Lana was wearing fake elf ears in the Sktchy inspiration photo for this portrait. Making them seem real was so much fun. And lthough they felt very unnatural to me at first I’m now beginning to enjoy adding these patterned backgrounds, although I still forget to include them until after I’ve done the portrait.
I drew this portrait in an A4 Moleskine Sketchbook with a Copic multiliner and Copic markers.
This is my fast fun response to this week’s Old School Sktchy challenge word “foreshortening”. I couldn’t resist that huge foot at the bottom of Taylor’s photo. I drew it on my iPad Pro using the Procreate app and my favourite Blackwing Pencil brush and then added the pink and white with a watercolour brush.
Its a very hot bank holiday weekend here. Time for a meditative coloured pencil drawing of Sktchy muse Mahatma. Hope the weather is good wherever you are and you get some time to relax today and have an enjoyable Sunday.
Drawn in a Hannehmühle Nostalgie sketchbook with a variety of coloured pencils.
Emmy was so much fun to paint. Inspired by Charlotte Hamilton’s Patterned Portrait course on Sktchy I created a background pattern similar to the one on Emmy’s short. It’s a bit wonky and uneven but I still like it!
I drew this in my Laloran sketchbook with a Copic multiliner, painted it with Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished it off with Prismacolor coloured pencils.
This week Sktchy are having a Calm Portrait Party and this portrait of Nelly is my entry for that challenge. The inspiration photo is such a beautiful one (I drew a portrait from a similar photo of Nelly’s a year or so ago and that remains one of my favourite portraits) and I so enjoyed drawing from it. As you can see I was experimenting again with coloured pencils- but on my iPad Pro again.
Yes this was drawn on an iPad Pro, not in a sketchbook. I created a coloured and textured paper background so that I could use lighter colours and they would show up. Once I started drawing I decided to use a lighter touch with my hatching on the skin especially and I think this was a good decision. I drew this with the Procreate app using Georg’s Blackwing Pencil brush (my favourite drawing brush).
This week’s Old School Sktchy WAX challenge theme is “fish”. Never one to take the conventional approach, I ignored Sktchy’s many photos of people with fish and instead chose to draw those beautiful image of a puffin with a mouthful of fish, posted by Africa Shepherd. I’ve never drawn a puffin before so I loved learning about the shape and colours of a puffin’s beak and eye as I drew it. Everything’s interesting when you draw it (I stole that line from Sketchbook Skool).
I drew my puffin in an A4 Moleskine sketchbook with Copic markers, a white Posca pen, Crayola Shimmers metallic coloured pencils and Prismacolor coloured pencils.
This is a really problematic portrait of Sktchy muse Walton. It’s a very poor likeness and a poor portrait. I got the eyes wrong and I ended up focusing too much on the details and forgetting to take a step back and look at the overall image. This is all too easy to do the iPad. So a poor portrait but a useful lesson for me to stop and check the whole portrait regularly while drawing.
This was drawn on a 2nd generation iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app.
A couple of weeks ago I promised another Sketchbook Skool student to make a video showing how I paint my watercolour skin tones. So I filmed myself while painting today’s Sktchy face Blud. You can watch the video on my YouTube channel here. I’ll warn you, it’s 50 minutes long (and I only recorded painting the skin) because there’s several layers of glazing. But if you do watch it I hope you find it helpful.
I drew the portrait with a Copic multiliner and painted it with Zecchi Toscana watercolours, Horadam Schminke pearlescent watercolours and Jackson’s Art watercolours in a Laloran sketchbook.
This portrait of Sktchy muse Lauren was drawn in an A4 Moleskine sketchbook with Unipin fineliners and Copic markers.
As well as having a great artist community, Sktchy also offers some great portrait courses. At the moment I’m taking a course with artist Charlotte Hamilton on drawing patterned portraits. This portrait of Tarana was inspired by this course and this week’s Sktchy Patterned Portrait Party.
It was drawn in a Hannehmühle Nostalgie Sketchbook with coloured pencils (from a variety of makers).
The good news is that, although you need an IOS device to have Sktchy app, you don’t need one to take a Sktchy course because they run on the Mighty Networks platform which is available via an app and a website. If you’re interested in finding out more about Sktchy’s portrait courses you can find out more by visiting the Sktchy shop at https://shop.sktchy.com.
drawing faces 