Pen and ink drawings have always been the artists’ and architects’ easy way to convey a certain sense of space or express their thoughts and feelings—we are used to them. However, artists have their own way to innovate the most familiar things and make them unique. One of the latest innovations in the world of ink drawings is the glowing ink sketches by Ukraine-based artist and sketches Nikita Busyak. Busyak has been posting his ink drawings for years, using his mechanical pen and ink. However, he just recently started adding a glowing effect to his illustrations.
“I instantly fell in love with the effect and realized that this was the style I’ve been searching for for so many years,”
—Said Busyak in an Interview with My Modern Met
courtesy of Nikita Busyak
Inspired by the romantic and melancholic effect the fluorescent light adds to cityscapes and intimate urban streets, Busyak used his multi-disciplinary skills to imitate this effect in his pen and ink drawings. The Ukrainian sketcher grew an interest in art at an early age, but it was not until college that he showed a passion for architectural sketching. This passion actually was his coping mechanism during boring lectures!
“I’ve been drawing for a long period of time. But switched to sketching in 2016. The main reason is: I was bored during lessons in college and the pen was always with me.”
—Explained Nikita Busyak on his Instagram account
The artist’s learning process was actually a self-driven one—Busyak explained that he did not take any drawing classes and preferred to learn this “the complex way”. He used his ink drawings as means to express his emotions, mood, and feelings. This self-learning journey taught him a lot, and he ended up professional in different art disciplines; mainly digital art and photography, and he has a separate Instagram platform for each. For a living, Busyak actually works as a car photographer!
Busyak’s pen and ink drawings mostly revolve around architecture and focus on various buildings and cityscapes in his hometown—all his sketches look familiar and intimate; classical European structures you can find in almost every city, normal apartment blocks, and dreamy cabins in the woods. Busyak wanted to go beyond this and add some more intimacy with the glowing effect, this is when he decided to make use of his digital art skills.
“I had a desire to combine traditional pen and ink sketches with digital art, […] Then, when I was playing with light and shadows in my sketches, I had an idea to bring the buildings to life by adding light in the windows.”
—Said Nikita Busyak in an Interview with My Modern Met.
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To achieve the glowing effect of his pen and ink drawings, Busyak photographs his sketches in dim lighting and enhances them with digital edits to illuminate the windows—the overall dim lighting makes the false illumination look real and magical.
How to Make Your Ink Drawings Glow?
After finishing his pen and ink drawing, Nikita Busyak uses digital software to add artificial lighting to his drawings. He cleverly chooses the placement of the glare and the color of the illumination to make the drawing look like it has an unknown source of the fluorescent light source.
This manipulation of the light’s color adds a third intangible dimension to the ink drawings; time—and it makes them look alive. Check this tutorial by the artist to find out how.
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Arch2O Drawing Challenge
Arch2O drawing challenge
If by now you are inspired by Busyak’s glowing pen and ink drawings and excited to create your own, Arch2O opened a window for you. Arch2O created an architectural drawing challenge, the registration started just last week, the 10th of October, and will remain open till the 15th of November. Architects consider drawings as their official language; it is how they connect, communicate, and -most importantly- tell stories. Ranging from abstract to highly detailed, and from strictly engineered to highly illustrated, architectural drawings give different senses of their context. The Arch2O Drawing Challenge calls for architectural drawings that convey the notion of their location and culture and tell stories of how people connect with these buildings.
To be part of Arch2O’s challenge, submit a single drawing that tells a significant story about architecture: how the built environment interacts with its context and inhabitants. The submitted drawing can be located anywhere in the world, be at any scale, and can represent an imagined architectural proposal or an existing work of architecture. The drawing should be categorized under the following: plan, section, elevation, perspective (1 or 2 points), parallel projection (axonometric, isometric, etc…), sketch, detail, or abstract.
As long as your drawing frames architecture as its main element of the story it is eligible. Prizes for top winners include a Graphic Drawing Tablet from XP-PEN for the Top 2 Winners and Publication in Arch2O’s Annual Feature “100 Drawings About Architecture”. Moreover, 100 finalists will be published in Special Annual Feature “100 Drawings About Architecture”, to be distributed to Arch2O’s community including 100,000 newsletter subscribers and 2.5+ million social media followers!
If you got inspired by our collection of architectural ink drawings for Inktober, keep scrolling for more inspiration with Nikita Busyak’s glowing pen and ink drawings.
20 Glowing Pen and Ink Drawings
#1
courtesy of Nikita Busyak
#2
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#3
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#4
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#5
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#6
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#7
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#8
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#9
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#10
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#11
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#12
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#13
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#14
courtesy of Nikita Busyak
#15
courtesy of Nikita Busyak
#16
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#17
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#18
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#19
courtesy of Nikita Busyak
#20
courtesy of Nikita Busyak
