Reihan

This is a tiny little portrait of Reihan in a little pocket Hannehmühle Nostalgie sketchbook. When I first started drawing 5 or 6 years ago I thought that it was easier to draw small. Years of practice have taught meme how wrong I was.

Drawing small is much harder than drawing big. There’s no room for tiny details so you have to focus on big shapes, and small errors take up much space and so seem magnified. I messed up the nose here and it’s right in the middle of the portrait and taking up a massive amount of space, drawing all the attention. If you’re a beginner reading this take my advice, start with a large sketchbook, not a small one!

Aldebarán

I gave my Bics a workout for this portrait of the amazing Aldebarán from Sktchy. This is much lighter than the very dark inspiration image, but it think it would have looked overworked if I had tried to go much darker and I just liked how it looked at this point.

Can I make a confession here? Although this was inspired by a fantastic photo sometimes I’m drawn to particular muses on Sktchy as much by their names as by how great their photo collection is. I’d never even heard the name Aldebarán before, but I definitely wanted to add it to my portrait collection 🤣

Madina

This is Madina from Sktchy drawn with Bic 4 colour ballpoint pens.

Rachael

This is my very wonky portrait of Rachael from Sktchy drawn in ballpoint pen in a Life Noble Note Plain sketchbook.

Lowkeyvibe

My week-long virtual conference has finished so I have time for drawing again and I’ve started off today with a portrait of Lowkeyvibe from Sktchy. I drew this portrait on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app and the ballpointy brush by Georg.

Salome

This is Salome from Sktchy drawn with Bic 4-colour ballpoint pens. I don’t often draw full body portraits but occasionally an image will catch my attention and I want to draw it. In this case it was the great posture – it was so interesting and I love drawing foreshortening so I wanted to try to capture it.

Berenice

This is Berenice from Sktchy. I love that I’m so much more confident and comfortable drawing with ballpoint pens since my whole month of drawing with them for Inktober,

Vampire Sarp

Hooray! I made it all the way through Inktober without missing a day! This is Sarp from Sktchy for day 31 which is, of course, Halloween. I’ve had a lot of fun using my Bic pens all month but I’m looking forward to using all my other art materials again from tomorrow!

Taha

This is Taha from Sktchy for day 30 of Inktober. I had planned to work this portrait in colour but I always start with a first layer in blue, establishing where the shadows are, and when I reached this point in the portrait I liked it so much that I decided to stop here.

Katie

I’m getting very frustrated by constantly losing likenesses in these ballpoint pen drawings but it’s all practice. This is Katie from Sktchy but it doesn’t look like her!