I’m trying to be a lot quicker and looser in my drawing in the hoping of finding some motivation, inspiration, flow. I’m not sure if it’s working but I do like the look of this portrait of Melek so I’ll keep pushing in this direction and see what happens.
I drew this on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app.
Keeping on keeping on, hoping that I’ll find my flow again sooner rather than later. In the meantime this is Cece from Sktchy painted with watercolour and finished with Prismacolor coloured pencils.
I’m really struggling with my drawing at the moment so with this portrait I wasn’t aiming for anything in particular, just at getting something down on my iPad that felt OK to me. So I left this as soon as I thought I’d captured something rather than keep messing with it and potentially spoiling or overworking that. I would usually work for a lot longer refining the skin tones and adding details so this portrait of Keiunna from Sktchy feels quite raw but I like it.
Still working through this mini crisis of confidence, which is showing up in my lines at the moment I think. But I know that if I persevere sooner or later I’ll find my way through. In the meantime you can enjoy (or not) seeing how it shows up in my work 😂. This is Gen from Sktchy drawn in Bic ballpoint pen.
Every so often we all have crises of confidence. I’m having one at the moment. I’m wondering if that’s because I’m not drawing as often as usual. I do know that I don’t want to post many of my portraits. I’m not sure it’s about the drawing to be honest, I think it’s more about a crisis of confidence more generally.
What I do know is that only way to get around it is to get through it bu keeping on drawing and posting. So here is today’s portrait of Andrea from Sktchy, drawn on my iPad Pro.
This is Johanna from Sktchy. She has an incredible face to draw, so full of interest and character and those glasses are a perfect framing device for portrait drawing. I always start my drawing with eyes unless the subject is wearing glasses, in which case I start with the glasses and work out from there.
I drew Johanna with a Unipin dark grey brush pen, painted her with Daniel Smith watercolour and finished up with Prismacolor coloured pencils, all in a Fabriano Venezia sketchbook.
This is Emma from Sktchy painted with Daniel Smith watercolours and finished with watercolour pencils. I haven’t quite got the angle right – in the inspiration photo her face is upturned and I haven’t quite captured that here which is why her eyes look too far up in her head. I think they’re positioned correctly but I haven’t got the tilt of the neck and chin right so it looks weird. I also totally lost her likeness but you wouldn’t know that if I didn’t tell you because you don’t know what she looks like, right?
My second portrait for my “Screen Queens” sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project 2021 is Zoë Washburne from the cult TV show Firefly and the movie Serenity, played by the very awesome Gina Torres. Firefly is definitely in my top 10 favourite TV shows ever and Zoë is a totally badass.
This is another portrait from the Sktchy portrait course “Drawing Anatomy with Tiffany”. This is Beata and the focus was meant to be on her ear, though I had the most fun with her nose and eye as usual. I used Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils.
This has been a long slow draw over a few days but I got there in the end. It’s a portrait of Jeeb from Sktchy for the “mouth” class of my Sktchy portrait anatomy class. I decided to use ballpoint pen for the portrait because I find mouths so hard to draw with ballpoints. Mouths are definitely my Achilles heel anyway ; they are unquestionably the facial feature I find the hardest to get right and I really struggle to get that roundness with ballpoint pens. Anyway I’m reasonably happy with how it turned out and I managed to draw teeth and they look OK!
drawing faces 