Guest Contributor: Genevieve Crabe on Stippling to Create Shading

Geneviève lives and teaches in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. She illustrates that by using the technique of stippling you can achieve shading with pen and ink as well as with a traditional pencil.

Geneviève Crabe - Artist, Writer, Teacher, and CZT

Stippling in Pen & Ink

Shading is an important part of Zentangle®. The purpose of shading is to give the illusion of depth and dimension.

In pen and ink art, there are a variety of methods for achieving this illusion, like parallel lines or cross-hatching. My favourite is stippling, where the shading values are achieved with small dots of ink by varying the density of the dots.

Here is an example showing how I can make a flat circle look like a round sphere:

Just like Zentangle® strokes, each dot must be deliberately placed so that the dots are as even as possible. The finer the pen you use, the smoother the shading will look.

You can see some examples of my pre-Zentangle pen & ink work on Flickr.

You can also use colour along with the stippling. In this example, I stippled the rose and then added a single colour using watercolour pencils:

Here is an example of a Zentangle® where I used stippling for shading instead of graphite:

If you want to learn more about stippling, check out my online class, Pen & Ink Rose.

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Related Posts:

• Sandra Strait’s tutorial on using squirkles to shade your art
• Visit the TIPS & TOOLS > SHADING page for more about shading your Zentangles
• Visit the TIPS & TOOLS > TUTORIALS page for a list of all the tutorials on TanglePatterns

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