Inktober 2020 Art Supplies — vina rathakoune

Why ink drawings for wildfire relief?

Every year there is a very popular artist challenge called Inktober. This event takes place during the month of October and the aim is dedicate oneself to practicing their inking techniques. I challenged myself to push and pull on the ink & tools to see how I could use this medium to interpret the my subjects through my vision. Using this challenge as an opportunity to do good, I created my Inktober collection with the intent to raise money to donate to 2 wildfire relief efforts. Wildland Firefighers Foundation and the California Community Fund. — Learn more about the Wildfire Relief

For this challenge, I tried to use whatever supplies I already had so some pieces are up-cycled from previous swatch sheets, which turned out great!

Black Phoebe drawing on Fabriano paper. Available in my shop — Visit Shop

On to the Tools:

Bamboo Stick

I started with this tool because I had it and I had never really used it. I think using this added a kind of dimension I couldn’t have create before if I just used a pen and nib or brush. I don’t know if I actually used it in the way it was designed for but it was fun to try out and exciting to experiment with. Using this tool allowed me to “sketch” with the ink and created rougher textures and lines and really allowed me to loosen up. This was vital in jump starting my process in creating ink drawings.

Ink Brushes

When I first started the challenge, I used calligraphy brushes when I was doing warm ups. It allowed for fluidity in freedom of movements and nuance. From my experience brushes made for ink are different from brushes made for other mediums. When using a brush made for ink, the ink flow is much better, more ink is held in the bristles, and it is much easier to clean. They’re really great to use as it really lets you be loose and encourages you to embrace how the brush will move vs. being tightly controlled with a pen and nib.

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

My absolute favorite brush pen is the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. I maybe favor it even more than a brush haha. The pros to using this tool, is that the brush nib is very flexible and allows for a wide range of line thickness & textures. The ink formula for this pen is also waterproof which means it’s great to use if you want to keep the lines but add another water based medium on top, like color inks. The only drawback for me is that you can only use one time use cartridges. I’ve tried to find ink to refill the cartridges to not be wasteful but typical india ink has a shellac (which aides in the waterproof nature) and it’s a thicker formula and therefore the ink flow to the brush nib isn’t great. I’ve resigned myself to disposable cartridges until I can find a suitable ink that will work with the pen. Alternatively, I have tried the Kuretake brush pens with refillable cartridges but I find their brush nibs slimmer and not quite the experience I get with the pocket brush pen.

Paper

I am a professed paper hoarder and I love trying different papers. During this Inktober project, I used the following papers: Canson Watercolor, Strathmore Printmaking, Illustration Board, Japanese handmade high absorbency paper, Fabriano Studio paper and Legion Stonehenge Warm White Paper. They each have their quirks and those coupled with the different drawing tools, enabled me to explore different textures and shapes.

Ink

Ink is by far the most important supply in this entire project. It is the medium that I primarily used to create the collection. While I have a wide selection of ink, I primarily worked with india ink. The brand I used was Speedball since I have a huge bottle of it. Aside from that, I also used colorful fountain pen inks to inject some color. Since most of the fountain pen inks I have are not water resistant I had to make sure to pay mind to which kinds of inks I was going to use as well as the order in which I was using them.

All in all, Intoker is a fun challenge and good way to improve your skills. I didn’t quite hit 31 ink drawings in the month of October, but I will have 31 in my collection :) Please stay tuned to see which new pieces get added next!

Take a look at all of my Inktober 2020 pieces here! — Inktober 2020

Cheers!

Vina