Portfolio: Beginning Pen & Ink will teach you everything you need to know about the fundamentals of drawing with pen and ink.
From the beloved and best-selling Portfolio art series by Walter Foster Publishing comes Portfolio: Beginning Pen & Ink, a book that invites you to explore this classic art medium in new and refreshing ways. This comprehensive guide is packed with valuable resources for artists of all skill levels, starting with the basics and ending with intricate, original step-by-step projects that are sure to impress—and inspire.
Portfolio: Beginning Pen & Ink introduces drawing basics, including stippling, hatching, and crosshatching; how to master the fundamentals of mark-making and line work; and helpful exercises for contour drawing, gesture drawing, perspective, and more. Chapters on value, tone, mood, light and shadow, and texture follow, ensuring that artists gain the drawing knowledge they need before working on the step-by-step projects featured in the book. Artists can even learn to add color to their black-and-white art using watercolor for a fresh, modern take on an age-old art form.
Whether you're a new artist looking to try a celebrated art technique, a pen-and-ink enthusiast, a mixed-media master, or a graphite-pencil fan looking to branch out to new mediums, Portfolio: Beginning Pen & Ink will teach you everything you need to know.
The Portfolio series covers essential art techniques, core concepts, and media with an approach and format that’s perfect for aspiring, beginning, and intermediate artists.
Also available from the series: Beginning Acrylic, Beginning Drawing, Beginning Watercolor, Beginning Pastel, Beginning Colored Pencil, Beginning Color Mixing, Expressive Painting, Beginning Color Mixing, and Beginning Composition.
Portfolio: Beginning Pen & Ink is a technique and tutorial guide on building up familiarity with pen and ink. Released 5th March 2019 by Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and available in paperback format.
Whenever I read art/tutorial books, I try to read them with an eye toward what they offer me that is new to me. I liked that the Ms. Lee has a very informal, supportive, and upbeat writing style with concrete suggestions for figuring out what you need to improve as an artist to proceed and steps to do so. Her personal style is appealing and very meticulous with just a touch of whimsy. There's enough realism included in the lessons that it would have relevance to people leaning toward illustration (anatomy/biology/natural sciences, like me) and also purely emotional/whimsical fancy (also me, in my 'off-work' time).
This is a beginner's manual. The tutorials start without assuming any previous experience. She includes an introduction to tools and supplies as well as a good and logical progression through the lessons from making marks on support surfaces (paper) through applying the practice lessons in complete projects.
I especially liked the tutorial on texture and shading. Very well done. Not unique, by any means, but a well done chapter with lots of tutorial exercises.
She also doesn't sugarcoat the process (which leads beginners to believe they just aren't artistically talented) - it's a skill and it takes practice over time to acquire). The book contains the word "practice" over 20 times.
Well done instruction with engaging and appealing pictures.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes
