but you do it everywhere. It loses its luster. It becomes almost boring It's another one. I like to use for backgrounds. This is kind of Something you'll see it's pretty popular, right? I'm sure you've seen this effect, but it's easy to do You just basically go around in different angles As I'm doing I might pick no lines going this right way I might go this way it's pretty simple It's actually kind of peaceful to some about this part right here. I could really zone out and just do this almost like meditation or something, but I'm sure all art should be thought of as meditation. But for me, it's not some parts of it are actually kind of Stressful, but it's all worth it. It's all Awesome in the end to see that just another little, you know, quick easy texture You can go back and play with this as well. You could Picking up some of the lines here and there. I like to just leave it like that. Tell you the truth now Another one that I like or the other thing. I think you should practice when doing this is to Block in an area. Let's say something like this. I'm gonna use this in 15. I believe it is Tombo Tombo Somebody tell me how it's pronounced. I put in the box below Type it how it sounds. Okay, so something like this All right, just it doesn't have to be pretty whatever. I'm just blocking in some shadow and then Practice rendering out from there. Okay, so I'll take this actually let's take the zebra one. So that's this one I believe yep right there. See that My lighting is bad in there zebra, I Don't know. What's the numbers on this thing? Yeah, I got my lights set up funny sorry folks again I'll link in the description box below But now try to take the the bulk of the shadow and render it out and when doing this I think it's important to try to Blend it in a way where you don't see the initial Now it's hard to explain you don't see the initial rectangle in between these so if I You want to make sure that the taper goes so thick that it turns into a point in the negative see the white It's basically a point. So I think it's really important to practice as I see a lot of people render and it looks pretty good But then they leave these big gaps in between their lines kind of everywhere. Okay, and in some areas It's okay to do that Like I'm saying about contrast and comparison. There's definitely areas you do want to do that. That's okay it's not like there's a right or wrong way to do this stuff, but You can get a really nice gradient or really nice transition if you focus on bringing these together a little more to me, that's what this is supposed to do your your your lines are supposed to soften up the edge of the The shadow and blend some of its anyway some of it should be not all of it, you know I'll do it by comparison. So up here We've got this tighter and I can go back in and keep making sure all these negative white little areas turn into points You know, that's the kind of paper. I'm looking for but say I do the same type of line exact same line But I space it out It's just a different look and I'll go I'll space it out further as I go this way And this is this is really what I'm talking about right here So to me, this isn't this isn't really what I would want to see in my work this portion It just has a totally different look than what we see up here This to me looks like more of a transition and then once I if I do I almost don't need to cross hatches Let's say I did. I also like to mix up the way that I cross hat with another pen so I could take the old one And go this way with it and I think it's nice to have that that variety that variation in the Lines, I feel like they don't I feel like it reads better when you make sure to use a different thickness of line there That might just be me. But again, I like to use all these pens together Now, let's see another way we could do this is we could try to cross hatch now at a Light angle like this. You'll see this effect a lot No, not they're gonna but yeah again, I would blend all that to where the gaps aren't so significant Let's just try some tighter line work But the main thing is just experimenting a lot like even right here, let's just do some stippling Another one that's real important to practice And I will sit here and just doodle all day long I'm a doodler folks But that's how you're gonna find your your effects, you know, you're gonna sit here and mess around with these different pens Oh, yeah. Let me show you what I like. So this is a pentel brush pen and what I like about these it's got a good quality for the tip of the brush and you can just kind of make some neat little Textures with this Now what's gonna happen generally is you're gonna need better hand control I think To work with this one. It's great for fills. Listen that in 15 I showed you great for fills really speeds up that part of the process But you can get all sorts of neat little textures Just you know the very tip of it like that It's also really nice for Energy effects, I'm just gonna Move that brush tip back and forth And almost think like a perspective line in the direction. Anyways continuity that way and space it out Over here. There's some smaller ones by comparison Hopefully you see you can get a really neat kind of energy to that And really quick. That's one of my favorite things about a brush pen The speed is just hard to beat Yeah, it's fun to do And you just keep building on it, too And nothing nothing. I want to stress is that don't be afraid to mess up Of course, you're gonna mess up and that's when you're gonna bust out your whiteout You're gonna fix things and you're gonna figure things out. You're gonna make it sometimes better You know great whiteout is this presto stuff The reason why I like this stuff the most. I'm sorry. I shook that right by the mic. That was probably offensive The reason why I like this stuff the most is because it's very opaque but you can really glob it down and It's solid and then it's workable. You can go back through and ink over this and make it look Just like drinking over Bristol board, so Yeah Big fan of this stuff. I wish it was a finer point but it seems like the trade-off is when you have a finer point that you basically don't get the opaqueness that you need so, let me see, let me go back to the Tombow fine point the food and Suka that I can't say and so I did these other lines right here And that's another one that I think is a good idea at the practice So, you know, this is more of a clean with a slight curve, but then I'm again I'm trying to bring those to it more of a point. I'm gonna practice that some more over here and I just wanted to explain to like I think a lot of people wonder, you know about the hand mechanics, right? so what I'm doing is I'm really placing the weight on my Heel of my you know hand is just planted, right? That's that's how I get the control and then I'm just rotating off that pivot point now that works for smaller tighter areas And I generally can get pretty good control But it also hinders me from doing longer Sweeping passes. So for instance again, this is more detail work. This is something in a tighter area that I'm going to do this in Because I'm not gonna have the kind of control I would need To go across the page now I can I can try that. I should try that or I should practice So say I needed a line to go from this point at this point It's a lot bigger area that I'm gonna have to pull a lot, you know longer stroke, right? So what I have to do there is kind of Create the line over a series of strokes. Okay, at least the way that I would do it The way that I found for it to work for me and then I would beef up the weight back here I would have that initial line that almost becomes a sort of ruler for me and then I would do that again And I can tell you right now that the amount of effort that I'm having to put into that line Makes me not want to use this pen. So again, this is where testing these tools are gonna tell you what they're good for For me, that's too much work for that line Kind of weird, I thought it would uh, come out better. I'm gonna try The zebra one again. See if that's any different To be it's because sometimes it's just the pens drying up a little bit No, it's it's really just that this is more of a detail brush and pen So I'm gonna try the Pentel brush pen now, I know right off the bat. I'm not gonna have the amount of control that I'm used to with a felt tip But It's easier to get that ink down And it might just mean that I need to dedicate more time to using this brush pen But again, I'm probably not gonna get the same control I'm after But speed is a is a big factor as well. I think it still looks good It's just not I see a couple little bumps where I didn't mean for them to be I Might even have to go back with a little bit of white out and try a different effect with this But if I need a gradient if I need some cross hatching in this big of an area Then I need what I need right? I'm gonna have to go for it and I Think that really I just need to spend more time using a brush when I beer on assault comics back in the day I did it all I inked it all with the brush pens. I can't even find those Brush pens that I used to get they were they were awesome. I got them from like the We call it architecture Design studio or you know the the supplies for architecture Drafting supplies, I guess drafting company. I don't know. But anyways, they were great. They were local I was able to find them and I Realized I could get a good line with them I'll tell you the truth. That's actually why I picked up this one I thought this was it looked just like this and a lot, you know pretty close So I thought that's what this one was the tombow, but it's not Like I said, I can't couldn't find them but what I'm getting at is that's one of the ones I first started to feel really comfortable with I'm using a you know brush pen from them and that Supplier. All right. So at any rate we'll bring this one to a close. I hope you've enjoyed today's video I'd love to know what you think and more content on the way as always keep drawing keep having fun and bye for now