Tutorial: Draw and sketch like the old masters
Ever wonder how the old masters did their quick sketches or concept drawings?
Nowadays we use computers or our ever best friend the pencil, but 4-500 years ago there was no such thing as a pencil so artists had to use different tools to put their ideas and studies on paper.
Open up a book with sketches from Rubens, Rembrandt,… and you will often see the word chalk, feather or pen. Chalk -which was very often used (brown, red, white,…)- and feather speak for themselves but what exactly is meant by pen?
Surely it’s not a pen like we know them, with a tube or a spong-ish material serving as an ink container.
They used what is called in dutch a rietpen. I don’t know the English word but for our own ease let’s call it a cane pen.
It’s made from a small piece of cane or bamboo. Any other wooden stick that is hollow on the inside will do. You could buy a cane pen in a decent art store but why spend money on this when your wife/girlfriend/mother surely has one of those cane sticks lying around her basement somewhere in case she has another plant to tie too so it will grow straight up? And aren’t we artists? We looove making things ourselves now don’t we…