We have just moved house, and my new home has a small wood-fired heater. It's a wonderful thing, gathering twigs and old pinecones from beneath our own trees for kindling. My fire-making skills are a bit dodgy, and yesterday morning I woke to find the log I'd left burning had turned into charcoal! So of course I had to test out its drawing properties! It turned out to be way too hard for drawing on paper, but it worked brilliantly on the courtyard bricks. My daughter decided to try to make paint, and discovered that soaking the charcoal in water allowed it to create a thick, dense coating. We spent a wonderful hour decorating the bricks, firstly with zig-zag paving patterns, then they evolved into sunbursts and curves, circles and squiggles punctuated with stripes and dots. They began confined within the each pair of bricks then gradually expanded across them. And what a mess we made! Hands covered in black! Fantastic!

I haven't had so much fun drawing in ages. I found myself wondering about my stone-age ancestors and whether those moms might have spontaneously made marks with their children. Did one of them draw a rayed sun like we had? It reminded me of how important it is to get back to the basics of drawing. It was the sort of drawing I used to do a lot of - instinctive, hands-on, messy and physical. None of this tidy A4 sketching for the scanner. How did you 'used to' draw? Have you left it behind for the drawing you 'need' to do?

Sometimes I'm being tentative about drawing - especially when I'm 'out of practice' or tacking a difficult subject. With pencil it's so easy to make tentative, uncertain marks, or to constantly erase and try again. Working with pen and ink forces you to be decisive. There's no 'maybe' with pen, no 'softly does it'. It's on or off. Yes or no. You have to oberve, visualise your marks and then commit to them. It might seem counter-intuitive to use such an unforgiving medium when you aren't feeling confident, but I hope you'll consider trying it. If you make a 'mistake', just go with it - don't try to second-guess. Pretend you're Matisse or Picasso. You're allowed to make interesting lines that are doing their own thing. You aren't a human photocopier. Ink pen drawing forces you to stop dithering and dive in feet first, and the results are often surprisingly good.

Try a few different approaches. Try pure contour drawing with interesting and elegant line. Try hatching and stippling to give the impression of tonal value, or add an ink or watercolor wash. Its important to start off with the right equipment - a fountain pen generally won't do the job so choose the right drawing pen. If you're using a dip-pen, you'll need to select and maintain your pen nibs.

I like to draw with fiber tip archival pens - Pigma Micron are nice, as are Copic Multiliners, and there's a dozen other reputable brands around. Look for ones with archival pigment ink if you want your work to have longevity. They don't have the interesting and varied line of a dip pen, but they are clean and convenient. The ones I use the most are probably the Artline brand - they're available at our local newsagent, so I always have a few to hand so that I don't end up doodling in blue ballpoint or my daughter's glitter pink gel pen.