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.

Bailey

I drew this portrait of Bailey on my iPad Pro using the Procreate app and Lisa Bardot’s pencil box brushes.

Hope

With this portrait of Hope I was trying here to see if I could use a ballpoint pen brush in Procreate to create a portrait similar to the ones I’ve been drawing in my Moleskine – but I really struggled. I was using a good brush I think but I couldn’t get my pressure/sensitivity right – and I ended up losing the likeness. And it took FOREVER! So I think I might stick to the analogue tools in future.

Loke

I’ve made a big decision about my portrait drawing over the weekend. I feel like I’ve hit a kind of plateau and perhaps even gone backwards, because I’m struggling to find enough time to really experiment in the way I need to in order to push my work forward. So I’ve decided that after three and a half years of more or less daily portrait drawing I’m not going to push myself to post a portrait every day any more. I’m going to continue to draw portraits as often as I can and will probably be working on a portrait most days, but I may work on a single portrait over several days to give me the time to experiment more and to allow me the time to work on other projects. So keep visiting because I’ll be posting, just perhaps not every day.

I drew Loke’s portrait with a variety of ballpoint pens in a Moleskine sketchbook.

Iliriana

I’m beginning to feel comfortable drawing with coloured pencils. I feel like I’ve found a process that suits me now and preserves my style so that the portraits I produce are still recognisably mine. I probably still need to build enough confidence with this style to add more layers of colour but I do at least feel like I’m going in the right direction now.

I drew Iliriana’s portrait in my Hannehmühle Nostalgie sketchbook with Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Laura

Still working on my ballpoint pen skills after that great Sktchy Art School course on Portraits in Pen. I think I’m improving slowly, but it is a very slow improvement. I still haven’t got the lightness of touch I’d like to achieve but I’ll keep at it and hopefully get there eventually.

I drew this in an A5 Moleskine with a variety of ballpoint pens.

Abby

This was such a hard draw. It’s so hard to draw a face when the usual markers, features and shadows aren’t clearly identifiable but are hidden by lots of face paint and make up. I struggle to get any sense of dimension and this face looks horribly flat. But it’s the Day of the Dead and I just had to draw a sugar skull portrait!

I drew this in my Moleskine sketchbook with Copic markers.

Cin

Sktchy is having a Halloween portrait party. I’m a huge fan of The Walking Dead and so when I saw a photo of this zombie amongst Cin’s inspiration photos on Sktchy it was irresistible. And it was huge fun to paint.

I used my Zecchi Toscana watercolours to paint it in my Laloran sketchbook and then finished it off with my Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Jeandor

This is what I think of as a classic comfort zone portrait for me. A great face with wonderful eyes, minimal hair and an interesting pose. It’s also the kind of portrait that begs to be drawn with Copic markers – good yellow, peach and lilac tones in the skin that suit my kind of Copic layering. Fun to draw.

I drew Jeandor in my A4 Moleskine sketchbook with Copic markers.

Claudio

Sometimes I make a portrait that I’m really happy with. This is one of those times. I love this portrait of Claudio. I feel like I got just the right combination of light and dark in the watercolour and then just the right amount of pencil marks to enhance it and not overwork it. That doesn’t happy often but when it does it’s good.

I painted this in my Laloran sketchbook with Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished it with Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Brooke

This is Brooke, drawn in my A4 Moleskine sketchbook with Copic markers and coloured pencils.