Tag: hatching

I spent a lot of time on this portrait of Monika but eventually ran out of steam and really didn’t want to work on it any more. This is my problem with both ballpoint pen and coloured pencil drawings – they take a lot of work to finish well. Sometimes they look good at a half done stage but you really have judge well when to stop. I worked on this one too long, past that stage so it really needs a lot more work to look much more finished to look good again. But that is a useful lesson for me in itself.

I drew this in an Emilio Braga notebook with Bic 4-way multicolour ballpoint pens.

I drew Sassa in my small Emilio Braga notebook with Bic ballpoint pens. It’s always a little strange seeing a scan of a small portrait write larger on my iPad or laptop screen – my pen strokes look so much larger and every error is magnified. Sassa’s ear, which isn’t right in my small drawing, is so much more obviously wrong here. But I remind myself that it doesn’t really matter – sharing is simply what keeps me accountable, what makes me keep drawing. It’s the process that really matters, not the outcome.

This is just the fourth drawing in my Emilio Braga notebook and already the notebook is starting to come apart at the seams. I love the paper – it’s a great surface for drawing on with ballpoints. But the notebooks are just that, notebooks designed for writing in, not drawing in. They are clearly not designed for the fairly heavy handling of my ballpoint pen drawing. It seems to be way that I keep turning the book when I’m hatching that is pulling on the stitching. I’m quite frustrated anyway that it doesn’t seem to be up to the job and I might have to abandon it.

Such a great name and such a great face – when I saw his photo on Sktchy Noppadol was an irresistible draw. Some I can browse Sktchy for hour’s trying to find a face I want to draw and other times one jumps right out and grabs me immediately and Noppadol’s was the grabbing kind – and I’m glad it’s a smiley face. It’s been a while since I’ve drawn a great smile so I’m guessing it’s a good sign that I wanted to draw one today.

I drew this in my Emilio Braga notebook with Bic Cristal and Bic 4-way multicolour pens.