Book Review: Pen & Ink: Contemporary Artists, Timeless Techniques

Here's another wonderful book for pen and ink sketchers.

Pen & Ink is like one of those handbook sized instructional/gallery artbooks released by publisher Frances Lincoln. There were two other books that I've featured before, namely Just Add Watercolor and Freehand: Sketching Tips and Tricks Drawn from Art. All three are lovely books!

Just like the title suggest, this book covers pen and ink art. It is a book of inspiration with tips, techniques and beautiful examples from artists all over the world. You'll get to see Ch'ng Kiah Kiean's textural strokes with twigs, Marina Grechanik's casual line art, Swasky's child-like intrepretation, Patrick Vale's intricate attention to details and a lot of other different styles and techniques. Artist and author James Hobbs also has his own sketches included, and his are quite easy to identify because of the thick strokes.

Each spread has an artwork on the right and the left talks about the techniques and the idea behind. The book has 208 pages and there are nearly 100 artworks. The content is grouped according to techniques, so there are chapters on line, tone, colour, texture and pattern, monochrome and mixed media. I enjoy the variety and it's inspiring to see how other artists use the same tools but come up with different effects. This is a book I can see myself going back to again in the future, just like the other two books mentioned earlier.

I recommend to sketchers, and those who like pen and ink art. If you like this book, be sure to check out Matt Rota's The Art of Ballpoint.

Pen & Ink is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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