Ink is a gel, sol, or solution that contains at least one colorant, such as a dye or pigment, and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, reed pen, or quill. Thicker inks, in paste form, are used extensively in letterpress and lithographic printing.
Bottles of ink from Germany
Writing ink and a quill
Ink drawing of Ganesha under an umbrella (early 19th century). Ink, called masi, an admixture of several chemical components, has been used in India since at least the 4th century BC. The practice of writing with ink and a sharp pointed needle was common in early South India. Several Jain sutras in India were compiled in ink.
Oak galls and iron(II) sulfate
Drawing is a visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface. The instrument might be pencils, crayons, pens with inks, brushes with paints, or combinations of these, and in more modern times, computer styluses with graphics tablets.
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice
Madame Palmyre with Her Dog, 1897. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Galileo Galilei, Phases of the Moon, 1609 or 1610, brown ink and wash on paper. 208 × 142 mm. National Central Library (Florence), Gal. 48, fol. 28r
Antoine Watteau, trois crayons technique
