Brit

I have two real Achilles heels (or areas I always struggle with) when it comes to drawing faces. One is drawing mouths, which I always draw too big initially, and the other is hair. It took me such a long time to gain any confidence in drawing hair but mostly these days I can manage it OK, except when I’m making a portrait with watercolour.

I still don’t know quite what to do with it or how to get it looking right. This portrait is a case in point. My anxiety comes through even at the initial drawing stage – I made a mess of the drawing here, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have done had this been the early drawing for a marker portrait. When it came to painting it again I didn’t really have a plan or a clear idea of what to do so I disguised the mess I created with some coloured pencil.

I know I’ll get there. I’ll develop the confidence eventually to draw and paint hair in watercolour confidently and well because I’ve been here before with marker drawing. In the meantime I just have to keep going. And to apologise to Brit, who has beautiful hair.

This was drawn in a Laloran sketchbook with a Unipin fineliner, painted with Zecchi watercolours and finished with coloured pencils.

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hareinthemoon

I love drawing things. These days I am rarely found without a pen, pencil or stylus in my hands. In my working life I spend a lot of time in meetings and classrooms, reading papers and strategies, so my home life provides a creative antidote to all that! I also have chronic pain, lots of it. I have scoliosis, fibromyalgia and CRPS, so my life is a balancing act, trying to balance work, which make me feel part of the real world, with pain, which is ever present, and art, which soothes my pain.

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