Back in 2019? Emma Stibbon (Royal Academician) ran a workshop at the University of Brighton based on Ruskin's 'Elements of Drawing'.
That workshop was what spurred me to start my Phd 'teaching robots to draw'. I remember doing the exercises and wondering how one of my many robots would fare, and then being amazed at the level of precision it achieved.
I never finished the Phd, and never finished the exercises in the Elements Of Drawing...
Fast forward 7 years to June 2026 and a conversation with Elizabeth Read Wilson at Purbeck Art Week who was very encouraging and got me thinking maybe I should have another look at Ruskin.
So here we go.
Exercise 1 in Elements of drawing is all about control, pen control as Ruskin is certain that a student will never master the finesse of a brush until they have proficiency with a (dip) pen and then a pencil.
When I did the workshop in 2019 I used a fat dip nib, as I'd not read the text. Ruskin actually suggests a fine Gillot crows quill, and ink 'as thick as it can be without clogging the pen.'
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The aim of the exercise is to apply an even tone to a square.
I tried a couple of nibs, and indeed the Gillot crow quill was the most successful, but only after I switched up to a thinner ink. The Deleter No.5 ink I started with was dense, and bunged up the nib. As I dont often use nibbed pens these days it took a while to work this out. Once I switched to some fresher Deleter No2 ink things went far better.
I thought I'd try with what used to be my default illustration pen, a Rotring isograph 0.5 which meant I spent a good hour un gumming the pen and getting ink stained fingers.
In the second exercise you draw a pencil outline of a plant from a Botanical book, then ink over the lines evenly. This was the sort of thing I'd do when I was an illustrator - pencil the rough, get it approved, then ink it up. I changed that up after a few years by inking on fresh paper using the pencil sketch through a lightbox, as water colour inks worked better on cleaner paper.
These days digital sketching allows you just turn off a sketch layer.
Exercise 3 is about getting a even tone, Ruskin says this is tedious, in fact he reckons most of the exercises are a bit of a bore, but required to level up on penmanship.
I've got to keep on doing the squares in between Botanicals and tone strips, so we'll see how that pans out.
I have to say Ruskin writes in a pretty convoluted way and sometimes it's tricky to unpick the aim of the exercise. This feels more true when the context has changed, Ruskin talks a lot about looking at the cheap woodcuts in any publication, and assumes the reader has a proficiency with a dip pen... some of the pen control he's trying to promote may be an artefact of the available tools. I'm going to guess these days a neo-Ruskin would get people to do this using a biro, something they were already familiar with.
I'll have a go with a bic later.
