HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 7

Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!

One of the things that separates the brush from the dip pen is its versatility in stroke direction. While the pen can catch on the surface of the paper if pushing it in the direction of the point — causing it to blot, spatter ink, dig into the paper, or sometimes even break the nib — a brush can make a nice stroke in any direction. It’s one of the great benefits of using a brush over pen and ink.

As I mentioned last week when discussing methods of controlling the brush, there are always two directions to any stroke – in drawing from the elbow, for instance, you can stroke toward or away from your body. Strictly speaking, this is only true if you draw using a single part of your body to control the brush, keeping all other parts of your body stationary. If you combine methods of control while making a single stroke – for instance drawing from both the wrist and the elbow at the same time — you can actually draw in any number of directions — up, down, left, right, at almost any angle.

With practice, it’s possible to make almost any type of stroke in almost any direction. However, you’ll find that certain strokes come more naturally in certain directions using different methods of controlling the brush. This is what I’ll be exploring over the next couple of weeks.

As you’re starting out, I suggest you go with the tendencies of the brush and make the type of stroke that’s easiest in that particular direction. Eventually, though, you may want to learn to make every stroke in every direction.

So let me start by making a distinction between pushing and pulling the brush.

You’ll remember last week I talked about how, no matter which part of your body you use to control the brush — whether drawing using your fingers, wrist, elbow, or shoulder — the line you draw is naturally in the shape of an arc around whatever part of your body is controlling the brush. For instance, when drawing from the wrist, you’ll see that your lines will tend to form semi-circular arcs with your wrist bone as the center. This makes sense since your wrist bone is resting on the paper and acts like the stationary leg of a compass, the arc’s center if you will.

Using a single body part to control the brush, these arcs are the most natural lines you can make when drawing, and they afford you the greatest control over the brush in most cases. You’ll be able to make nice lines quickly using these kinds of strokes. However, to really take advantage of the brush’s unique shape, you’ll need to combine methods of control. It’s in combining the various methods of control that I introduced last week that pushing and pulling come into play.

Pushing or pulling the brush means adding an additional method of control to your stroke, by which you can move the brush in a direction toward or away from the arc’s center. For instance, if you’re drawing from the wrist, you can use your fingers to angle your line toward the arc’s center as you draw. This is pulling the brush. Pushing the brush would mean angling your line away from the arc’s center using your fingers.

So we see that by combining two or more methods of control, you are able to expand the direction you can move the brush in ways that will give you greater flexibility in making certain kinds of stokes.

Next Wednesday: We’ll start our discussion of the kinds of strokes you can make most effectively by pushing or pulling the brush in: Inking With a Brush, part 8!