I love to mix ink with other mediums, but most of all I love its simplicity and ability to make your mistakes a part of the process – any mark is there to stay and must become a part of your drawing. It also means survival for decades plus, assuming any reasonable quality ink is used. The most engaging element of drawing with ink however is its portability, and depending on what you are drawing, it can be a quick fix of creativity for the time poor. I have a variety of small series in different styles: Dog Ink Series, Ink Scribbles, Simple Ink Doodles, Detailed Doodle Art and Digital Ink. Read more about my ink journey and tips for beginners in my Just Ink Blog.

I’m currently loving experimenting on drawing a digital dragon using the ink, chalk and pastel tools. Once he is finished, I plan on doing a joint project with my daughter – an amazing digital artist in her own right – as it’s something we’ve always aspired to do.

These digital inks were created using the ink brushes on my Wacom MobileStudio Pro. The stylus is designed to look and feel like a pen and the specialised glass touch screen feels almost like paper so it feels natural when drawing. Regardless of the tools or mediums chosen – oils, charcoals, erasers etc, the pen is super accurate so I apply the same principals in pen, brush, eraser movements etc with my stylus pen to create the desired result. It is a mistaken belief they are quicker or easier in comparison to traditional mediums as you need to think differently, and you need to master many unique and often challenging skills and techniques. I prefer my Clip Studio Paint software but also use Coral Paint.

Scribble artwork is precisely that. It’s scribble but this form can be delightfully elegant as well as fun and messy and consists of crude messy looping similar to the movements used in handwriting. It has a starting point and tonal values are created by scribbling over and over until the required darkness is achieved. When I draw up the picture I mark in outlines, the important lines, and basic shapes of where shadows will need to be added. I tend to move around the page with minimal lifting of the pen nib. The untidy squiggles for outline effect are added as the grande finale. Occasionally I will add a pop of colour – such as the Gorilla’s eyes and the blue yarn in the Bear drawing.

Doodling is again, super fun and easy because there are no set rules. My preference is to use tiny flowers and create tonal values through colouring in the background around the flowers or symbols, sometimes even completely blacking out an area. Lighter tones can be created by leaving space between doodles, choosing light or looser designs to doodle. Again I sketch out zones in my chosen image and work from there.

I was approached to do this peacock commission many years ago and adapted my simple doodling to more detail. This led to another series which I periodically add to, but I have limited myself to only Australian flora. My first one was from one of my own reference photographs of a newborn brahman calf.