Formulas for bistre, made from the soluble tars in wood soot, were recorded as early as the fifteenth century, whereas sepia became fashionable in the late eighteenth century. Two traditional brown inks are bister, a luminous, transparent ink and sepia, an opaque wash extracted from the secretion of the cuttlefish.
The more permanent carbon black ink, such as Chinese or Indian ink, is colored with fine particles from charred wood or burned lamp oil. The corrosive nature of iron gall ink can also cause the underlying paper to discolor or deteriorate. Iron gall ink, derived from a chemical reaction between iron compounds and the tannin in oak tree gall nuts, gradually fades from black to brown. The oldest black inks are iron gall and carbon black. Composed of very fine pigments or dyes in a solution of water and gum arabic or animal glue, ink must be intense in tone yet thin enough to flow through the point of a pen. Pens have evolved from reed and quill to metal nibs like that used in the detail at the left.Īlthough today inks are available in a rainbow of colors, historically they were produced only in black, brown, or subtly tinted variations. The field ofĪ union of opposites, pen and ink wash drawings combine sinuous fine lines with broad washes, the latter often difficult to distinguish from watercolor in a finished drawing. Ink drawing with metal nib pen by Burne-Jones,Īs seen through the microscope.
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