This is a portrait of Nob from Sktchy. The portrait was an experiment to see if the coloured pencil chiaroscuro method I learned last week would work with ballpoint pens. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
Nob
Tag: hatching
Amelie
This is another page from my sketchbook for Brooklyn Art Library’s “The Sketchbook Project 2021”. I chose the theme “no erasing” because I wanted to use ballpoint pens throughout the sketchbook and the title of my book is “Screen Queens”. This queen is Amelie, played by Audrey Tautou.
Gen
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.
Johanna
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.
Emma
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?
Zoë Washburne
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.
Beata
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.
Jeeb
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!
Ser Brienne of Tarth
This year I am participating in Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project for the fourth time. I missed a year last year but signed up again this year in November but have only just received my sketchbook – the first one the library sent out to me went missing in the pandemic post so they dispatched a replacement in January which finally arrived on Friday.
I’ve decided that my sketchbook this year will be a celebration of some of my favourite female characters on screen and I’m going to draw them all in ballpoint pen to fit with the Sketchbook Project 2021 theme of “No Erasing”. And who better to fill the first page of my sketchbook than Ser Brienne of Tarth?
Appollonia
I totally lost the likeness in this ballpoint pen drawing of Appollonia from Sktchy yet it’s one of my favourite drawings ever. Why? Because I think there’s a really comic book quality to it and it’s the first time I’ve seen that in one of my own drawings. I’m a huge consumer of graphic novels so perhaps it was inevitable that something of what I was seeing in those books would eventually show up in my work but I never really expected it to. And I’m so excited now I’ve seen it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it again but I do hope so.
drawing faces 