Value studies are a fundamental skill taught in many high school and college art classes. Grab a brush, or dip pen, and a bottle of India ink plus some water and you’ve got the tools you need for a simple black and white value study. It’s simple it’s effective. You have to think in terms of black gray and white.

When I had my summer of art way back in 2002 (0r 03?) I did a LOT of value studies and simple pen and ink drawings. I’ve written about this summer extensively. I got up, drove to a tourist spot, drew and painted, then came home and listed EVERYTHING on eBay. Every sketch, every doodle.

​Shockingly most of it sold and pretty quickly. I sent out India ink sketches all over the US and a surprising number overseas.

I decided to return to some of my artistic roots last night, but with a twist.

Yesterday, I shot a video that will go live on Thursday, about the importance of prep work. In that video I use Meeden soft body matte acrylic paint to tone canvases and paper. I spent about 2 hours outside in my backyard toning 10 small canvases, 5 medium panels, and 30 pieces of paper. Big brush and 5 shades of paint. I mixed mud and  grays and used the colors straight out of the bottles.

The matte paint is really nice for working on top of with India Ink. So last night I pulled a stack of these toned papers out and started to do some value studies. Simple pen and ink, created with pens made from Knot Weed*. Making reed style pens with knot weed is probably the only really good use for it, other than eating the shoots on occasion. Anyway, it seemed like a fun thing to do- create drawings of a place using a tool I gathered the materials for in the place I’m drawing.

Cutting a reed pen from knot weed needs a sharp strong knife. It’s best to cut the general shape of the pen while the knot weed is still soft and green. It’s much harder to cut when it’s dry, but it’s not terrible to shape when dry.

I cut myself 5 pens, cracked one and ended up with 4 usable dip pens. (More on these later.)

I used my images of the stormy skies and started to create while watching the dark thriller Furious.  

This one is the simplest- India ink, walnut ink, and a small amount of colored pencil. The ink was scraped away to create the lighter areas.

A little more complicated here, the toned paper had 2 colors- pink and gray. IT worked really well for this image. I used the widest pen to create some marks that look like balsam fir to me. The lightness of the sky was added in with white water soluble crayons. A hint of gray colored pencils.

I let myself get a little wild with this one- all the materials stated but I also used an acid brush to add in some water and create some variation with the white crayon and walnut ink. I used the sides of the pens to scrape away and move the ink into puddles.

Trying to capture the dark airiness of this tree on the left. I think I did okay with scraping the ink around with the side of the pen.

This was the last one I worked on. This is nit a scene of Maine but of the Willows. I wanted to capture the trees airiness, plus the sticks of the bushes and the angular harshness of the rocks. I like how the walnut ink bled into the sky. I tempted fate with the technique, but I like it.

*Knot Weed is an invasive species but my parents have a small well contained stand of it on the farm. I hate it and we’ve tried to eradicate it a few times, but it takes years of dedicated effort and likely poison to get rid of it. Which honestly would leave a barren hole in the garden. But the reason it is well contained is that it is next to their house, there is a cellar entrance on one side and an entrance to the house on the other side. The lawn side gets mowed down regularly. My Dad also regularly goes in and cut the whole stand down to the ground.