Document authoring that involves illustrating pen input in an authoring environment is herein improved to provide patterns with higher perceptibility for representing the pen input in a graphical user interface. Colors and patterns are provided as effects that are applied to the illustrated pen input so that multiple textures or colors may be applied to the illustrated pen input without requiring the user to manually signal a switch in texture or colors or using multiple objects to represent the pen input. In various aspects, the patterns used in effects are created with a greater perceptibility, so that users will more readily recognize the effect, with various layers of a contrast basis image imparting a perceptible pattern and a background color image imparting colors for an enhanced ink effect definition.