Pen and Ink Sketching
Pausing to Notice the Small Things
Field sketching is way of quickly recording forms when out and about. When I stop to draw, even for just a few minutes, the world seems to settle and the tiny details that usually slip past become majestic and wonderful. Pen and ink feel perfect for this kind of looking: immediate, simple, and direct.
Ink Lines in the Wild
Most of my sketching happens at home but when I do sketch when I’m out and about, I use a technical pen such a Rotring 0.25 isograph pen. Anything with waterproof ink is fine. You can try with water moveable ink and use water and a brush to move the ink around. Any paper will do but I like a travel sketchbook that folds along the short axis so I can create a drawing with lots of length. Good for branches, trees or lots of little sketches. Ink has no room for adjustment. It is a very binary and very permanent medium. It forces me to commit to each line, to trust the marks I make, and to accept the quirks that come from drawing outdoors.
This honesty is part of the charm. My lichen sketches, made quickly on a damp rock or the edge of a woodland path, look alive precisely because the lines aren’t perfect. They’re responsive, immediate, and rooted in the moment they were made.
Don’t let the permanency of the ink dissuade you from giving it a go. Its surprising how forgiving the organic shapes of something like lichen can be. Its a great place to start.
Recording Tiny Landscapes
Lichen is one of my favourite subjects to sketch on the spot. Each clump is its own miniature world, full of texture and shape. Working in ink helps me break these complex forms into simple impressions: clusters, curves, shadows. Sometimes I add a wash of watercolour later to suggest tone or highlight a subtle green, but the ink does most of the storytelling.
Poppies, by contrast, feel like the complete opposite: delicate, fluttering, impossible to pin down. Sketching them in ink is a lesson in movement, capturing the sway of a stem or the soft fall of a petal before the wind changes everything. A quick streak of watercolour often brings the impression together, adding just enough colour to hold the memory in place.
Moments on the Page
Field sketches aren’t meant to be perfect; they’re meant to be alive. They remind you what it is to look at tiny details right under our noses. Each ink line is a small record of attention, a moment spent noticing something I might otherwise have walked straight past.
Most people never sketch in pen because of fear of mistakes. Mistakes happen and when they do, just move on and embrace the organic nature of creation.