I somehow felt that I should learn using a pen more properly. I was in the middle of my Computer Security assignment about breaking the Enigma encryption, so I guess I found it refreshing. Anyway, I borrowed the book "Rendering in Pen and Ink" by Arthur L. Guptill from NUS Central Library, read it here and there, and tried the preliminary exercises suggested in it. After 5 pages of lines and curves, I started drawing boxes. The problem is that the boxes are in the book. All I needed to do was to copy the lines from the book. Although this is necessary to know approximately what lines I should draw to convey degrees of darkness, sooner or later, I need to learn how to draw those lines by myself if I want to draw pictures which are not in the book.

It happened that the theme for the Weekly Drawing Contest was Tsunami Channel fanart. I was not yet good enough to draw realism with pen, so it was a great opportunity for me to exercise my own pen drawing.

Most people commenting on the picture seemed to like the rooftop. I do like it, but, in my opinion, the most difficult part in the drawing is the composition. I am pleased with the overall composition of the picture. However, the background, I think, betrays that I am a beginner pen user. I tried to convey a wind using curves, but failed miserably. In my opinion, my lines were too wild, the directions were chaotic, and the strokes were too strong.

All in all, I was pleased with this. It was pretty nice for a try, but it left some of my questions about pen drawing unanswered.

Dimension: A4 (21 x 29.6 cm) Paper: printing paper Pencils: 2B mechanical and HB genuine Pens: Pilot drawing pen number 03 and 08 Work duration: around two days for planning and pencilling (with most time dedicated to planning) plus around a day and a half for inking Date finished: 22 November 2003