Some asked if I did commissions. “If someone asks and they understand that time is money.”
Then they said “spiderweb.” They had my attention. That’s a negative space project where what you don’t draw is more important than what you do draw.
I went looking for a video to see how other people might be handling it but found nothing. Tried looking for pen and ink examples from professionals and also came up empty. I have found a hole in the internet. I hate holes in the internet.
Rough draft to prove out some concepts. I learned a few things from this and will use them on a second draft. I might have to go bigger and darker to get it right. And it needs more foreground. But it’s a fully finished rough, so I have that going for me. Which is something.
If you know of high skill examples or have any suggestions I want them in the comments.
Have you tried seeing if any tattooerists have info out there? Spiderwebs don’t seem to be a super rare tattoo. Maybe there’s something helpful there.
I know one I can ask. Good idea because there is a direct parallel to not being able to use a second medium.
I love the idea of using negative space this way. It would be amazing if you could add more dimensionality to the background, increase the sense of perspective being the negative space so that the foreground objects create a sense of nearness.
Also, what is the web is attached to? What are the anchor points above? It’s unclear if the web is in a window or attached to plants in the garden.
I assumed it’s attached to taller plants.
I’m planning to dramatically increase the amount of foreground to bigger things taking up maybe 20% of the whole thing.
I think increasing the details of the background will require me to upsize the whole thing from 5.5 x 8.5 to a larger paper. Otherwise the lines have to be placed too close together over multiple windows through the web that the results won’t be different from what I have here or they will frame the windows too much defeating the negative space idea. Foreground pens are 05 to 08, background is 005 to 2. The page size is just top small for the background to be detailed without it looking like misplaced foreground at this scale.
That makes sense. If there are plants above, consider framing a bit of them in for the final version, or change the web layout to match what’s there. Spiders make do with all sorts of wonky areas, after all!
Again, I really love what you’re doing here, I hope you’ll post more.
Draw everything normally then use a white pain pen for the web
I explicitly want to avoid using anything but black ink and white paper. I want a clean finished product.
Maybe you could find a way to cut thin strips of masking tape for the web so that you could render the background and then remove the mask?
I did consider that but tape would catch the pen tip causing all kinds of artifacts. I considered maybe using a high gloss board and painting the web in a thin wax. Then melt the wax off when done. But the wax would have to be almost plastic in hardness to avoid gumming the pen tip. And that would create both a nightmare for application and removal.
But I like that you are pondering it.
Still trying to nail it.
Latex masking fluid is likely one solution for preserving negative space in this type of drawing.
Latex would trip up a pen tip. It would work fine for markers or brushes though.
