Line Drawing, Tone and Depth and Stipples and Dots

I used a dipping pen to do a contiuous line drawing of some fruit and vegetables.  After trying a pepper cut in half I decided to try other objects.  It was a lot harder than I had anticipated and getting the shape trying to use a continuous line was quite difficult. The space is quite startling when there is no tone and using line to give shape and form is challenging.  I really liked this exercise, it highlighted the faults in observation as there was no where to hide no tone to help out with the form. 

Tone and Depth

I chose a beetroot and I enjoyed this exercise and I feel that although I am not completely comfortable with the cross hatching technique it is becoming easier.  I tried to concentrate on the dark tones to get contrast and depth and I found that the cross hatching worked on the more rounded part of the vegetable and hatching worked well on the straight stems.
I then tried to take this exercise further and used a collection of natural objects to try and work the tone with the cross hatching it was time consuming but it was a great exercise in observation and I soon got into the swing of using the hatching technique.

The next exercise was with stipples and dots and I chose a dipping pen.  I like the randomness of the line with this type of pen and also you can alter the amount of ink on the nib to help achieve different tone.  I think that this technique works well for textured bark and plants although, I would try this technique for any piece of work I think it would be time consuming but I am someone who likes to capture detail and so it would work for me.