Author: 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.

Zel

I do love working with ballpoint pens these days. This portrait of Zel from Sktchy was drawn with a range of Bic 4-colour ballpoints in a Life Noble Note Plain notebook.

Laura

It’s been a tough week and hatch, hatch, hatching away has been one of the things that has been helping me keeping on keeping on, one day at a time. This portrait of Laura has taken me a couple of days, mostly in the evenings. I love drawing shadows and the Sktchy inspiration photo has such beautiful shadows that I love building up with a range of colours.

I drew this portrait on my iPad Pro using the Procreate app and the ballpointy brush.

Ehsan

Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils in a Midori cotton sketchbook.

Sydney

This is Sydney from Sktchy. I’m really happy with this portrait. I think i did a good job of combining watercolour and coloured pencils. I can see mistakes, of course, but I’m enjoying the direction my work is going at the moment.

I drew Sydney in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook with a Unipin grey brush fineliner, painted her with Sennelier watercolours and finished the portrait off with Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Zoey

Totally lost the likeness with this portrait of Zoey from Sktchy but I’m enjoying pushing my practice with coloured pencils and learning as I go. They really aren’t in my comfort zone and I’m finding that everything I learn working on these portraits is proving really useful in my mixed media work.

I drew this in a Hannehmühle Nostalgie sketchbook with Polychromos coloured pencils.

Sherry

This is Sherry from Sktchy. I spent a couple of hours just playing around with a few different pencil brushes in Procreate instead of just using my go-to brushes. It was fun and I like that the portrait looks different from my usual style yet still distinctively mine.

Ali

This is Ali from Sktchy drawn with Bic 4-way multicolour ballpoint pens in a Life Noble Note Plain.

Emitis

I’m struggling with my mental health again but now I find that, instead of not drawing at all, I’m drawing often. I need to keep my hands moving so when I’m not working my fingers are constantly hatching away, or crocheting or clicking on my Nintendo Switch.

I’m also finding that it helps to have several portraits on the go at any one time, so I can switch between them. With portraits built up through hatching I’m not always sure when they’re finished so it helps to step away from them, move on to another one, and then come back to them to the next day and take another look. That little break allows me to look at them afresh and I can see where they need more work – as they almost always do.

The hatching on this portrait of Emitis from Sktchy helped me through 2 evenings when I was struggling to focus on the television or anything at all. I drew it on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app and the ballpointy brush by Georg.

Catherine

This is drawn from an inspiration photo on Sktchy of Catherine posing as Frida Kahlo. Since Frida is one of my favourite artists and inspirations it should be no surprise that the photo found its way to the top of my Sktchy queue as soon as I saw it. I used Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils to draw it in my Midori cotton sketchbook.

Luca

Experimenting a little bit today with coloured pencil over watercolour for today’s portrait or Luca.