The case for ink and wash on British waterways

Few subjects suit a sketch journal quite like a British river. You get a stone bridge with a dark arch, a tangle of alder and willow, the flat grey of a weir, and a sky that changes its mind every ten minutes. Ink and wash is the perfect response: waterproof pen lines carry the structure and the detail, while loose watercolour washes carry the light, the weather and the mood. The line does the thinking; the wash does the feeling.

It is also a genuinely practical pair. The kit is small enough for a coat pocket, a sketch takes twenty to forty minutes, and you can work standing up or perched on a lock gate. Unlike a careful tonal pencil drawing, it rewards speed rather than punishing it.

Your riverside kit, kept deliberately small

Everything depends on the ink being waterproof. A standard fountain pen ink will lift and bleed the moment a wet brush touches it, turning your careful drawing into a muddy smear. Pigment-based drawing ink and fineliners are the safe choices.

• Line: a 0.3 and a 0.5 fineliner, or a fountain pen filled with waterproof ink. Add a brush pen for bold darks — bridge arches and shadowed banks respond well to it.
• Colour: a half-pan tin with six to nine colours. Ultramarine, burnt sienna, raw sienna, sap green, a warm grey and a violet will cover almost every British riverbank.
• Water: a water brush is convenient, but a small bottle and a synthetic travel brush give you more control and less surprise leakage.
• Paper: 200gsm or heavier, cold pressed, in a landscape-format book with a stitched spine so it lies flat on your knee.
• Extras: a cotton cloth, a bulldog clip for windy days, and a folding stool if you plan to sit for longer than half an hour.

One palette tip: ultramarine mixed with burnt sienna makes a beautiful soft grey that flatters overcast water. Mix a large puddle of it before you start and you will not have to fumble for it later.

Draw the lines first — and let them breathe

Begin with the biggest shapes rather than the prettiest details. Mark the horizon, then block in the bridge, the mass of trees behind it, and the line where the bank meets the water. Work from the general to the specific and stop before you have described everything.

Vary your line weight. Let the far bank be a thin, broken line and the near bank a firmer, darker one. Allow lines to fade out entirely where sunlight catches a wall. Reserve your hatched shadows for the darkest two or three places in the drawing — under the arch, beneath the eaves of a boathouse, along the underside of overhanging branches.

Resist drawing every ripple. Pick four or five and leave the rest to the wash. When the line work is finished, wait a full two minutes. It feels long, but it prevents the heartbreak of a wash lifting your best marks.

Loose washes: two or three, no more

The most common mistake in ink and wash is over-painting. Think in layers, not in detail. First a pale wash across the sky and the distant trees. Let it dry to the touch, then add the mid-tones — the shaded tree mass, the reflection band, the stones of the bridge. Finally, one or two dark accents in the deepest shadows.

Mix your colour wetter than feels comfortable and apply it with a single confident pass. If you drop a second colour into a damp wash and tilt the book slightly, the pigments will blend themselves far more attractively than you could manage with a brush. Leave the white of the paper for sparkle: a sunlit parapet, the crest of a weir, a white duck on dark water.

Don't tint every ink line. A bridge drawn entirely in line, with colour only in the sky behind it, often reads better than one flooded with pigment.

Water, reflections and the grey British sky

Rivers are simpler than they look. Paint a flat, pale band from bank to bank, then a darker horizontal stroke where the shadow of the bank falls. Reflections of a bridge or a tree are vertical drags of colour pulled downwards, slightly broken, never neat. Leave uncoloured gaps between them for the glint of moving water.

For the sky, one even wash of ultramarine with a touch of burnt sienna gives you that soft, damp grey so typical of a February afternoon on the Thames or the Cam. For a brighter summer day on the Wye, wash raw sienna into the lower sky before the blue dries.

Fieldcraft: weather, seating and the twenty-minute sketch

A small routine makes outdoor sketching far easier. Spend five minutes simply looking and choosing your viewpoint, eight minutes on the line drawing, and the rest on wash. Keep the book open on your knee, clip the pages against the wind, and keep your kit in one waist bag so nothing rolls into the water.

• Rain: shelter under a bridge, in a bus shelter, or inside a café window. Waterproof ink means a few spots of drizzle will not ruin a drawing — but blot the paper quickly.
• Cold: fingerless gloves, and a pencil tucked in a pocket for warmth. Washes dry slowly in low temperatures, so thin them a little more.
• Summer:midges gather at dusk near slow water, so sketch in the morning, and carry a folded sheet of card to fan washes dry.

Above all, go back to the same stretch of river more than once. Familiarity with the curve of a particular arch or the way light lands on a mill race will improve your sketches faster than any new brush or colour ever will.