Tag: hatching

Rosi

I started drawing and painting Rosi in my Drawing Faces class for Sketchbook Skool and finished it after the class. This was one of those portraits where I think I had a likeness at the drawing stage, then I lost it, got it back at various points, lost it completely and at this finished stage have a sense of her but definitely not a complete likeness. I think the bottom half of the face is not bad but I’ve lost something around the eyes, hair and top of the face.

Of course drawing in class isa very different to drawing for myself. I have to draw flat so my document camera captures the process well for everyone viewing online. I have to work faster than I would normally (though that’s not necessarily a bad thing). And I use a thicker pen so that my lines are more visible for viewers – and I do find that makes a big difference. Perhaps I’ll start using a fountain pen again so I can have more line variability if I’m going to have a thicker line?

Denyce

I’m struggling to draw in the hot weather in the UK. The heat affects my meds and makes me very tired and I think that this affected my drawing subliminally – Denyce looks so tired in this portrait and she really doesn’t look tired in the inspiration photo. Her hair has also ended up frizzy from the humidity – and it’s not like that in the inspiration image either. I didn’t really notice this when I was drawing but can see it so clearly now.

So my challenge for the next couple of weeks is to see if I can manage to draw portraits without making people look hot, sweaty and tired. I’m also wondering if this something that happens to other people or just me…

Bully

I love drawing dogs almost as much as I love drawing humans and this was an especially cute dog to draw. This is Danyelle’s bull terrier, posted on the Museum by Sktchy app., drawn on my iPad Pro using the Procreate app.

Erika

We practiced drawing noses in my Drawing Faces class for Sketchbook Skool’s Spark programme this week. I love drawing noses and hate drawing mouths (because I find them so difficult to get right) so drawing Erika’s nose and mouth here was both a joy and a struggle! We focused on finding the roundness in these features to help us draw them well and it was a lot of fun.

I usually play around with the drawings a little after class, adding finishing touches when I have more time. But this week I have builders putting in new windows and I had to pack all my art materials away straight after my class, so I had to finish my drawing entirely in Procreate. So all the finishing touches are added with digital Copic and coloured pencil brushes.

208 faces

Every time I finish drawing a face from the Museum by Sktchy app I upload the portrait into a 13 square grid in the collage app Pic Stitch. When that grid is full I upload it into a 16 square grid. I have a collection of these grids now recording all my portraits over the years since I joined Sktchy. This is my latest grid, finished this week, which contains 208 portraits completed over the past year.

Thank you so much to all 208 muses, without whom I would have no inspiration, and to everyone at Sktchy who keeps the app running so efficiently. 🙏❤️

Angie

This is Angie from the Museum by Sktchy app. I’m absolutely in love with the True Grit Chromagraph brushes I bought recently – True Grit brushes aren’t the cheapest Procreate brushes on the market but they’re worth every penny. They’re the best quality of any I’ve tried and I get excited every time they bring out a new set!

If you’re interested in having a look at their brushes you can check them out here – and this post isn’t sponsored by them in any way, I just love their brushes.

Murphy

I have two things to tell you about this portrait. The first is that I hate drawing someone if I don’t know their name. As you will know if you’re a regular follower of this blog, most of my photo inspiration comes from the Museum by Sktchy app. Most of the images posted on there to be drawn are selfies but people do also post images of family members or friends, and often theses images don’t have names. If I can’t name the person I won’t generally draw them. This guy wasn’t named but I really wanted to draw him – it’s such a great inspiration photo – and the last name of the person who posted the photo is Murphy so I decided to steal her last name and use it for his name. Sometimes, if there’s an image I really want to use, I can create a workaround to one of my own rules 😂

The second thing I want to say is that this is the second portrait I’ve drawn of Murphy this week. I drew the first one in my sketchbook and painted it in watercolour and it is truly, embarrassingly awful. The worst portrait I’ve drawn in years. I did think about working on it in Procreate to try to improve it but once I’d uploaded it and had a look I decided that it wasn’t worth rescuing and I should start again. So I did. And this is an infinitely better portrait. Sometimes it’s better to simply start over.

Neshama

This is Neshama from the Museum by Sktchy app. I decided to stop drawing her T this point because I really like the expression I’ve caught on her face and I have a tendency to overwork ballpoint pen drawings. I didn’t want to overwork this one.

Evgenia

I drew most of this portrait of Evgenia in my class for this week’s Sketchbook Skool Spark programme. I didn’t have time to work on the hair during the class so I did that later and just focused on the face initially. I drew the portrait in my sketchbook and cleaned it up digitally on my iPad using the Procreate app.

Anna

This is Anna from the Museum by Sktchy app. I’m teaching a pop-up class on alcohol markers for the Spark programme at Sketchbook Skool later this afternoon and I want to talk about a range of markers, not just Copics, so I’ve been breaking out some of the other markers I’ve got in my supplies that I haven’t used for a while. So for Anna’s portrait I used the Spectrum Classique fair skin pack for all the skin tones. They did a nice job, though they’re a little darker than I would usually use for fair skin.

I also did an interview recently with Danny Gregory, the founder of Sketchbook Skool, about my sketchbook practice. He posted this on the Sketchbook Skool YouTube channel last Friday and if you’d like to take a look you can watch it at https://youtu.be/29P_Cqdp4rQ