I’ve been teaching some iPad drawing in my Sketchbook Skool Spark class for the past few weeks and this is the portrait that I was working on in Procreate in those classes.
We started by learning how to adjust brushes and work with layers and clipping masks before moving on to drawing our portrait of Annett. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m amazed at how much progress the students have made!
I’ve been working on this portrait of Godfree from Sktchy slowly over several days, just layering up that hair bit by bit with my Bic. I could have continued with more layers but I was pretty happy with how it looked at this point so stopped here. Just love the meditative scratch scratch of vertical hatching with a Bic pen.
Svet doesn’t actually look like a Disney Princess in real life. I somehow turned her into one while drawing her portrait, mainly by making her eyes far too large. She does have beautiful big eyes, but not as ridiculously big as I’ve drawn them!
Everything in this portrait is slightly out of proportion and place ( I mean, what is going on with that left arm?), creating more of a caricature than a portrait, but I was so absorbed in my process that I didn’t see this until I was finished.
And this is where posting all my drawings keeps me honest! We all have good days and bad days when it comes to making art, but I always learn something from the process. Today I learned that I really should try not to get so caught up in the process when making digital art, that I should take more breaks, step back and look at what I’m doing, try to see how it looks from more of a distance. And that’s valuable learning. I also enjoyed the drawing process so it was a valuable experience too.
This portrait of Em is an example of one of those drawings/paintings that goes wrong from the beginning and I just had to resolve to keep going and learn what I could from the process.
I made a huge absentminded error once I’d finished my line drawing by forgetting I was working in my watercolour sketchbook and intended to use watercolour for my base colour. I started to add shadow with a Copic marker and realised my mistake as soon as I’d drawn a line – you can see that line moving down the forehead above the right eyebrow!
My initial instinct was to abandon the portrait at that point but then I decided I would carry on, enjoy the process and see what I could learn from trying to disguise my grey-pink Copic line. So I painted on with watercolour and then added coloured pencil. I don’t think you would see that line unless you know it’s there and look for it so I’m happy with what I did in the end.
But the entire portrait is not quite right. That error early on was a sign of my mind being not fully focused on my drawing, which is how it is right now.
I went back to my Copic comfort zone for today’s portrait of Anjelica from the Museum by Sktchy app.
This is Sandro from the Museum by Sktchy app drawn on an iPad Pro using the Procreate app.
You can’t beat a couple of hours of meditative ballpoint pen drawing for finding your zen on the weekend. This portrait of Aly was such a relaxing draw!
I had so much fun drawing this ski mask in Sketchbook Skool’s Drawing Faces class yesterday that I almost forgot to post it!
Shaking myself out of post-Christmas malaise and into drawing action with this portrait of Summer. I got a Repaper device for Christmas and drew this old school style with a pencil on my Repaper, then imported that sketch into Procreate to add line and colour to it digitally. I need to work more with the Repaper to figure out how to get the best of it but it definitely produces a more authentic pencil line than working directly on the iPad.
I was gifted some new watercolours for Christmas and this portrait of Star from Sktchy is their first outing. They performed beautifully and I’m looking forward to working with them a whole lot more.
drawing faces 