Pen and Ink demonstration by Charles Hickson

Charles started by showing us some of his work and explaining his usual working process. He uses  a variety of pens, brushes and ink brush pens in his work.
Working from a photograph, he draws the bridge in pencil first, straight onto the white paper. When doing these in the studio or live, he  often does a thumbnail sketch first.  After the bridge, he draws the  mountains in the background before adding the trees. Then he uses a 0.3 pen to add details on the bridge starting with the keystone in the middle. Some structural mark making is added as well. 

 Ink is put in a small container with a dropper, then a couple of containers are made up by mixing water to ink on a 4 to 1 ratio for the darker wash and 8 to 1 mix for the lighter wash. Using a couple of nylon brushes he paints a light wash to add mountain detail at the back before doing the mountain on the left side with a  dark wash.
He then starts adding texture on the bridge and the darks under the bridge using brush marks to get the right effect. He can darken this, if needed, by going over it again. As he goes along he builds up areas adding some more darks with the brush, then more details with the pen.

Then he sketches in the bridge's reflection with a pencil before wetting that area of the paper with clear water and starts to add the reflections in a horizontal fashion. The trees are added behind the bridge before working on the stones along the riverbank making the large one at the foreground more textural.
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He carries on adding detail continually working on different areas as well as adding darks to harmonize the  painting. As the session comes to an end he adds some final details such as the  shrubbery .

Another interesting and informative session from Charles and I'm sure he will be back in future with a new demonstration.