
We drew Wendy, one of my favourite Sktchy muses, with ballpoint pens in my Spark Drawing Faces class yesterday .

We drew Wendy, one of my favourite Sktchy muses, with ballpoint pens in my Spark Drawing Faces class yesterday .

I started drawing portraits with ballpoint pens in 2020 and I’ve drawn one every few weeks since then. Today I finished my first sketchbook of these drawings almost exactly three years after I started it with this portrait of Jodi from the Museum by Sktchy app. It’s a wonderful sketchbook because I can see how much progress I’ve made over these three years I developing both my skills and my style.
If you’d like to see a flip through of my completed sketchbook you can view it on YouTube here.

I bought some new 4 colour ballpoint pens by Life & Pieces; one is the usual blue/red/black/green but the other two have different colours to my usual Bics. I used all three for this portrait of Jeff from the Museum by Ktchy app.
They’re a bit blobby as you can probably tell – far more blobs of ink on this drawing than the Bics ever give me. They’re also more like gel pens, it’s not easy to work light strokes with them. But it was still fun to switch it up & use something different and I love the overall colour effect I got from them.

Today’s face is a quick ballpoint pen portrait of Bia using Bic 4-colour pens.

Lots of meditative hatching for this portrait of Diey.
Would you like to draw faces with me? I’m an instructor with Sketchbook Skool’s Spark program, which offers live art classes online every single day, plus studio time, a huge library of recorded classes and an online Skoolyard where you can meet likeminded folks from all around the world who are making and sharing art daily. If this sound like something you’d like to try they have a sale on until May 2 and I have an affiliate link which will give you an extra 15% off the sale price.
To find out more about the Spark program here. If you’d like to enrol for Spark with an extra 15% off the sale price click here.

My favourite drawing to do to relax is ballpoint pen drawing. There’s nothing as calming and meditative as hatching in a single direction with my Bics. This portrait of Jacob was the perfect exercise for a chilled Bank Holiday weekend.

I’ve been working on this portrait of Godfree from Sktchy slowly over several days, just layering up that hair bit by bit with my Bic. I could have continued with more layers but I was pretty happy with how it looked at this point so stopped here. Just love the meditative scratch scratch of vertical hatching with a Bic pen.

Winding down for the holidays with some ballpoint pen drawing. This is Adam from the Museum by Sktchy app drawn with Bic 4 colour ballpoint pens.

When you draw muses from the Museum by Sktchy app for a long time you inevitably develop favourites. Wendy is an absolute favourite of mine. I love drawing her. She has the best eyes and such an expressive face, and all her photos are well-lit and interesting. They are everything I look for when I’m looking for a great image to draw from.

This was a fun draw of Marie from Sktchy in my Sketchbook Skool Spark class yesterday.