Anna – PPE Protest Poster

It seems that the best (only?) way I can process my emotions at the moment is through my art. My response to anxiety is to just keep drawing…. Anyway my husband is an NHS resuscitation practitioner (and has asthma) and so it should be no surprise that the lack of sufficient adequate personal protective equipment in the NHS to deal with the Covid-19 crisis is causing me some anxiety.

So my response today has been to turn a Sktchy inspiration photo I found of Anna in surgical scrubs into a protest poster. I made a number of protest poster style portraits a year or so ago so it was great to revisit this style for a day.

I drew this portrait on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app.

Christina

I’m feeling very anxious at the moment. Who isn’t, right? But I have a long history of mental illness and I’ve been trying really hard to ignore my rising anxiety these past few days but it’s refusing to be ignored. It’s waking me up,in the early hours and affecting me physiologically now. So I’m having to pay it some attention.

I’ve become very good at managing my day-to-day anxiety over the past few years but it’s obvious that those management techniques aren’t going to be enough in this new lockdown world, I have to adapt and find something more rigorous to help me through this. So I’ve started by simply admitting that, not only to myself but publicly, I think he way I know best, drawing. And I’m sharing this with #MadCovidDiaries, a project for people with mental health issues to share diaries of their experiences of the lockdown in the UK.

I drew this portrait on my iPad Pro using an Apple Pencil and the Procreate app.

Scout/WonderWoman

This is Scout Penelope, everyone’s favourite child model on Sktchy. I drew this portrait for this weeks Old School Sktchy “childhood “ challenge because in my house childhood was all about dressing up. I made so many costumes for my daughter, who was constantly challenging me to turn her into a mermaid, a dinosaur hunter or Nancy Drew. And she grew up to be her own version of Wonder Woman, as I’ve no doubt Scout will do too.

I drew the portrait in my Midori Cotton sketchbook with Copic markers, Prismacolor coloured pencils and Posca pens.

Lykke

I’ve drawn Lykke before and I’m sure I’ll draw her again – she’s one of maybe two dozen Sktchy muses who have everything I want in a model and who post new inspiration photos regularly. I love the contrast between the blue hair and the light and shadows in the inspiration photo and worked on reflecting that in my portrait.

I drew this portrait in my Midori Cotton sketchbook with Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Anna

Oh my, I struggled with the hair on Anna’s portrait . This was my second inked version of the portrait- the first one I experimented with a brush pen on thee hair using heavier inked lines but hated the result so much I drew the whole portrait all over again. But I still didn’t get the hair right. I don’t like it at all. But tomorrow is another day and I’ll draw another portrait.

I drew Anna in my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook with a Unipin fineliner, painted her with Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished the portrait with Prismacolor coloured pencils.