More exercises in form
 

All I do is draw these days. My wife has to pull me away for dinner.

I decided this evening to just kick around and have fun. I was sketching loosely with pencil, when I decided to try my form exercises with ink. I took out a roller ball pen and some scrap paper and started drawing with ink only. I used no pencil marks to guide me, so every mark I made had to be as close as possible to its true position.

Here's an Ingres.

Leighton

My father

My friend, Norm. This is the one I spent the most time on. The others took only a few minutes each.

The purpose of these is train myself to quickly capture form and a likeness. I had read that Watteau was especially good at this, which was part of his genius.

These are very nice. (And, for those of you that have not tried this-it's very difficult to pull off and look honest and loose like these.)

Man, you can really draw! I especially like the Leighton one. You're going to have to change the caption over near your photo: "Guy who can draw a little" is no longer accurate.

Jeff, I really enjoy seeing these drawings. Tim is right. This is not nearly as easy as it looks; in fact it is really hard.

I can feel your hand as if it were mine.

Well done!
 

This is almost like my approach to pencil drawing. Your attention to line placement is like mine. In pencil, you would add the element of thickness and value to the line. With an ink pen, you only have one value and one thickness. But that forces you to do other effects, like cross hatch, which you have done, and denser line placement in darker areas.

I love your freedom in your use of lines. Most drawings you see are too careful and timid. Here there is care, but there is boldness and confidence. That is what shows up here. Only time and experience can produce it.

I love to draw this way, although I use pencil rather than pen. You have a good eye and steady hand. Each line is a building block to the next. If one line is wrong, the whole drawing falls apart.

True, it is an exercise in form, since form is in the mind all the time. But the actual development of the drawing utterly depends on the correct execution of each line. Especially since it is in ink.

A worthy exercise. I would consider this more than just an exercise, but a mastery.