Careful stipple (creating shading with fine dots) is a beautiful but time intensive way to add value to pen and ink drawings. A faster approach is to use stipple paper. The surface is textured with fine bumps and divots. If you rub the paper with a black Prismacolor Premier pencil the bumps pick up the color while the divots remain clean white (see enlarged inset). The harder you press, the narrower the white areas become. Drawings shaded with this technique reduce and reproduce well in black and white. Study the step by step demonstration to see the illustration workflow and more tips on using stipple board. Click on the first image to start a step-by-step slideshow.
Place the leaf on your page and lightly trace around the edges with graphite pencil. Do not press the pencil against the sides of the leaf but move the pencil along the edge, keeping the leaf still with the other hand. When you can no longer comfortably trace the contour, rotate the paper and the leaf, hold the leaf down again and continue tracing.
Use the light graphite line a guide to draw the contour of the leaf with a wide nib pen (Micron 08 (0.50 mm)). Rotate the paper as you draw to help you make the line segments between each point on the leaf margin in one smooth curve.
With a finer pen (Micron 03 (0.35 mm)), draw the primary leaf veins, paying attention to the negative space between the vein and the leaf margin, the overall curve of the vein, the angle at which the side vein intersects the main vein, and the height of the insertion of each side vein on the central vein.
With a still finer pen (Micron 005 (0.20 mm)), draw in the tertiary veins. Note that on some leaves the veins will reach the leaf margin (hear with every point on the leaf margin). In other leaves the leaves branch and disappear before they reach the edge.
Carefully pace each vein. It helps to have the real leaf directly on your paper, next to your drawing. Do not make up veins, check what they really do. You can stop here if you just want a line drawing.
If you made your illustration on stipple paper, begin to shade the leaf one vein-section at a time. Use a black Prismacolor or Faber Castell pencil, not a graphite pencil.
Continue slowly over the whole leaf surface. No scribbling in the tone.
Vary the value with additional coats of black pencil. Copy the shape and location of dark spots. Are they along veins or between them?
Add white highlights with a white gel pen. There you have it- stipple paper, fast and fun.
