It’s taken me more than a week to finish this portrait. I got stuck on the hair for some reason and now it feels either over or under done. I suppose I mean that I think I should have either left it alone sooner or I think I need to work on it more, but I don’t have the time or motivation so I’m leaving it here and moving on.
The face is the Alina from Museum by Sktchy, who I’ve drawn before, and I used my usual Bic 4 colour ballpoint pens.
This is India from the Museum by Sktchy app drawn and painted in a Fabriano Venezia sketchbook with a Unipin fineliner, watercolours and coloured pencils.
A quick ballpoint pen sketch of Nana from the Museum by Sktchy app today.
This is Rime from the Museum by Sktchy app. I drew her portrait with a fineliner, Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils. This is very much my comfort zone. I always feel most at home when drawing with Copics and in the past year or so I’ve added coloured pencils to this working method because I can add some softness and extra detail (both highlights and shadows) to the marker drawing with them.
I picked up a new 4-colour ballpoint pen from the Japan Centre in London when I was in the city a couple of weeks ago for a hospital appointment. I obviously had to try it out on a portrait, so I drew Alexander from the Museum by Sktchy app.
The pen is a Tombow and has the usual 4 colours – black, blue, red and green. It has a lovely line – its lighter in tone and thinner than a Bic so it’s easier to create a gentle build up of colour. Having said that, the ink does blob much more than Bics do, so I had to clean the nib much more than I have to when using Bics and I still found blobs crept into my sketch, as you can see. So there’s not much to choose between the two brands for me – though Bics would still be my go to because of the wider range of colours.
I am still drawing but slowly, and also working on commissions, which necessarily take priority over my Sktchy draws. But it was definitely fun to take some time out to draw Taelor from the Museum by Sktchy app on my iPad Pro,
A very quick draw of Jenny from the Museum by Sktchy app with my Bic 4 colour pens.
Today is International Womens Day and the best way I know to honour it is with my drawings of women. I’ve drawn thousands of women from the Museum by Sktchy app over the years since I started drawing portraits – these are just a few of them. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to them all and especially to Jordan Melnick, the creator of the app, and his team at Sktchy.
I love making digital drawings that look as much like drawing in a sketchbook with analog materials as possible. Georg Graf Von Westphalen’s ballpointy brush is the best ballpoint pen brush I’ve come across for Procreate. This portrait of Lake from the Museum by Sktchy app was drawn with the ballpointy brush using a colour palette I created from my favourite Bic 4-colour ballpoints. I love how it turned out, especially the hair.
You can find out more about Georg’s Procreate brushes here
There’s no question that drawing lines with a ballpoint pen is the most therapeutic kind of drawing for me. It’s just so simple and straightforward and I’m simply building up the image layer by layer with each colour. I’m still on sick leave at the moment and right now this is the kind of drawing that I find the most soothing.
The model is Kate from the Museum by Sktchy app and I used Bic 4 colour ballpoint pens in a Life Noble Note Plain Notebook.
drawing faces 