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This Inktober drawing is taking forever and making me really behind schedule. Oh, dear! I plan to finish this one up later, time permitting. It’s all dots. And dots. And more dots. It’s is crazy-making but really fun – and a good way to think about positive and negative spaces.
Journey by Paper 
Amazing texture! Leaving space is a lot harder than filling in for me, and that’s the challenge in using a pen for me. Do you ink without first outlining areas with a pencil? If not, how do you keep all the details and the overall shape so precisely?
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Hi, Yul. I did a basic outline of the starfish for shape and the lines. From there I am looking at the photograph that is the basis of the drawing. I outlined the starfish first, and then the ridges of the lines in each arm, and the pentagram in the center where the arms form. From there, I used a broad ink pen and dotted in the darkest areas. After I got bored I moved to a smaller pen, and continued to make the dots. As I was doing this, I realized – and to me, the most important thing – that the best way to express the white or lightest areas was to use the pen to outline, with dots, the white areas themselves. I am doing this very slowly as the contrast between the light / medium / dark areas needs to be considered.
Hope this helps!
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That’s immensely helpful. It also reminds me of your other post where you wrote about painting the darkest and the lightest areas first and fill in the shades later. I’ve been using a hack of drawing dark areas roughly and then highlighting with pastels, but I’ll try these when I want a clean, sober look. Thank you!
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My pleasure!
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