I’m starting 2020 with a little watercolour of Tina’s son. I don’t know his name but I loved the photo of him she posted on Sktchy. I love to try to capture different expressions in my portraits and this one is just great! It’s all in the eyes and the eyebrows.
I drew the portrait in my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook with a Micron .01 fineliner, painted with Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished it off with Prismacolor coloured pencils.
This is Olivia, drawn on my iPad Pro in Procreate using Liz Kohler’s great digital watercolour brushes. If you’re interested in my method I’ve uploaded a Procreate timelapse to my YouTube channel here.
I’m still practicing with those ballpoint pens when I get the chance. I drew Jezori’s portrait in my tiny Moleskine sketchbook with a 4-colour Bic ballpoint.
This is Sktchy muse Scott and this is the kind of Sktchy inspiration photo that is irresistible for me. I love these kind of ‘altered perspective through glasses’ photos and that pipe is fantastic. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to draw the pipe initially but I figured if I messed it up I could crop it out and just include the pipe stem in my portrait (these kinds of cheats are essential to my drawing practice 😂) but in the end I was happy enough with how it turned out. It’s a little large but I wasn’t going to worry too much about that.
I drew Scott in my A4 Moleskine sketchbook with Copic markers and a white gel pen.
Santa brought me a set of Boko Undo E-Sumi Japanesque watercolours in “Almost Black” shades. This was my first use of them, trialling the purplish black for this portrait of Sktchy muse Tink. It was also only the second page of my new watercolour Moleskine sketchbook, so I was trying out new paint in a new sketchbook, so I’m pretty happy with how the portrait turned out, all things considered. I like both the paint and the sketchbook.
This is a portrait of Sktchy muse Ima and is the first page of my new Moleskine watercolour sketchbook. Lots of people talk about being nervous of drawing on the first page of a new sketchbook. I used to feel that way but once I started daily drawing I lost all first page nerves. The first page is no different to any other page – if anything, I’m excited to start a new sketchbook. That’s not so much about the drawing but about stickering the covers. I collect stickers purely for putting on the covers of my sketchbooks so I love to start new sketchbooks so I can put new stickers on them.
I painted Ima with Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished the portrait with Prismacolor coloured pencils.
This is Bec, one of my oldest online drawing buddies. We’ve never met in person because I live in the UK and Bec lives in Australia, but we see each other most days on Instagram, Facebook and/or Sktchy and often chat about drawing, art communities and family. I’ve aged Bec a little in this portrait- she’s definitely younger than she looks here! But I know she’ll forgive me because she knows this is the kind of thing that sometimes happens when you’re drawing.
I drew Bec’s portrait in my A4 Moleskine sketchbook with Copic markers, coloured pencils and metallic gel pens.
Today’s portrait is of Jenny, and all I could think of as I was drawing this portrait was the fairytale The Snow Queen. All the time I’m drawing I’m having a conversation with my subject and as I was drawing this I was most definitely talking to the Snow Queen, more than with Jenny 🙂
I drew Jenny on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app.
I’ve been practicing with ballpoint pens again. I drew this portrait of Jana D in my tiny pocket Moleskine using two Hema 6-colour ballpoint pens and a Paperchase 8-colour ballpoint pen. The pens aren’t great quality- they ‘re quite leaky and they also dry up frequently (hence all the scribbles on the opposite page to get them going again) but they have nice fine nibs which are great for such a tiny Moleskine.
This is Ahmet, drawn in my A4 Moleskine sketchbook with Copic markers and coloured pencils.
