Do you start with pencil or jump right in with pen?

[Thaneeya McArdle]

I'm curious how other people approach pen and ink artwork.

When it comes to realist pen and ink art, I have a tendency to start a drawing in pencil, so that I can erase any mistakes, before going over it in pen. 

If I'm doing an abstract pen and ink drawing, I usually feel confident enough to use a pen right from the beginning and not use a pencil at all.

How about you?  Which do you prefer, and why?

[Mary-Ellen Arsenault]

I never use pencil, I want to make my efforts count and to have to go back and draw over is extra time. I sometimes use tracing paper and simply 'dot' around the key points. I mostly just use my ink and 'dot' the outline myself sometimes using a photo as a guide next to me. That's why I like pointillism. A line is a line, if it's out of scale, you can't draw another line adjacent to it. whereas a dot can have dots added around it and it never appears as though you had the framework scaled incorrectly. And sometime, I just draw free form.

[Erik Cheung]

I think it depends on envisioning also aside from being confident.

If an artist has a set expectation of what the final product has to be, (I need it to look this way!), pencil is ideal as a preliminary stage tool. But if an artist treats drawing as an expressive process believing that the eventual look does not matter, pen or marker would be suitable. After all, mistakes could be covered up by improvisation in the process anyway. 

On a side note, as a drawing instrument, graphite could never get as dark/black as ink...so it also depends on the effect desired.

Personally, I use pencil to start because I need to highlight the found images from the confusing lines in my approach. Ink would have the images set on stone without any possibility of change. Secondly, pencils leave me with options of white lines in my compositions. My recent work especially 'Night' and 'In the Public Eye' would be boring works without these white lines.